(2008) As the Earth's fresh water (salt water makes up 97% of the planet's water) is continuously depleted and polluted, director/writer/producer/ cinematographer Sam Bozzo focuses his camera on dozens of knowledgeable people - including Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow, authors of the book on which the documentary was based - who present powerful evidence that the human race must confront its profligate attitude toward this precious, life-sustaining resource or suffer the dire consequences, as happened to the Mayan culture.

For example, Los Angeles's "hydrolic civilization" depends upon water piped south from northern California, without which it could sustain only one sixth of its current 18 million people. Narrator Malcolm McDowell's voice provides the right tone of somberness to the subject.

The facts come fast and furious: as billions of gallons of groundwater are extracted daily, the Earth is being transformed, causing desertification, deforestation, erosion, sinking cities, and earthquakes; as the wetlands disappear (60% have been destroyed), along with hardscapes replacing permeable soil, the planet loses its ability to percolate and filter water back into its aquifers while rain water washes out to sea; using polluted water to irrigates crops, farmers are poisoning those who consume the vegetables and fruits, with miscarriages resulting and sperm counts falling; in the poorest countries people are dying of water-borne diseases.

In 50 years, says hydrologist Michael Kravcik, we will experience a collapse of our water resources if nothing is done. In conquering nature we're killing ourselves. Water cartels, such as Suez and Vivende, have been privatizing drinking water across the globe ("the new colonialism"), taking over from local governments, hiking prices while mismanaging the systems (in some instances leaving residents without drinkable water).

"It's not the money, it's the power," says Ric Davidge, Alaskan entrepreneur and former administrator in President Reagan's Department of the Interior, arguing that water is a good investment, considering the relationship of supply to demand, and a good arrangement for the public when government partners with private interests. However, critics point to the many instances of collusion and corruption in such leaky couplings.

Meanwhile, GE, Proctor and Gamble, Dow Chemical, among others are increasingly venturing capital into the world's remaining water resources. For wealthy countries desalination may be a solution, though the process is highly dependent on fossil fuels for its energy consumption.

As does a similar documentary, Flow, Bozzo covers the same water controversies of Coca-Cola and Nestlé (aka Perrier and Ice Mountain) corporate theft, draining and pumping water out of local lakes and aquifers for bottled water to be sold elsewhere (valiantly though too often futilely opposed by people such as Terry Swier and her son Chris), interrupting and damaging ecosystems; the revolt of Bolivians against the water-privatizer Bechtel Corporation; access to safe drinking water as a human right.

Like oil today, scarcity of freshwater resources will become potential areas of conflict - e.g., Brazil's plentiful Guaraní aquifer as "the Middle East of water in the future" - as nations attempt to secure future means of providing potable water.

Kravcik and others make the case for returning to a natural cycle of allowing rainfall and local irrigation to recharge groundwater, more hydroponic agriculture, conservation (including gray-water recycling), eliminating dams and water catchments, and application of new technologies to preserve soil and local water without pulling excessive amounts of water from the ground.

The filmmaker's speculation into the motives of the Bush family's purchasing huge quantities of land in Paraguay - moving from its financial interest in oil to water - detracts from the primary objective of making a convincing, well-reasoned argument for humanity's survival by introducing a political polemic.

Once again I was greatly disappointed that only briefly did anyone mention the need for human population control as a requirement for resolving this planetary crisis.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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