Film details water crisis

Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005 | 9:32 a.m.

The wrangling over water for Las Vegas and in the West generally is just one part of a global water crisis that, for many, has life and death consequences, a mixed crowd of policy makers, scientists and others heard Monday evening.

Movie maker Jim Thebaut presented his new documentary "Running Dry" on the global water crisis at a screening at the Desert Research Institute for about 100 people. Among those who watched the movie were Pat Mulroy, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager, and Patricia Simon, widow of the late Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill.

Sen. Simon's book, "Tapped Out," was the inspiration for the movie, Thebaut told the crowd.

Also attending were members of the state Board of Regents and various other political leaders.

Jane Seymour, a humanitarian activist and actor who appears in the theatrical release "Wedding Crashers," attended the Las Vegas screening and narrated the movie.

Mulroy, whose agency is in the midst of negotiations to acquire groundwater from rural Nevada and with other states to draft provisional rules to deal with feared Colorado River shortages, appeared in the movie and discussed the struggles affecting Western water demand.

In the movie, Mulroy noted that people have been moving to the Southwest for the last 50 years in swelling numbers, and often depending on artificial means to sustain an unrealistically irrigated lifestyle.

"We have engineered our way out of nature," Mulroy said.

After the movie, she noted that Las Vegas has had a successful conservation program that has cut 23 percent off the total amount of water used by the region over the last two years even as the population has grown by 170,000 people. The success is due to the "most aggressive water conservation program in the United States," she said.

"I think we are actually starting to get it," she said.

In the movie, Mulroy joined speakers such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Communist Party chairman in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and Shimon Peres, former Israel prime minister. Footage of Western deserts and the Bellagio's fountains came in sharp relief to scenes of squalor and contaminated water from the Middle East, India, South Africa and China.

Simon recounted a trip that her late husband took with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that looked at ecological and community destruction that came from diverting water that once flowed to Uzbekistan's Lake Aral. The destruction was instructive of what happens when water is taken for granted, she said.

"Water is a resource that is our life," she said. "It's a resource that is too valuable to lose."

Thebault, an environmental planner before he turned to making movies, said reading Sen. Simon's book triggered his desire to write about water.

Throughout the world, the twin problems of environmental degradation and lack of water supply are challenging communities, the movie said.

The movie warned that worldwide, 14,000 people die each day because of lack of access to clean water. Of that number, 9,500 are children in what are "quiet, preventable deaths."

One-quarter of the world's population now lacks access to clean water, and global climate change is altering precipitation patterns and further threatening water supplies, the movie reported. U.S. intelligence officials believe that armed international conflict will break out over access to water by 2015.

Seymour, in her narration, called for a "new global ethic" and international cooperation to stem the tide of deaths and disease from bad or insufficient water supplies.

Thebault said the movie makers hope to bring "Running Dry" to theatrical release later this year. The point, Thebault said, is to help foster the kind of ethic that will lead to more protections and wiser use for water.

"This is a call to action," Thebault said.