Book Review: Charles Fishman's "The Big Thirst"

 This year's hot new book about water, "The Big Thirst" written by Charles Fishman, has brought to the public eye what many who are involved in the business and study of water, water resources and water management have long known. Water resource problems are a fact and, if we continue with business as usual, are coming to a town near you. Throughout the world, water crises are popping up, too much water here or too little there. But why are these incidents so shocking? The reliability of water systems in the western world is so ingrained to our consciousness we hardly question it. We, as a society, place little value on our most precious resource, confident that it will be there when we need it. And this is simply not the case.

  Fishman uses this book to examine how and why we use water the way we do while taking account of what is going right and what is going wrong. The book is filled with case studies, from the United States, to Australia, to India looking at domestic, agricultural, and industrial situations to provide a "big picture" view of the situation and where it is heading. The common thread to all of these cases is the value we place on water. Typically this value is trivial, water is cheap, easily accessible, and taken for granted by many. It comes from an unkown source through unknown means and the waster water is taken care of in an unknown manner. To much of the population it is simply a black box.

  All of this is changing though. Water prices are rising, sources are becoming less dependable and, with the recent attention being brought to emerging contaminants, quality is being questioned. The view of water as a resource and the effort to effectively manage it as such is a change that needs to take place in society, from top industries to single family homes. Water reuse, conservation, and protection are all practices that can both lead to and result from these changes and are a few of the things that must be done in order to deal with water scarcity problems around the world. Big businesses such as IBM and Coca-Cola realize this and are taking measures to achieve levels of water management previously unseen. And they are not doing this out of ethical responsibility either, they are doing it because it makes sense. The economic benefits to these companies, who use massive amounts of water for their operations are clear. The money saved from pumping, cleaning, and then disposing of this natural resource are substantial, and as domestic prices rise will matter to everyday people as well. The effort to protect natural water and use less is not an environmental movement, it is an economic one.

 The take-away message of the book is short and sweet, the "golden-age" of water is over and the sooner we acknowledge this and adapt, the better off we will be.