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AS ALEX PRUD’HOMME and his great-aunt Julia Child were completing their collaboration on her memoir, My Life in France, they began to talk about the French obsession with bottled water, which had finally spread to America. From this spark of interest, Prud’homme began what would become an ambitious quest to understand the evolving story of freshwater. What he found was shocking: as the climate warms and world population grows, demand for water has surged, but supplies of freshwater are static or dropping, and new threats to water quality appear every day. The Ripple Effect is Prud’homme’s vivid and engaging inquiry into the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century.
The questions he sought to answer were urgent: Will there be enough water to satisfy demand? What are the threats to its quality? What is the state of our water infrastructure—both the pipes that bring us freshwater and the levees that keep it out? How secure is our water supply from natural disasters and terrorist attacks? Can we create new sources for our water supply through scientific innovation? Is water a right like air or a commodity like oil—and who should control the tap? Will the wars of the twenty-first century be fought over water?
Like Daniel Yergin’s classic The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Prud’homme’s The Ripple Effect is a masterwork of investigation and dramatic narrative. With striking instincts for a revelatory story, Prud’homme introduces readers to an array of colorful, obsessive, brilliant—and sometimes shadowy—characters through whom these issues come alive. Prud’homme traversed the country, and he takes readers into the heart of the daily dramas that will determine the future of this essential resource—from the alleged murder of a water scientist in a New Jersey purification plant, to the epic confrontation between salmon fishermen and copper miners in Alaska, to the poisoning of Wisconsin wells, to the epidemic of intersex fish in the Chesapeake Bay, to the wars over fracking for natural gas. Michael Pollan has changed the way we think about the food we eat; Alex Prud’homme will change the way we think about the water we drink. Informative and provocative, The Ripple Effect is a major achievement.
- Sales Rank: #450787 in Books
- Published on: 2011-06-07
- Released on: 2011-06-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.30" w x 6.00" l, 1.30 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
Review
"Both drought and flood are on the rise, and Alex Prud'homme, in this fine new account, helps you understand why. We've taken the planet's hydrology for granted for the 10,000 years of human civilization; that's a luxury we can no longer afford." —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"By illuminating the central issues—water quality, water quantity, ownership, waste, infrastructure—through the tales of individuals who wrestle with them, Alex Prud'homme makes a vast and desperately serious topic flow beautifully through the rocks and hard places that our planet is caught between."—John Seabrook, New Yorker staff writer and author of Flash of Genius
“The problem of water quantity, quality and use are upon us. Alex Prud’homme’s book identifies some of the culprits, including us inattentative citizens and the combination of regulations and markets needed to make clean water usable and available in the twenty-first century. This book should wake you up.”—William D. Ruckelshaus, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
“An essential work about a topic too-often ignored.”—Kirkus (starred review)
About the Author
Alex Prud'homme, the grandnephew of Paul Child, is the coauthor with Julia Child of the New York Times #1 bestseller My Life in France. He is also the author of The French Chef in America, to be published by Knopf in the Spring of 2016.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
The Defining Resource
Thousands have lived without love—not one without water.
—W. H. Auden
It is scarcity and plenty that makes the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would not exchange one for ten barrels of water.
—Galileo Galilei, 1632
THE PARADOX OF WATER
The received wisdom is that America has some of the best water in the world—meaning that we have the cleanest and most plentiful supply of H2O anywhere, available in an endless stream, at whatever temperature or volume we wish, whenever we want it, at hardly any cost. In America, clean water seems limitless. This assumption is so ingrained that most of us never stop to think about it when we brush our teeth, power up our computers, irrigate our crops, build a new house, or gulp down a clean, clear drink on a hot summer day.
It’s easy to see why. For most of its history, the United States has shown a remarkable ability to find, treat, and deliver potable water to citizens in widely different circumstances across the country. Since the seventies, America has relied on the Environmental Protection Agency and robust laws—most notably the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, which have been further enhanced by state and local regulations—to protect water supplies. Even our sewer systems are among the best in the world, reliably limiting the spread of disease and ensuring a healthy environment. At least, that is what the water industry says.
To put the state of American water in perspective, consider that by 2000 some 1.2 billion people around the world lacked safe drinking water, and that by 2025 as many as 3.4 billion people will face water scarcity, according to the UN. What’s more, as the global population rises from 6.8 billion in 2010 to nearly 9 billion by 2050, and climate change disrupts familiar weather patterns, reliable supplies of freshwater will become increasingly threatened. In Australia and Spain, record droughts have led to critical water shortages; in China rampant pollution has led to health problems and environmental degradation; in Africa tensions over water supplies have led to conflict; and in Central America the privatization of water has led to suffering and violence.
At a glance, then, America seems to be hydrologically blessed. But if you look a little closer, you will discover that the apparent success of our water management and consumption masks a broad spectrum of underlying problems—from new kinds of water pollution to aging infrastructure, intensifying disputes over water rights, obsolete regulations, and shifting weather patterns, among many other things.
These problems are expensive to fix, difficult to adapt to, and politically unpopular. Not surprisingly, people have tended to ignore them, pretending they don’t exist in the secret hope that they will cure themselves. Instead, America’s water problems have steadily grown worse. In recent years, the quality and quantity of American water has undergone staggering changes, largely out of the public eye.
Between 2004 and 2009, the Clean Water Act (CWA) was violated at least 506,000 times by more than twenty-three thousand companies and other facilities, according to EPA data assessed by the New York Times. The EPA’s comprehensive data covers only that five-year span, but it shows that the number of facilities violating the CWA increased more than 16 percent from 2004 to 2007. (Some polluters illegally withheld information about their discharges, so the actual contamination was worse.) The culprits ranged from small gas stations and dry-cleaning stores, to new housing developments, farms, mines, factories, and vast city sewer systems. During that time, less than 3 percent of polluters were punished or fined by EPA regulators, who were politically and financially hamstrung.
During the same period, the quality of tap water deteriorated, as the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was violated in every state. Between 2004 and 2009, a study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit watchdog organization, found, tap water in forty-five states and the District of Columbia was contaminated by 316 different pollutants. More than half of those chemicals—including the gasoline additive MTBE, the rocket-fuel component perchlorate, and industrial plasticizers called phthalates—were unregulated by the EPA and thus not subject to environmental safety standards. Federal agencies have set limits for ninety-one chemicals in water supplies; the EWG study found forty-nine of these pollutants in water at excessive levels. Translated, this means that the drinking water of 53.6 million Americans was contaminated.
Many people have turned to bottled water as a convenient, supposedly healthier alternative to tap, but a 2008 test by EWG found that bottled water (purchased from stores in nine states and the District of Columbia) contained traces of thirty-eight pollutants, including fertilizers, bacteria, industrial chemicals, Tylenol, and excessive levels of potential carcinogens. The International Bottled Water Association, a trade group, dismissed the EWG report as exaggerated and unrepresentative of the industry, demanding that EWG “cease and desist.” EWG stuck to its conclusions and objected to the industry’s “intimidation tactics.”
The health consequences of water pollution are difficult to gauge and likely won’t be known for years. But medical researchers have noticed a rise in the incidence of certain diseases, especially breast and prostate cancer, since the 1970s, and doctors surmise that contaminated drinking water could be one explanation. Similarly, the effect of long-term multifaceted pollution on the ecosystem is not well understood. What, for instance, is the cumulative effect of a “cocktail” of old and new contaminants—sewage, plastics, ibuprofen, Chanel No. 5, estrogen, cocaine, and Viagra, say—on aquatic grasses, water bugs, bass, ducks, beavers, and on us? Hydrologists are only just beginning to study this question.
In the meantime, human thirst began to outstrip the ecosystem’s ability to supply clean water in a sustainable way. By 2008, the world’s consumption of water was doubling every twenty years, which is more than twice the rate of population growth. By 2000, people had used or altered virtually every accessible supply of freshwater. Some of the world’s mightiest rivers—including the Rio Grande and the Colorado—had grown so depleted that they reached the sea only in exceptionally wet years. Springs have been pumped dry. Half the world’s wetlands (the “kidneys” of the environment, which absorb rainfall, filter pollutants, and dampen the effects of storm surges) were drained or damaged, which harmed ecosystems and allowed salt water to pollute freshwater aquifers. In arid, rapidly growing Western states, such as Colorado, Texas, and California, droughts were causing havoc.
A report by the US General Accounting Office predicts that thirty-six states will face water shortages by 2013, while McKinsey & Co. forecasts that global demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent in 2030.
The experts—hydrologists, engineers, environmentalists, diplomats—have been watching these trends with concern, noting that the growing human population and warming climate will only intensify the pressure on water supplies. Some call freshwater “the defining resource of the twenty-first century,” and the UN has warned of “a looming water crisis.”
“We used to think that energy and water would be the critical issues. Now we think water will be the critical issue,” Mostafa Tolba, former head of the UN Environment Programme, has declared. Ismail Serageldin, the World Bank’s leading environmental expert, put it even more bluntly: “The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water.”
© 2011 Alex Prud’homme
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Conserve it, use it smartly in accordance with nature, and keep it clean
By Sal Nudo
Author Alex Prud `Homme claims "The Ripple Effect" is not an "encyclopedic" read, but at times if feels that way. That's not to say I wouldn't recommend this book; after all, the many troublesome issues over available, clean freshwater for citizens worldwide are crucial to know about and getting increasingly urgent by the year.
Prud `Homme cannot be accused of forgoing research or skimping on facts. He transitions nicely from one troubled region to the next, giving proper weight to the severity of the problems but not sensationalizing, and offering advice by experts throughout. I came away thinking super-arid Arizona, remote Las Vegas, sprawling California and weather-troubled Georgia are in for some rough times, presently and in the future. The Midwest, where environmentally destructive farming methods and flooding are common, also has its share of water-related predicaments. Prud `Homme drives the point home that people all over the world -- from seasoned hydrologists to the average man and woman -- will need to rethink every aspect of water. As populations explode, drinkable H2O is dwindling -- something's got to give in this equation. Additionally, outdated, unregulated laws and a worrisome inclination by politicians and their constituents during the last decade or so to pay less attention to "the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century" have exacerbated the problems.
Admittedly, my eyes and thoughts glazed over at times as Prud `Homme intricately covered numerous judicial cases and technical details to supplement the themes. But numerous things stuck with me. Harmful agricultural methods, for instance, have contributed to the runoff of contaminated groundwater into major rivers, causing numerous "dead zones" where aquatic life has stagnated and useable drinking supplies have been curtailed. In addition, though they are much needed and provide a cherished economic drive, electricity, thirsty crops like corn and raising farm animals account for much more wasted and detrimental water use than water coming out of taps by U.S. residents as a whole, a fact I found interesting.
Smarter techniques and habits could change things for the better, such as building porous concrete that absorbs rainwater in urban areas and not purchasing bottled water. But evolution comes slowly when high-stakes money and ever-moving progress (in areas where it's difficult to transport water) are on the agenda. As more and more pavement is laid down in urban areas all over the country, some of it covering precious wetlands where rainwater is easily absorbed, the runoff of tainted water into underground pipes is inevitable. The flushing of pharmaceuticals and everything else under the sun is also a potential issue, as is climate change and evolving weather patterns that much of the world is drastically unprepared for. Leaders in forward-thinking countries such as below-sea-level Holland have thought outside the box and adapted beautifully, working in tune with nature for results that work. Other locales, such as New York City, could come to a standstill if a weather-related catastrophe struck -- and experts claim such calamities will occur. All this just scratches the surface of what's covered in "The Ripple Effect."
Solutions? Prud `Homme offers hope, including a cautiously optimistic section about desalination plants, which extract salt from seawater to make it drinkable. All is not bleak, but many people in the know say that the preciousness of water could someday exceed that of oil, and it's worth noting that the two resources work hand in hand. This is an eye-opening book that's worth the time.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Must read
By Marty
I'm not done reading this book. Some books you just can't gallop through, they must be digested incrementally, and this is one of them. I have felt for some time that water, being indispensable to all life, will inevitably and finally be the one thing that either pits humans against each other or ultimately forces us to cooperate. Let's hope it is the latter.
We have done such a whole lot of damage to this planet that I hold slight hope of it (and us) holding on a whole lot longer. Yes, I sound like a nut, but how long could you hold out without water? -- Maybe 3 days. So many people walk many miles each day to obtain water -- and really cruddy water at that. We're still lucky in the US to have fresh water -- just turn on the tap, there it is -- but we're using it up faster than we should. Agriculture and fracking and industry etc etc use billions of gallons per day. I sure don't know what the answer is, and I'm betting that by the end of the book the answer will still not be clear.
This is an important issue that should have TRUE cooperation nationally and internationally, it's above politics. It's about the survival of life on planet earth. And we can't survive without water.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By Garry W. Owens
The Ripple Effect provides a very basic review of the condition of freshwater around the world. The data is very useful and the commentary provides a variety of viewpoints about the global water crisis from a layperson's point of view. It is a body of work that should be read and used to determine a course of action that is intended to have significant impacts particularly in the under and undeveloped places on the globe. I highly recommend it to all water justice activists present and future.
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