Water Crisis
In June of 2021, Lake Mead—the largest reservoir in the United States—reached the lowest level in history. The following month, Lake Powell—the nation’s second largest reservoir—also broke an all-time water-level low. Never before had the nation’s two largest reservoirs broken low-water records at the same time. But over the next several months this became normal, as these two Colorado River reservoirs continued to break low-water records month, after month, after month. The Southwest’s climate-driven water crisis has become so acute that cities throughout the region have rushed to embrace what is arguably the water source of last-resort: sewage. In his latest book, “Purified: How Recycled Sewage is Transforming Our Water,” Burke Center Executive Director Peter Annin tells the story of how wastewater has become too precious to waste anymore. Water recycling is booming throughout the sunbelt. Los Angeles has pledged to turn 100 percent of its sewage into drinking water by mid-century; San Diego plans to turn 50 percent of its sewage into drinking water by 2035. Texas, Florida, Virginia, and many other sunbelt states are investing heavily in water recycling as well. The prestigious journal Nature hailed “Purified” as one of the top five science books of 2024.​​
Officials in the Great Lakes region—home to 20 percent of all the fresh surface water on the planet—saw this water crisis coming. That’s why they created the Great Lakes Compact, which went into effect in 2008. It is a legal water fence designed to keep Great Lakes water inside the Great Lakes watershed—for perpetuity. But creating the compact was a controversial and colorful tale that Annin tells in his first book, “The Great Lakes Water Wars,” the latest edition of which was released in 2018. The book delves into the long history of political maneuvers and water diversion schemes that have proposed sending Great Lakes water everywhere from Akron to Arizona. Through the prism of the past, Annin puts today’s Great Lakes water tension into perspective, including the massive and heavily litigated Great Lakes diversion in Chicago which is more than a century old and sends 2.1 billion gallons of Lake Michigan water to the Gulf of Mexico every day.
Through these nontechnical books, op-eds, speeches, and summits, the Burke Center continues to produce nonpartisan water-related communication and policy work to help the general public, lawmakers, and regulators better understand the global water crisis as it continues to create challenges in water-stressed, and water-rich parts of the world.
