from Lincoln Journal Star

"The Future of Water, A Startling Look Ahead" by Steve Maxwell with Scott Yates, American Water Works Association, 165 pages, $29.95

Water, one of the most precious resources on Earth, is also the most abundant, covering about three-quarters of the planet. Yet the prized, fresh, clean water that humans need for life is becoming increasingly scarce, polluted and expensive.

This book explains all about this increasingly dangerous situation and should be read by politicians, policy makers and folks like you and me. It is a book that looks at the conditions of water now, with projections into the future, which are based on the history of past water use.

There are three major themes of this book, according to the authors:

First, they see that "water is rightfully becoming recognized as one of the key criteria, or ‘factors of production' in industrial manufacturing, public policy-making, and personal decision-making." Water is joining labor, capital and energy as crucial to economic decisions and our standards of living.

Secondly, the "water footprint" or the total way that water impacts all we do, all we own and all we consume will become more important in the future as clean water becomes more scarce.

And third, the price of water is likely to increase rapidly in the future and have a major impact on our future priorities and behavior. Water today is cheap (almost free), and the price doesn't truly reflect the true costs of delivering it for use, or the true value to our lives. Our attitudes about its use obviously will change as it becomes more dear in dollars and abundance.

For most Americans, the biggest home use of water is to keep lawns green. Enjoy those lawns now, say the authors, "because the future doesn't look bright for wide expanses of green grass surrounding every home." Especially because we use expensively treated clean water, the same that we drink and clean with, to spray grass and plants.

Worldwide, most fresh water is used to irrigate crops for humans and animals, and that is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, even with expected radical changes in irrigation systems and watering on farms that are outlined. With a projected shortage in fresh water just about everywhere, dire hunger can be expected to increase as more food is needed to feed more mouths, but having less water to use. Currently, irrigation improvements have contributed to a slight decrease in U.S. per capita water consumption, but that is changing here and worldwide with increased populations, climate warming and heavy droughts.

This book is strangely fascinating. With its sharp analysis of current facts and trends and projections of those facts and trends into the future, it reads like a model for disaster. Which it is.

However, the authors give some hope for fresh water sustainability in their concluding chapter, if people and governments will act promptly. They lay out seven areas of reform that will do so. After all, "water will play a much more critical and central role in our lives and behavior in the future," they write. Perhaps the biggest reform we face is acknowledging that our "free" water isn't, that it is costly to produce and find and that supplies are very limited.