Learning (At Last) to Value Water

welIn 1774, Ben Franklin said, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of the well.”

“He was wrong,” author Robert Glennon told an audience of about 100 Tuesday at the Alumni Memorial Union at Marquette University.  Even as  wells and water supplies move ominously closer to dry in parts of the United States, the public and many policy makers are not responding in ways that could avert major impacts, warned  Glennon, whose books include Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It, published last spring.

“We don’t value water in the United States,” Glennon told the session, part of the “On the Issues” series hosted by Mike Gousha, Marquette Law School Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy.

Wisconsin is not standing at the precipice of a water crisis to the same degree as  metropolitan Atlanta and much of the western United States, but it would still be wise to undertake public education efforts here and to make more effective water use decisions, Glennon said. 

He also said the Milwaukee area was doing ”pretty well”  in building itself as a center of water-related economic development, thanks to the number of businesses in the area connected to water use,  the growing involvement of universities, and the presence of Lake Michigan.

Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy in the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona, said water is a finite and exhaustible resource that needs major public attention similar to the way petroleum is regarded. “Water lubricates the American economy just as oil does,” he said.

He said droughts in recent years in some parts of the country were not much different than those in the past. What is different, he said, if the number of people living in places such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Policies and practices have not changed to keep up with the demand on water as some water tables and aquifers decline in major ways. “You can’t keep putting more straws in the glass and expect things to get better,” he said.

“We humans have an infinite capacity to deny reality,” Glennon said. He said many Americans follow “a hydro-illogical” cycle when it comes to concern about water, and he likened some decisions – or the absence of decisions – in places such as Georgia, where there remains almost no control on how many new wells are drilled, to operating “a circular firing squad.”

“People who think business as usual and some engineering solutions will solve this crisis are not thinking,” Glennon said.

But he said he was “incredibly optimistic” that solutions would come. He advocated steps such as greater re-use of water, increased water conservation, and increased desalinization of water in coastal areas.

“”I want to take a fresh look at the human toilet,” he said. “We need to figure out a new way of disposing of human waste” that does not use nearly as much water, he said.

He also called for pricing water more realistically for consumers, which would mean substantial price increases for many people and businesses.

But he suggested the biggest steps are likely to involve a combination of government regulation and free market forces. “We are entering an era of water re-allocation,” Glennon said.  “There is no alternative.”  

Glennon, who described himself as coming from the left side of the political spectrum, described instances where farmers and land owners had found it financially attractive to reduce their water use in exchange for payment from others who wanted to use or conserve that water.

“The critical ingredients are moral courage and the political will to act,” Glennon said.

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