Film details water crisis
By Launce Rake <lrake@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

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.