Have We Reached Peak Water?

Flow is Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: the world water crisis.

San Marcos River by Eileen Trainor

Here are a few water facts that will make you gulp:

• Of the 6 billion people on earth, 1.1 billion do not have access to safe, clean drinking water.
  (www.charitywater.org)
  
  
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently does not regulate 51 known water contaminants. (www.foodandwaterwatch.org)
  
  
• While the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day, those in developing countries cannot find five.(www.charitywater.org)
  
  
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.(www.water.org)
  
  
• According to the National Resources Defense Council, in a scientific study in which more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water were tested, about one-third of the bottles contained synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic. (www.nrdc.org)
  
  
• Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil.
  CBS News, FLOW.
  
  
• There are estimates that from five hundred thousand to seven million people get sick per year from drinking tap water. Erik Olson, Deputy Staff Director of Barbara Boxerʼs Environmental and Public Works Committee (EPW), FLOW.
  
  
• Californiaʼs water supply is running out – it has about 20 years of water left in the state.
  Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant and co-author of Blue Gold, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, FLOW.
  
  
• There are over 116,000 human-made chemicals that are finding their way into public water supply systems. William Marks, author of Water Voices from Around the World, FLOW.
  
  
• In Bolivia nearly one out of every ten children will die before the age of five. Most of those deaths are related to illnesses that come from a lack of clean drinking water. Jim Schultz, founder of the Democracy Center in Bolivia, FLOW.
  
  
• The cost per person per year for having 10 liters of safe drinking water every day is just $6 USD. Ashok Gadgil, Senior Staff Scientist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, FLOW

Purchase the movie FLOW here.

Tags: water costs, chemicals in water, vanishing drinking water, waterborne illness, bottle water tainted