Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It by Robert Jerome Glennon, Robert Glennon

From Barnes & Noble

Every year, trillions of gallons of water go down our toilet drains. Billions more are expended in the middle of the Mohave Desert in elaborate displays at Las Vegas hotels and casinos. Meanwhile, the citizens of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from rural Alabama to satisfy even minimal needs. America's water supply isn't just trickling away; it's thundering toward a crisis that will affect every man, woman, child, and industry. Robert Glennon's Unquenchable not only describes our looming predicament; it also pinpoints the hard market-based choices that we will have to make to alleviate the problem.

From the Publisher

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out.

Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry.

The looming catastrophe remains hidden as government diverts supplies from one area to another to keep water flowing from the tap. But sooner rather than later, the shell game has to end. And when it does, shortages will threaten not only the environment, but every aspect of American life: we face shuttered power plants and jobless workers, decimated fi sheries and contaminated drinking water.

We can’t engineer our way out of the problem, either with traditional fixes or zany schemes to tow icebergs from Alaska. In fact, new demands for water, particularly the enormous supply needed for ethanol and energy production, will only worsen the crisis. America must make hard choices—and Glennon’s answers are fittingly provocative. He proposes market-based solutions that value water as both a commodity and a fundamental human right.

One truth runs throughout Unquenchable: only when we recognize water’s worth will we begin to conserve it.

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