The Water Crisis

...Most aspects of our civilization today contribute to this siltation problem...

...America is losing the battle against water pollution, Donald Carr tells us, and the result could be wholesale destruction of recreational resources, the silting in of the Great Lakes, extinction of our fish and wildlife, widespread disease, and human deaths...

...Our industries have had their way so long with most of the states and with local authorities that they are not about to give up their profitable superstition about rivers and lakes with rubbery assimilating capabilities...

...ships which discharge oil, refuse, and sewage...

...He is highly critical of the U.S...

...a torrent of industrial wastes, some of which are deadly poisons which slip through treatment plants...

...One of the worst destroyers of lakes and rivers is silt...

...The irrigation farmer claims he will be ruined if water costs him more than one cent per 1,000 gallons...

...The problem of water shortages is a problem of treating dirty water, whether the dirt is in the form of municipal sewage, industrial waste, salt, or silt...

...Bald-headed and bleary-eyed sophistry," Carr calls the industries' arguments...

...Army Corps of Engineers, contemptuous of the grandiose scheme to divert water from the Yukon to the Rio Grande through a $100 billion engineering project, and utterly impatient with industries which offer solid economic alibis for their pollution...

...Carr writes...

...The nation at long last is genuinely aroused about water pollution...

...detergents...

...Carr thinks we should stop fooling around with water—damming it, diverting it, wasting it, trying to hide it once it is polluted...

...He usually gets it at that price, but it is a gift from the taxpayers, pure and simple...

...pesticides...

...The next advance was to connect them to cesspools outside the house...

...septic tanks...

...The pollution of our waters is an inevitable by-product of our present highly-advanced civilization...

...He sees pollution as an extremely complex political, social, and economic problem...

...This worked well for a time but when the cesspools filled, the disagreeable odors which had plagued even the finest of homes began to return...

...Carr describes how silt turns sparkling blue waters to a muddy brown, shuts out sunlight, takes away oxygen, turns a sand or gravel bottom to thick muck, and before long "assassinates a river...

...It was then that the fateful decision was made to connect these private cesspools to the public sewer system—which had been designed to carry off storm water, not human wastes...

...Similarly, the decisions we have made on developing our land have doomed our waters...

...For instance, in the early 1800's in England, flush toilets began to come into general use...

...He thinks we are failing to pursue this priority with proper zeal because we have a false notion of how much fresh water is worth...

...With the help of broadly-visioned technical experts such as Garr, there is no reason why the public, private industry, and their elected representatives cannot agree on a program which will save the fresh water supply that is absolutely vital to our civilization...

...Reviewed by Senator Gaylord Nelson Tf anyone still doubts the cries of alarm sounded by conservationists and others about our mounting pollution crisis, this fact-filled report by a research chemist should convince him...

...We need to construct a new philosophy of costs...

...Carr, who gets mighty indignant at times, is trying to pound into our heads that we must change our way of living...

...Our only big problem in water is the pollution problem...

...Three per cent per year of the $100 billion scheme (to tap Yukon water) would go a long way toward curing the pollution problem in this country by installing proper sewage and industrial waste treating facilities...

...Somewhat surprisingly, considering his background as a research director for petroleum companies and a consultant on rocket fuels and other scientific and technical matters, Carr takes his position in the great water debate alongside the conservationists and the wildlife lovers, not with the engineers...

...Carr sees water as perhaps our most vital single resource, and he chronicles through the ages man's difficulties in using it properly—difficulties which have led to typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, dysentery, and ugliness...

...In making this sweeping indictment, Carr does not ignore the more obvious and immediate causes of our pollution crisis: "Nonexistent or inadequate sewage treatment plants...

...The solution lies not merely in piping in more water to dilute our torrents of waste but in a completely new attitude toward water resources by government, private industry, and the public...

...If we do any further "civilizing" without considering expert advice, we may destroy our entire civilization...

...Carr points out: "This was one of the most critical and perhaps disastrous decisions ever made in our civilization...

...It is caused by farming, lumbering, strip mining, highway building, and, perhaps most of all, by real estate subdividing...

...Perhaps the distinguishing feature of Death of the Sweet Waters, one of several recent studies of our pollution problems, is its broad historical viewpoint...

...Because of this catastrophic mistake some 150 years ago in England, most of our cities today must discharge raw sewage into nearby lakes and streams every time it rains, and sewers fill with so much storm water that the sewage treatment plant cannot handle it...

...Instead, he thinks it is quite obvious that we simply ought to purify it...

...If separate drain systems for domestic sewage and rain water had been instituted at this time, the great American cities would probably have continued such a design practice, and we would not now be faced with an astronomically expensive and almost impossible problem of urban redevelopment...

...Carr blames real estate developments upstream from Washington, D. C, for the 2.5 million tons of silt washed into the Potomac each year—"enough to fill six million bathtubs full to the brim...

...The Mississippi River is inundated by 500 million tons a year...

...He has high hopes for processes which will make fresh water from the salty oceans, especially when combined with nuclear power plants or even with sewage treatment plants...