Water: With James Earl Jones; M E No Supers

There are as many different words for water as there are cultures on the earth. The people throughout the world have one thing in common. We've always put water to work. It is essential to civilization. But imagine a world where water is rationed based on race or religion. It is in the Middle East. Imagine a world where special police control the streets to catch people wasting water. They do in parts of the United States. Imagine a world where 30,000 people die every day because of dirty drinking water. They do in many developing countries.

The earth is entering a period of global water crisis and the stakes are tremendous because without water life itself is impossible. Of course there's plenty of water in the world. She quarters of the earth is covered with it. But many places people are using water far faster than nature can replenish it. In the next hour, we'll visit parts of the United States, Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand. Places where people have learned the importance of water conservation. Before we begin our journey, I'd like you to think of the old saying. Water, water, everywhere, but narrow are dropped to drink. That really is true. Ninety-seven percent of the earth's water is in the ocean, too salty to drink.

Two percent of the earth's water is frozen in glaciers and the polar ice caps. Which leaves about one percent. One percent of the earth's water is available for people to use. Which makes it the world's most precious natural resource. One place that's clear is the Western United States. Water is so scarce in the state of California, it has sparked a major economic battle between cities and farmers. We sent reporter Terry Fitzpatrick to investigate a conflict we all may face someday. If the development has been less for 30 or 4,000 years, man sees water that doesn't even raise a crop and have his own civilization there. Perhaps it isn't natural that it's been done by man since man had enough ingenuity to use that extra water to raise a crop.

Dana Fisher is one of the most successful farmers he'll ever meet. His farm stretches about as far as the eye can see. And what do people grow out here? Cotton, alfalfa, lettuce. Those are some of the major crops right there. This is what makes Dana Fisher's farm so successful. Irrigation has transformed the Palo Verde Valley into an agricultural oasis. But like many California farmers, Dana Fisher has found a better crop than cotton, alfalfa, or lettuce. Fisher is selling some of his water to the cities of Southern California. We took the land out of production and promised, well, of course, more than a promise, we contracted to leave it out of production for two solid years for 24 months. So that Los Angeles could take the water?

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California pays Fisher $620 an acre, not to grow crops on part of his farm. That's more money than he could make if he did plant crops here. It's a pilot project to see if cities and farmers can cooperate in managing California's scarce water supply. 25% of Fisher's farm, just like 25% of the entire Palo Verde Valley, is barren. Wow, if the cities want water, they can get it normally, because they can afford to pay so much more for it. There's an old saying in that nature that water flows towards money and doesn't require gravity. Here is where Dana Fisher's water will end up. The cities of Southern California use more than 800 billion gallons of water a year. It's enough water to flood the entire city of Los Angeles, eight feet deep.

Most of the water comes from hundreds of miles away, through elaborate networks of dams, aqueducts, and filtration plants. John Woodraska heads the Metropolitan Water District, which buys and delivers water to 300 communities in Southern California. The water that is made available to the urban interests, the multiplier effect for that investment brings thousands or millions of dollars into the economy and thousands of jobs. Clearly, the highest-invest use of that water from an economic standpoint has said the urban interests are going to get that water. 98% of the jobs and the economic output of California is in the cities, not on the farms. And to prosper, these factories need water, but more than 80% of California's water is used by agriculture. That's why the Metropolitan Water District is looking to buy water rights from farmers.

I've had farmers tell me the best crop they've had this year has been metropolitan. That's the only thing that's actually made them money, and it's allowed them to keep in business and farm in a future year. Selling the water to metropolitan ends up being the best alternative, in some cases, to those farmers who are just breaking the ground and developing this whole new field of water transfers. The Metropolitan Water District paid $27 million to farmers in the Palo Verde Valley. They're pleased, but many other farmers feel this deal with Los Angeles was a deal with the devil. The referred California could repeat one of the most notorious water grabs in the history of the American West. What farmers are worried about is what happened here in the Owens Valley of California. This was once rich farmland. There was plenty of water and lots of potential for the future. But that's before the city of Los Angeles came here.

In the early 1900s, the city bought virtually all of the land in the valley and then built this dam. And water that used to flow to the farms of the Owens Valley is now diverted 200 miles to the city of Los Angeles. My dad told me that a lot of the ranchers here owed a little money and they figured that was a good way to get out of that city. Because the city was often a pretty good price at that time for land. Farmers didn't realize Los Angeles was after the water, not the land. Agents for the city said they were building a cattle ranch and summer resort, but secretly they were buying key parcels of land that controlled the water supply. Divided and conquered. That's what the whole thing was. Did you feel a little bitter about how that happened? I'm very bitter. I hate the city of Los Angeles more so than anybody. I'll tell you that. Big for destroying the sole valley. I feel this would have been a beautiful valley today. Ken Stewart is the only farmer who hasn't sold his land to the city of Los Angeles.

The city has been offering to buy his place for decades. Stewart's 160 acres of alfalfa is the only green spot for miles. He uses groundwater to keep his farm going. A lot of people think I'm crazy because I'm still here, instead of selling out to him. But I have much longer to go and I've figured that I want to leave my son something and whatever they want to do with it, that's up to them. When Los Angeles built its aqueduct to the Owens Valley, it was heralded as one of the world's greatest achievements in engineering. The water flowed over mountains through giant siphon tunnels and then through the desert to Los Angeles. For a while, farmers were allowed to lease back some of the land and the water rights they had sold to the city. But as Los Angeles grew, the city took more and more of the water it owned

away from the Owens Valley. Farmers were so bitter that one of Stewart's neighbors sabotaged the aqueduct in 1924. He blew up that siphon and when he done that, that destroyed the siphon and everything else. It took him a year and months to fix it all up. See, they had to repair all new pipe and everything like that. You're smiling when you were... No, I was glad to find a bin. If I was young right now, I'd try it myself. I'll tell you. The Owens Valley is now a tourist stop for people on their way to Yosemite National Park. The major display of water is a fountain outside the Chamber of Commerce. The loss of water meant the loss of a way of life. There's no opportunity for young people here. The only job you got here are service jobs. In a service station, in a restaurant, a place like that.

In a man with a wife and three or four kids, they can't afford it. They both got to work and then they can't hire to make it. What happened in the Owens Valley taught Californians that their future depends on who controls their water. Water here is property and people guard it jellously. The state's history is marked by intense competition between cities and farms to develop a reliable water supply. Out here in Southern California, we're building a great empire on the edge of the desert. If we are to survive and to grow, we must have the water that will enable us to maintain our mastery over the desert. California now has the most elaborate water works in the world, enough canals to reach two-thirds of the way around the earth. Farmers still control most of the state's water supply, despite the loss of water in the Owens Valley. If cities want to grow, they have to take water away from farms.

There's no place left to build new dams. Well, Southern California gets water from three sources from the... David Kennedy heads the Department of Water Resources for the state of California. Kennedy was able to convince farmers to share their water with cities when drought hit California several years ago. Well, the basic concept was we would buy water from willing sellers, those farmers, irrigation districts, who either had more than they needed, or were willing to not use water that they otherwise would have put to use in return for being paid. At the time, cities were so desperate for water, they were urging the governor to declare a state of emergency and commandeer the farmers' water supply. But Kennedy developed his idea for a California water bank, and farmers who had previously fought to protect their water rights, suddenly called David Kennedy to sell. Oh, that's good to hear. I think we're all convinced this was a better way to do this by compensation,

negotiation, cooperation, rather than confrontation, and everybody going off the court. The water bank lasted only two years during the worst of the California drought, although the bank has closed the idea of selling water caught on. Cities are rapidly buying whatever water farmers will sell. Will cities buy all the water in a region and repeat the experience of the Owens Valley? The cities say no. Because of the history of this issue, we are very sensitive to coming in and dealing on a voluntary basis with the individual farmers and trying to work out a deal that is going to be beneficial to both parties. But already, the sale of water is having unintended effects. When farmers in the Palo Verde Valley took their cotton fields out of production, the local cotton gin went bankrupt and was put up for auction.

We just got on the point we didn't have enough acres to justify running, and with the cost to maintain an operation this day in time, it just wasn't feasible. So here we are. We're going. We're history. Low cotton prices put the cotton gin and trouble to begin with. The two-year program to sell water to Los Angeles was the final straw. If they renew those contracts or there's leases, then I think it is a dangerous trend. And certainly, I hate to see a little area like this as remote it is. Go out agriculture because they don't have water to farm it. We have sold it for $95,000. This is the risk of selling water. But for every loss on the farm, there's a gain in the city. With the water it takes to flood one acre of farmland, factories can generate more than 2,000 jobs. As we go forward and we take a look, there are going to be people displaced and there are going to be some tough decisions that have to be made.

And I think in our system, economics is driven a lot of those value decisions. Despite the problems with water sales, they are the wave of the future throughout the Western United States. Should there be a free market for water or should someone control water sales? Should someone manage the price of water and decide who will win and who will lose in the battle between cities and farms? These are still unanswered questions. For Ken Stewart, there's still the ultimate question. Will farmers eventually forget what can happen if they lose their water supply? Stewart insists what happened to farmers in the Owens Valley could happen again to farmers someplace else. And I'd say if they want to stay in farming to not give that water up, no way. Not even for a couple of years. Not for any time.

Because if they want to take the water, it's going to be awful hard to get that water back. As I say, money talks. Worldwide, more than 1 billion people cannot afford life's most basic necessity, clean, reliable water. In fact, dirty drinking water is the world's single largest killer of children. Developing a dependable water supply can dramatically improve people's lives. But there are economic limits to what water technology can do. Small scale projects are helping people in developing countries like Lusuto. With these tanks, people collect rain from their roofs. In parts of Chile, people even use plastic nets to capture moisture from fog. But many sources of water are just too expensive to be practical.

For example, it's technically easy to take salt out of sea water. But desalination takes tremendous amounts of energy. Only wealthy nations, like Saudi Arabia, can afford it right now. For most of us, the best way to get more water is to conserve the water supply we already have and make it go further. A good example is Australia, where reporter Lucy Broad visited the cattle grazing towns of the Outback. How often are we told Australia is the driest continent on earth? In fact, the truth is we have one of the largest resources of water to be found anywhere in the world. Although the land below us may look arid and dry, the problem is not too little water, but too much. Welcome to Charleville, southwest Queensland, where I'm being met by Jed Brennan from

Queensland's Department of Water Resources. Brennan is trying to protect an ancient source of water that's vital to the economic health of Australian Grazias. This is it, artesian water. Throughout Australia, people have drilled thousands of artesian boars, over 1,000 of them gushing uncontrollably just like this. This is really hot, it's like being an sauna. Yeah, it's really warm, Lucy. It's probably about 65 degrees Celsius. Wow, and does it flow like this all the time? Yeah, this is a flowing artesian ball. The water is coming from the great artesian basin. The depth here is somewhere in the order of 800 metres. This has been bringing water from 800 metres below the ground for almost 100 years. The great artesian basin is one of the world's largest underground reservoirs, covering a quarter of the continent of Australia. The water comes from rainfall in the coastal mountains and slowly travels inland like a giant underground river.

When people drill a bore, the water bubbles to the surface under its own pressure. Cattle and sheep grazias then channel the water through open drains. And that's the problem. Most of the water inside these drains is wasted. Probably about 90 or 95 per cent of the water in the drain system would be wasted through evaporation or through percolation into the soil. Only a very small percentage of the water coming from the bore would be actually consumed by stock. So what we really need is to more efficiently distribute the water that we've got. Artesian water has been essential to life in the Australian Outback. But for generations, wasting water wasn't a worry. It was well over a century ago when the first bore was drilled. Suddenly there was good, clear and seemingly limitless water, allowing people and animals to live in arid and previously

inhospitable areas. Bores were put down by the thousand, making it possible for a huge grazing industry to develop. And to support it, towns. This is our next watering hole. Why Andrew? Population 99. One of hundreds of towns throughout Australia that simply wouldn't exist if not for artesian water. This is bore water? Yes. What's it like living in a town with with artesian water, with bore water? Getting used to it. What's the problem with it? Some things that stink. Now, artesian water, if you're in might stink a bit, but no, beautiful. I find it actually good for

washing it. I only need half a soap per cent. The artesian bore that supplies the people of why Andrew is just one of five thousand throughout the basin. The question is, is there enough water to go around? Already, 1500 bores have gone dry. This was an artesian bore drilled back in 1898. When it first went in, the water flowed at a rate of over six million litres a day and the pressure was enough to push the water 25 metres into the air. That's higher than this tower. Now, it's five metres under and the owner has to use this windmill to bring it to the surface. Is Australia running out of artesian water? At first, people thought they were. But scientists have discovered that water is entering the great artesian basin as rain, at least as fast as it's being lost through bores. So, if supply is not the problem, why are some bores drying up? The answer is pressure, or rather,

the lack of it. When the first bores were put in, the pressure pushing the water out was very high. But as each new bore was drilled nearby, the pressure progressively decreased, to the point where at some bores, the flow ceased altogether, and water had to be pumped out. To prevent more bores drying up, Jed Brennan's job is to persuade Grazius to bring these free flowing ones under control. The Grazius generally accept the rehabilitation program as a good idea, simply because we're aiming to save a resource that's really precious. The artesian water that supplies a lot of western Queensland is probably the lifeblood of the pastoral industry in Queensland. Before any work can be done on these bores, you have to know what condition they're in, and this is one of the tools that will tell you. This specially designed camera will give you a worms-eye view of the condition of the bore casing. Okay, Warwick, let it go. If the casing is in bad condition, it means

either replacing it, or drilling out a new bore. Capping a hundred-year-old bore can be a long and expensive process, making the protection of artesian water a huge job that's only just begun. You could get galvanized steel and put it in, but probably the truth this way would be polypide just to get it into the drain again. Jed Brennan tries to convince Grazius that capping their bores will save the money. By using pipelines instead of open drains, Grazius can make better use of their land. The artesian bore naturally provides the pressure to power the pipeline. So, in other words, instead of using a boardroom which won't even run down hill, water can be pushed from natural pressure to areas that were previously unwatered on the place. The government covers 80% of the cost, but even with the subsidy, capping a bore costs more than

most Grazius can afford. Well, you can talk in a range of a couple of thousand dollars for a bit of minor works around the head of the bore right up to somewhere in the order of 70 or 80 thousand dollars easily to construct a deep artesian bore. Grazius who have capped their bores say the benefits are well worth it. My board drains are expensive to maintain, a lot of work, and eventually all the water will be gone, right? I mean, on the left. So, if you close them off, you build up pressure in your bore, and then you should have a resource there for many more years. Beside the economic advantages, there are environmental reasons to stop the uncontrolled flow of artesian water. Some of the open bore drains have turned the arid landscape into a slimy swamp. In other places, evaporating water leaves behind a film that kills the natural vegetation. It's putting salt in all the minerals and things into the ground, and I think the

malgotries are suffering because of it. You can see they're dying all the way down through there to the towards the creek. Capping the free-flowing bores of Australia will solve these problems, but with so many bores, the job will take years to complete. I think it's becoming more and more important as time passes because some bores will continue to lose flow, and some bores will cease to flow. So, if we can stabilize the system or perhaps increase pressures, then it'll be to the benefit of all users. When the work is done, wastage will be reduced, and environmental problems will be much easier to control. There'll be more water for town supplies, mining, or even irrigation. On such a dry continent, water is too valuable a commodity to simply let it run to waste. Throughout the world, people are moving from the countryside into the cities to seek better jobs

and a better way of life. Unfortunately, the bigger a city becomes, the bigger its water problems become. Our next stop is Mexico City. One of the largest cities on earth. It is dramatically outgrown its water supply. Our report in Mexico is produced by Michelina Augusta. Mexico City, capital of one of the world's most rapidly developing nations. For millions, this is a city of opportunity. A prosperous and attractive place to live. Unfortunately, Mexico City is also one of the most crowded and polluted places on earth.

And for many residents, getting water has become an urban nightmare. Shortages are an everyday fact of life. Mexico City's economic success could also become its downfall because of water. The intense demand for water means people like Bertha Moia have to haul their water from public barrels. Moia lives in the hilly fringe of town. In a neighborhood growing faster than authorities can lay new pipe. When I arrived here, I found the liquid. Because it is a very heavy work to go and bring up to two bottles of water. Because it is a song, it is a song, and you know, once again, it will repeat the liquid.

70 liters of water per day, one third of a barrel. That's far below what's recommended by public health experts. About 6% of the population here does not have plumbing in their homes, so more than a million people have to haul water from public barrels, which are filled by tanker trucks each week. However, Moia's problems won't be over when she gets running water in her home, because in Mexico City, even people who have pipes have problems. The Cortés family lives in the urban core of Mexico City.

When they turn on the tap, usually nothing happens. Water comes for less than an hour each day. The Cortés family owns an apartment in a sprawling complex called Biathlon. Here, water shortages pit neighbor against neighbor, even brother against brother. Many of the buildings in Biathlon were never finished, and like many places in Mexico City,

squatters have invaded. Their presence makes the water situation worse, because there's not enough water for all. Because they can't hook up to the water main, some squatters have joined together to keep water in a concrete system. Others have improvised a network of plastic hoses from a public tap. Ironically, the leader of the squatters is the brother of David Cortés. Traditionally, squatters have little right to public service because they do not own their homes,

but they have relentlessly pressured authorities to improve living conditions at the Biathlon apartments. After months of arguing, officials finally let Herrardo Cortés and his neighbors connect hoses to the water main, despite the objections on his brother David. The delegation has given the opportunity to connect to the water main, and of course we have all the right to the water, and they also have a little water like us, and here is not a question of whether it is invasor or another population, or zero of another country, but the problem is that the problem is that there is no water again.

This is how the demand for water continues to explode in Mexico City. Requests for new service in neighborhoods at the edge of town, and complaints for better service in established communities. Just about everywhere in Mexico City there's some kind of problem with water. As new buildings go up, water pressure goes down. The question for urban planners is how big can the city grow before the water runs out. David Wilk is part of a special team investigating the future of the city's water supply. Mexico City currently gets 70% of its water from the aquifer beneath the valley of Mexico,

which is home to the city and its suburbs, but people are depleting the aquifer at an incredible rate, so fast that much of the city is actually sinking into the spongy soil. Some older buildings are leaning over, and pipes are breaking underground. Engineers are trying to solve the problem with a scheme to import water from distant rivers and distribute it more efficiently, but in a city growing so fast, even the chief water engineer Juan Manuel Martinez says more than construction projects are needed. Mexico City is encouraging people to conserve what water they have.

This commercial urges children to report leaky pipes. Right now, 30% of the water supply is lost through leaks. The city is also targeting the biggest water guzzling device of all. Newly manufactured toilets can use only 6 liters of water. And for the first time in Mexico City, there's an alternative to using fresh water. The city is encouraging large consumers like factories to use treated sewage instead. This is where the city must take its boldest step in water conservation. It's hard to believe this is part of urban Mexico City,

but these canals and the hills behind them are the only places that haven't been covered with concrete. Here, rain can seep underground and recharge the natural aquifer. Environmentalist Tere Asnar warns the city could lose its water supply if homes are built here. There was a time when most of Mexico City looked like this. In the days of the ancient Aztecs, Mexico City was virtually surrounded by water. But now the lakes are gone, victims of urban growth. To protect the few undeveloped patches of land still surrounding the city,

officials posted signs years ago declaring the area off limits, but land speculators ignored them. So, environmentalists pressured authorities to set an example. In 1988, police evicted more than 3,000 families who had been tricked by speculators into buying plots of land. Their homes were destroyed and the neighborhood was turned into a park. The families were resettled in an area that isn't critical to the survival of the water supply. The evictions left bitter feelings and officials are reluctant to remove more settlements by force. In fact, officials allow new construction just beside the neighborhood where families were removed. It's frustrating to environmentalists who say it's essential to keep people out of this region. It's an absolute hierarchy.

Despite the fact that there are programs of urban and ecological protection in the city, this does not work. This policy is of magic. All the days we see that all the areas are being made, where they can't be built in any way. Because there are no means to stop it. There is no way to stop it. Authorities say it's difficult to keep squatters from taking over vacant lots, but some land has been protected from urban sprawl by putting it to productive use as farms. Officials like Juan Manuel Martinez say the city needs high rise apartments so that growth can go up instead of out. And urban planners like David Wilk say the city needs a heightened awareness of the water cycle on which it depends. The urban population is very disarrayable in what is the natural environment,

as we already know, the most appreciated concepts in the natural environment with the rivers and lakes practically do not exist in a urban agglomeration of this type. Therefore, we do not have a reference to the value of that natural resource. In one sense, Mexico City does not have a water supply problem. It has a water demand problem, and planners have gone a long way in managing that demand. But the city continues to grow at a staggering pace, more than half a million new residents every year. As long as that growth keeps up, officials will face an almost impossible predicament, improving water service for people who desperately need it, while living within the limits of nature.

Water is vital to economic security. Some experts predict it will become more important than oil. And eventually, countries may go to war over water. As the world's population grows and we improve our standard of living, the risk of a water war could increase. In fact, Egypt has threatened war if Ethiopia ever blocks the Nile River by building dams upstream. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, control of water is a major issue in Middle East peace talks. And there's another kind of water conflict, not between people, but between the needs of people and the needs of nature. Fish, birds, and animals depend on water, but throughout the world, we often forget wildlife when deciding how our rivers and lakes should be used.

It has happened even in New Zealand, a country with a clean and green reputation. Reporter Peter Luelin shows us what can happen when a country becomes too dependent on hydroelectric dams. New Zealand is the last place on Earth you'd expect to find a shortage of water. Some of the heaviest precipitation in the world falls here, creating some of the world's biggest glaciers. New Zealand has abundant rivers that, like the world over, are the lifeblood of the natural environment. But over the past 50 years, nature's energy has been harnessed here by an extensive system of hydroelectric dams. Rivers that once flowed uninterrupted to the sea now cascade through giant turbines to provide 60% of New Zealand's power.

Too many people, dams held the promise of limitless power, clean, renewable, and free. But the reality is that nothing comes for free. The dams have taken a toll of New Zealand's environment. Hardest hit, a New Zealand's unique bird populations. The hydro dams have dramatically changed their habitat. The damage is so severe that some species are on the brink of extinction. The ones we most concerned about are black stilts, which are endangered down to the last 100 birds, rivals down to about 3,000 and black fronted turns, not sure maybe about 10,000 left now. The black stilt needs open gravel banks in order to survive. That's because on open land predators have no cover to surprise these ground nesting birds. Normally spring floods would sweep river banks clear of vegetation, keeping the river safe for birds to nest.

But spring flood water is now stored in reservoirs, or diverted to canals for hydro generation. We lost about 40 kilometres of riverbed through flooding in the creation of dams, and about another 85 kilometres of riverbed that was dewatered either partially or totally through diverting the water into canals. Is that a major proportion of the habitat for these birds? It's a very significant proportion of rich riverbed youth. Tourists driving through this part of the country often stop and marvel at these beautiful stands of wild loopings, but that the conservation officers, they're a disaster. Without the natural flushing of seasonal flooding, the loopings consolidate the islands in midstream, and then the willow trees. Another imported pest can become established. These deepen, confine and divert the water and provide cover for predators. The situation has become so desperate that the Department of Conservation, known as Dock,

is spraying herbicide to kill the loopings and the willows. It is a disaster for the bird life. The birds are becoming threatened through loss of habitat, and Dock's job is to preserve these species from becoming extinct. While many users argue that the loss of natural habitat is the price you pay for power, many others are wondering if hydroelectricity is worth spraying the nation's riverbanks with poison. And so hydro planners have been pressured to rethink the way New Zealand uses its water resources. Mark France is a spokesman for the power management company ECNZ. There was a belief that we could engineer our way out of any difficulties. I think now it's been realised that there is a limit, that you have to work with nature not against it. However, working with nature was far from the minds of post-war energy planners, and even today economic pressure makes this a difficult promise to keep.

When the hydro system was built, it brought a boost to employment and industrial productivity. The dams were symbols of progress and national pride. In the countries, dams and generating stations, Ben was the greatest. Finally, in May 1965, the 48 million-pound engineering achievement was ready for opening by the Prime Minister, Mr. Holyoke. In those days, the electricity generating system was run by government department. The output of the sudden hydro system was balanced by oil and coal generation during spring and summer, so that the storage legs could be recharged by melting snow. Since then, New Zealand has become more and more reliant on hydroelectricity. That's because the system has been converted from a public service department into a profit seeking enterprise, and decisions were made to close fossil fuel stations because it's a hard economic fact that it's cheaper to make electricity from hydro than from oil and coal.

That is, if there's enough water in the reservoirs. In 1991, the spring rains failed. With the system unbalanced, the energy industry and the whole country was thrown into chaos. The cold edge of winter the power cuts have already started. One network muse with Richard Long and Judy Bailey. Good evening. It rained in the South Island today. But far from where it was needed, far from where it could avert a national crisis, so today, electrical acted. It demanded a 10% reduction in consumption, twice what they were asking for two days ago. Beginning next week, several major power boards will impose home water heating cuts from seven in the morning until after midnight. That'll mean just one tank of hot water each day. New Zealanders were quickly learning that management of the nation's rivers has a direct effect on their lives. The government announced a state of emergency as the winter cold started to bite. I think we're going to be quite a big cold ahead in the Christchurch and South for

water coming up. We're just having one bath, sitting between my daughter and I in the morning. I put my blanket on for about 10 minutes in that turn at all. The limit of the environmental rules had been reached and the choice had to be made to sacrifice environmental protection in time of crisis. Finally, on the advice of power planners, the government suspended environmental rules so the legs could be drawn down further still. ECNZ's chief executive said the country should pray for rain as the power went off. Well, I suppose the system was tripped up by and flow of low flows, a sequence of low flows, which it was not designed to cope with. The system was designed to cope with low inflows that you would expect once in 20 years and the event we got was so much more rare than that that there was no way the system could cope with it. But others suspected the weather was only part of the story. Sheep farmer Bruce Scott thinks ECNZ was generating hydroelectricity at a level that you could not support. There's no question. There is something going on

with that weather pattern changes, but tickling the last three years. Goodness me, this is a third October in November in a row that we haven't had noticed rains. That on its own, in my opinion, justifies the pairs that be to have a very good look at the management of these lakes because the weather patterns are changing. And meteorologist Neil Cherry thinks ECNZ made the problem worse by relying on hydrodams instead of cold generating plants well into the drought. The intriguing thing that I found on retrospect because I was analysing it was that they were using these lakes right through that summer, even though the lakes were low like this. And it was at the end of the financial year when they went back to normal generating conditions. Now that raised my suspicions. Was it the financial situation that was driving them to use cheap hydro and not expensive thermal? Those suspicions were never proved, but a government inquiry suggests that New Zealand should not be relying so heavily on hydro that a rare drought could create a crisis.

So the question remains, can it happen again? Will New Zealand manage its hydro system in a way that provides cheap power without damaging the environment? Part of the answer lies in the new Resource Management Act, which imposes a new word for power planners to live by sustainability. What it does is require a bottom line that the effects of any use be sustainable, sustainable in terms of the needs of future generations, sustainable ecological terms, sustainable in terms of what the community's values are for it, water race, and at the same time sustainable for them from the point of view of the national benefit of hydro generation. It will be a difficult balance to maintain because the seeds of future crises are already in place. The glassier-fed lakes of Pukaki and Tekapo are the storage tanks for the complex plumbing of the hydroelectric system. In a normal year, the surface of Lake Pukaki here

would be 40 feet above my head enough water to power the entire country for over three weeks. This year, like last, water levels are precariously low. During the last hydro crisis, New Zealanders were able to take extraordinary steps to save electricity in some places as much as 20 percent, and all New Zealanders became a little more conscious of how saving power also means protecting the natural systems on which power generation depends. There will be more droughts, but New Zealand has learned some hard lessons about relying too heavily on hydroelectricity for power. And although the country has paid an environmental price for its hydrant, given the alternatives of fossil fuels or nuclear, perhaps it is the lesser of the evils. However, what is clear is that sustainable management of the system cannot rely simply on a prayer for rain. It's important for both the environment and our economic well-being to conserve the world's water supply. We can't afford to wait any longer.

Remember this. Water is the fundamental building block of life. There is no substitute.