The Worth of Water
How We Survive
Marketplace
5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2024
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Colorado River, vital to the American West, faces a crisis as demand surpasses its supply due to rising temperatures and unsustainable usage practices. As millions depend on its waters for survival, challenges like rampant growth and water-intensive farming further strain this precious resource. Across the region, communities must rethink water distribution and utilization to adapt to a drier future.
In this special, we follow Leigh Harris and her husband Franck Avril, residents grappling with water scarcity in their dream home built on a dry lot. Their journey underscores the urgency of finding affordable water sources amidst worsening drought. Additionally, we delve into technological innovations, from desalination to rain water, offering potential solutions to the crisis. We also examine a growing movement, rooted in Indigenous values, to give nature — rivers, fish, crops and trees — the same rights as people, and what that might mean for the future of the Colorado River.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The first sign that something is a miss at Lee Harris's house is the plastic bottles. |
| 0:06.0 | Some bottles of water outside, lots of them. |
| 0:09.0 | Dozens of clear one gallon bottles lined up outside the front door. |
| 0:15.0 | Nice shirt. I love Arcade Fire. |
| 0:17.0 | A fit blonde woman wearing an Arcade Fire t-shirt and a wide scarf holding her hair back comes out to greet me and my |
| 0:24.9 | producer Caitlin. |
| 0:25.9 | I'm Caitlin. Nice to meet you. As you can see we have a price to pay for |
| 0:31.0 | living in paradise. |
| 0:33.0 | I have to promise me to not think untoward of us |
| 0:37.0 | because we've been literally camping in this house |
| 0:41.0 | for six months now, with no real running water. |
| 0:45.6 | Inside more bottles on the kitchen counter and all over the tile floor, which Lee |
| 0:51.8 | admits hasn't been cleaned in a while. |
| 0:54.4 | We do our best. |
| 0:55.4 | We can't wash the floors or do things that normal water. |
| 0:59.4 | You don't really think about how you use water on an everyday basis when it's just |
| 1:05.1 | flowing from taps. She could turn on the taps and clean water would come out but at a |
| 1:11.7 | price Lee can no longer afford. |
| 1:15.0 | Because here in Rio Verde foothills, in the scrub outside Scottsdale, Arizona, Lee and her |
| 1:20.6 | husband Fronk are among hundreds of people scrambling for water after the city cut them off. |
| 1:29.2 | It's June 2023 and for more than six months at this point |
| 1:34.0 | Lee and Fron have been doing everything they can to avoid turning on their |
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