Dead Pool

"The incongruity between where we want to live and where Nature supplies the water to sustain our lives is the root fact of existence in the West, the one simple fact of life in the West that is more important than any other."

Despite an ever-growing population and periodic summertime water shortages, we have it way easy here in King County. But if you live in California, Arizona, or one of the other southwestern states that gets the majority of its water from the Colorado River, water is in short supply and the immediate future, not just the distant future, looks pretty grim. Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West by James Lawrence Powell gives a compelling account (and stinging indictment) of the history of water usage in the Southwest, the effects of global warming on the already over-allocated Colorado River (which in most years doesn't even reach its delta), and the probable outcome of a continuation of consumption patterns in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and southern California. And what is that consumption pattern? As the author puts it, "Regardless of the state of the Colorado River today, every city, county and state in the West plans to consume more water. In defiance of logic and limits, the driest states have become the fastest growing."

Dead Pool is rich with historical information, mathematical and statistical analyses (complete with tables and graphs), and comprehensively stated arguments and conclusions. And yet, though it might be considered somewhat dense by some readers, it is a very engaging read. Indeed, the section that deals with the rivalry between dam-crazy Bureau of Reclamation chief Floyd Dominy and the fiery Sierra Club executive director David Brower is a downright page-turner. There are a number of interesting illustrations and 22 pages of notes in the back. In all, this is a highly persuasive (and more than a little alarming) book written by a well-informed expert.

So why should we care? I mean, they're down there and we're up here, right? Well, I'll leave you with the following prediction for Phoenix in the frighteningly-near future: "Businesses and family begin to abandon Phoenix, creating a Grapes of Wrath-like exodus in reverse. Long lines of vehicles clog the freeways, heading east toward the Mississippi and north towards Oregon and Washington." That's us. As James Lawrence Powell so eloquently points out, this is everyone's problem.