Steven Solomon's Water Blog Homepage

Tuesday, July 24, 2012 4:56 PM

Dear Dr. Solomon:
Firstly, I would like to congratulate you for your 2010 book WATER: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. Your book, which I have just finished reading, is a brilliant exposition of the place and importance of water in the development of civilizations. Given the rapidly worsening water crises currently growing and spreading throughout the world, your book could not have been better timed. Your conclusion that civilizations rise or fall according to how well they manage water and how well they develop novel strategies to cope with water crises that inevitably arise seems to me to be absolutely on point, especially at this time in our history.
Secondly, I would like to express my disappointment that in your discussion of solutions to the current water crises you did not consider a solutions that has real potential for solving some of our most serious water management problems. This solution has existed for almost a hundred years. I am referring to “Fresh Water Recycling”. Fresh Water Recycling involves the trapping of fresh water that has already run its’ course to the sea (and would otherwise be lost to the sea) by means of dykes and and one-way dams into reservoirs and the conveying or recycling the reclaimed water by means of natural waterways, man made canals and pumps to water needy areas. Unlike diversionary projects that merely transfer water between water basins, fresh waster recycling adds new sources of fresh water to the over-all water supply. Fresh water recycling does not involve creating large new reservoirs by flooding or diverting water away from it natural course. Therefore, it does not cause the environmental problems that are associated with the diversionary projects that you criticize in your book.
Examples of existing and functioning fresh water recycling are the Calfornia Aqueduct and the Zuider Zee/ Ijsselmeer in the Netherlands. An example of a water management proposal that involves fresh water recycling is the GRAND Canal of North America designed by Canadian engineer and visionary Thomas Kierans. You can learn about the GRAND Canal proposal at the web site: http://web.archive.org/web/20091027035959/http://ca.geocities.com/grandcanal2005/index.htm and the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_Development_Canal . Mr. Kierans who is my father will be 100 years old on February 13, 2013.
I sensed from final chapers of your book a bias against large scale water projects. It seemed to me that you were saying that the lesson we have learned from the 20th Century is that „big is bad“. May I respectfully suggest to you that whereas big water projects can be bad they don’t have to be bad. Without the California Aqueduct Los Angeles would not exist. It is possible to have large scale water projects that respect the environment and can do large scale good for the ecology. May I also suggest to you that problems such as Great Lakes polution/falling water levels and the drying of the Ogallala Aquifer are large scale problems that demand large scale solultions. You also seem to ignore the tremendous stimulative effect such large scale projects such as the GRAND Canal could have on the economy particulariy in regards to employment. The GRAND Canal also would have ancilliary benefits such as improved fisheries and shipping in Hudson Bay. Once you have studied the GRAND Canal I would be very interested in you thoughts.
Yours very truly.
Michael Kierans.