Why Water Should Matter

Remember that Scientific American article about water and energy that I sent out a while back? Well, Jenny Dorgan of the Alabama Environmental Council wrote an excellent op-ed that was recently printed in The Birmingham News. Using the Scientific American article as a starting point, Jenny convincingly argues that protecting our freshwater resources through water conservation, efficiency and reuse is crucial to the future of our society’s economy, security and quality of life.

Read Jenny's op-ed below. Thanks to Jenny for the inspirational words and to Kirsten Bryant for forwarding me the letter!

Why water should matter
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Jenny Dorgan

An article in a special issue of Scientific American, "Catch 22: Water vs. Energy," begins by describing the battle Alabama has been locked in for two decades with Tennessee, Florida and Georgia over - water. In response to a plan to reduce water flows from reservoirs in Georgia, the article explains, Alabama objected, worried about nuclear power plants that use enormous quantities of water to cool their big reactors. There was potential the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan would need to shut down.

Wait a minute. Alabama's priority for water use is for industry's sake?

Consider the following.

Our 77,000 miles of rivers and streams have been recognized as a global priority. Alabama is first in the nation for the number of species that live in our water. We also have the waterways with the first and second most number of imperiled fish species on the continent.

Outdoor recreation is a significant employment- and revenue-generating industry in Alabama.

If recreation, economy and biodiversity don't speak to your heart, ponder this: Water is life. It has no substitute; without it, people die. Millions of people die every year from lack of access to clean water.

Severe water shortages affecting more than 400 million people today will affect 4 billion people by 2050.

Said Scientific American: "It seems we're approaching an era of peak water. The situation should already be considered a crisis, but the public has not grasped the urgency."

Fortune Magazine declared: "Water is the oil of the 21st century."

In Alabama, thermal cooling for power plants, such as the Farley Nuclear Plant, accounted for 83 percent of water withdrawals in 2005. All but 5 percent of it is returned, albeit altered. The point is, enormous quantities of water are used to create energy. Likewise, enormous quantities of energy are used to process our water.

Americans are finally giving the energy crisis the attention it warrants. What will it take for us to make the connection between water and energy, and the need to address these issues as one - for our rivers, our security, our climate and our pocketbooks?

Today, Alabamians can pitch in for the greater good as our parents and grandparents did during World War II. As the green elephant in the room, Republicans for Environmental Protection, recently remarked, from a national security standpoint, efficiency is the perfect energy resource because it is dispersed, decentralized and domestic. Efficiency doesn't put dollars in terrorists' pockets. Efficiency cannot be bombed. Efficiency doesn't rely on choke-point infrastructure such as tankers, pipelines or refineries. Efficiency doesn't bind America into alliances with dictatorial regimes in unstable regions. Efficiency doesn't risk the lives of American soldiers defending energy resources far from home. Efficiency doesn't expose our national security to coups and cartels.

REP goes on to say, "Critics clinging to outdated notions have brushed off new technologies as `boutique' resources that only Luddite hippies could love. The critics haven't been keeping up with the news."

We need a market-driven, diversified energy portfolio that promotes the use of a combination of alternative sources of energy in cogeneration with the finite resources that remain. Solar, wind, geothermal and low-impact hydro technologies are the future for clean, efficient energy. Think of the jobs that will be created.

And don't forget the water part of the equation: We can get bigger energy results faster through water conservation, efficiency and reuse than virtually any other energy strategy. Jenny Dorgan of Birmingham is program coordinator for the Alabama Environmental Council. E-mail: Jenny@aeconline.org.