"Everyone takes water for granted," filmmaker Jim Thebaut said.  "I don't think that the average citizen begins to realize how fragile the system is."  

Maybe not.  But just a few minutes of his latest documentary, The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry? is enough to change all that. Thebaut is not just a documentary film-maker, he's also a man on a mission: ensuring that "all people... have access to safe, affordable and sustainable drinking water and adequate sanitation" in a world where 1.2 billion people live where water security is imperiled, and trends are only growing worse. On Thursday, May 7, that mission brought him to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach for a special screening of his followup to his 2005 documentary, Running Dry, which had a global focus.

"Even though people appreciated the message, there was a disconnect between the world and what's happening here in the US," Thebault told Random Lengths, when asked how he came to make the followup. "When I say that a child dies every 15 seconds they say, well that's over there.  I did it [the Southwest film] to bring the issue home," he explained.  And that meant covering everything from the extravagant desert water fantasies of Las Vegas hotels and Palm Springs golf courses to the Third World conditions of Navajo and Hopi communities where 80,000 people lack basic running water.

The screening was followed with a panel discussion featuring Thebault with two local water officials, Tim Brick, Chair of the Board of the Metropoliticn Water District, who also appeared in the documentary, and Kevin Wattier, General Manager of the Long Beach Water Department.  

While the threat of global warming and the Southwest's particular vulnerability clearly loom in the background (see "The Fire This Time and Next", RLN, November 02, 2007, for the prospective recurrence of Medieval megadroughts), the film, narrated by actress Jane Seymour, avoids focusing on global warming, going out of its way to include a balance of Democratic and Republican senators and representatives-as well as Dr. Gene Whitney, science advisor to President Bush, along with a range of local and regional water officials.  It's enough to simply focus on existing shortages, inadequate infrastructure (such as 100-year-old levees in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta), projected massive population growth, and the undisputed fact that the Colorado River compact-the backbone of regional water distribution-was based on what we now know to have been an exceptionally wet period of time.  Put them all together and the need for urgent and comprehensive action emerges organically from the film.

While the film derives most of its power from the gradual weaving together of hard facts and human testimony, there are some stunners that stand out, perhaps most notably the warning that Lake Mead might not be there in its present form in 20 years.  "We might have to go on rationing, or not have any water at all," Thebault warns, pointing out that the CIA has cited this as a potential national security threat.  Another stunner is the vast difference in water consumption levels between the US and other industrial nations.

In the followup discussion, Wattier revealed a silver lining to that disturbing fact-by cutting back through a number of coordinated strategies, Long Beach has dramatically reduced its per-capita water consumption, back to levels not seen since 1945.  While Long Beach has proven that dramatic efficiency gains are possible, the sheer magnitude of regional population growth-increasing sprawl, and burdening more fragile ecosystems-makes a strong case for the need for a comprehensive water and land-use policy transcending traditional political boundaries.

"We need to plan on a watershed level.  Water transcends political boundaries."  Thebault said.  This is clearly evident in the way his latest documentary revolves around the Colorado, with side-discussions of the Rio Grande and the Sacramento/San Joaquin river system.

Thebault has little patience for traditional states-rights arguments, given how water systems work.  But he's not for running roughshod over anyone.  "It [water/land use policy] should be implemented on a national and a regional level.  The Southeast has their own set of issues. The Midwest especially faces depletion of aquifers," he points out.

"Every region has its own unique issues."