The Water Crisis | National Geographic

0:00 the following program is paid content for finish fresh water we can't live without it but it's running out fast we call this the bathtub ring and the reservoir has dropped 120 feet in the last 20 years now i'm tracking down innovators who are trying to turn the tide we're here in the trenches right in a desperate fight to change our water thirsty ways laser leveling our field helps us be very efficient with our irrigation but we can't just rely on the experts to bring us back from the brink and wait until after the water is already down the drain

0:47 we all need to make changes in our daily lives [Music] can we strike a balance between the comforts of modern life and the health of the planet can we hang on to the fresh water we so desperately need [Music] before we use up the last drop los angeles california this is a city i am very familiar with

1:33 a sprawling urban jungle home to more than 10 million people who together use almost one and a half billion gallons of water every day two decades of drought have made the supply of fresh water critically low water shortages are happening all over the world agriculture and industry waste way too much water there are ever more people on the planet and the weather is getting hotter and drier we have to do something if not for ourselves for the generations to come if you want to make a change in the world

2:18 sometimes the best place to start is right here at home just imagine all the water across los angeles wasted on lawns that no one ever even uses i want to see just exactly how i should adjust my life even in the smallest ways so i can stop being a part of the water scarcity problem start being part of the solution here to help me is christa guerrero from the metropolitan water district of southern california first she checks if all the faucets toilets and shower heads in the house are fitted with water-saving devices then it's time for her to put my habits under the microscope uh-oh so how often would you say you run your dishwasher so i like to do my dishes

3:04 but um i use the dishwasher when usually i have a lot of guests and do you rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher uh yes i do i feel like that's the wrong answer you actually use less water when you use a dishwasher than you do when you wash by hand the new ones are about three and a half gallons every time you run them that's like so little and they still have the high pressure that you would want in order to not have to rinse your dishes beforehand got it thank you absolutely how many showers would you say you take a week seven and do you know about how long you shower for um a few minutes probably

3:50 [Music] you just want to get in get it done and then you know get the coffee do you know if the shower head is low flow i don't believe so an average shower length for most americans is about 8 to 10 minutes long and that's about 20 gallons of water for that entire shower oh okay and how often do you run your sprinklers they're on a timer okay the sprinklers that you have each sprinkler nozzle puts out about the same amount of water as an average american shower so if you think about having 20 sprinklers in your yard that all go off at once you're so much shame right now your lawn is taking 20 showers at once so this is the process in which i'm facing my demons and we're going to make make things

4:37 better right okay so the calculations that i have your indoor water use is about 83 gallons per day the average american is about 88. so not too bad all right your outdoor is at about 213 gallons per day and that's mostly because of your sprinkler system the average there is about 112. oh for most americans sorry and so that brings you to a total of about 296 gallons per day that you're using and around your home my daily water use is much worse than i expected especially in the yard it's time for me to make some changes at home

5:24 averting a water crisis requires changes outside the home too agriculture manufacturing energy these are all massive consumers of water i'm shannon switzer swanson a national geographic explorer and marine social ecologist my work takes me all around the world to study how fishing communities deal with environmental challenges like pollution and climate change but now i'm investigating a major ecosystem that's under threat right on my own doorstep the san francisco bay

6:09 i'm heading out into the bay with john rosenfield he's the senior scientist with the non-profit organization san francisco bay keeper we're the watchdogs of the bay the the little boat that could uh we use drones and airplanes to monitor the largest polluters bring them into court if we need to so john tell me what's going on in the bay here well we're witnessing an ecosystem collapse really san francisco bay is home to six species that are officially endangered including two unique forms of chinook salmon and two kinds of smelt the orca whales are also endangered because they cannot get enough food and they specialize on chinook salmon

6:55 so is that because of pollution caused by people that's wrong that's running into the bay and the delta pollution is part of the problem but there's really a bigger problem what we take out of the bay before it reaches the bay is fresh water we take that out of the rivers that flow into the bay it gets diverted to agriculture and to urban uses how much fresh water are we taking out of the bay in a typical year we take out 50 of the water that would flow into the bay before it reaches the bay and in some years we take out as much as 70 on today's patrol we meet up with a fish research vessel from the university of

7:40 california davis i'm excited to see what they caught what are you catching it's a really nice halibut oh my gosh how amazing beautiful are you catching any long pin smells no longer smell to date okay and this would be their habitat this is definitely their habitat and we're trying to understand why their abundances are so low and whether there's anything we can do to help save the population nowadays because we divert so much water upstream this is salt water perpetually throughout the year in the winter and spring normally this water that we're on top of would be fresh you could drink it does that really make a huge difference to the health of the ecosystem it makes all the difference to an estuary so it's really the mixing of

8:28 fresh water with salt water from the ocean that creates this nursery habitat that the fish depend on are we taking fresh water out to a level that isn't gonna work for much longer it's definitely not sustainable i mean the evidence is really clear wow yeah i really had no idea how many ways freshwater affects the marine environment as well as a marine social ecologist what's happening to the bay is really troubling to me but also as someone who wants to start a family in california it's critical for me to know if there's a way to address this water crisis i just found out that i'm expecting a baby that gives me a brand new perspective on living in a state that's partly desert

9:16 so i'm heading out to the american southwest to explore where our water comes from and whether we can save enough of it does it make sense to put down roots in a place where the water may be about to run out from florida to new york to california fresh water supplies are running critically low as a un goodwill ambassador on the environment i'm passionate about protecting ecosystems around the globe [Music] and now that i know just how much water i'm wasting around the house i'm making some changes in my daily habits not rinsing the dishes before they go into the dishwasher is a no-brainer

10:06 and there are a few simple fixes that i've been meaning to do for a long time okay by changing from a toilet model that uses 1.6 gallons per flush to 1.2 gallons i can save up to 2 gallons a day in the shower you can add a flow reducer to the shower head for an eight-minute shower this would save up to 10 gallons of water per day in the kitchen an aerator does a similar job reducing the flow by two and a half gallons per minute wouldn't tell the difference and i've started collecting the water that

10:52 usually just runs down the drain every day while i wait for the shower to heat up so i'm setting myself a personal goal at home to cut my water consumption by 30 if everybody in the united states did that we'd save eight and a half billion billion with a b gallons of water every single day that's more water than flows through the grand canyon each day so what do you say want to save a river the first stop on my journey through the american southwest is the mighty colorado river it's the number one renewable water resource for nevada arizona and southern california

11:39 here on the nevada arizona border the steep rock walls of this canyon created the perfect site for building what was at the time the largest concrete structure in the world the hoover dam [Music] i've come here to meet john fleck a professor of water policy at the university of new mexico to find out how much longer this river can sustain us every time i come to hoover dam i'm struck by how important this place is in the growth of the western united states it's the water supply for 40 million people 5 million acres of farmland the lettuce you eat all winter the alfalfa that feeds the cows that make

12:25 your burgers and your pizza cheese so much depends on this river and hoover dam is at the heart of the system it's the dam that we built that made all of that possible wow 40 million people is a lot of people and i keep hearing that we're running out of water and is that true yeah so we're not exactly running out of water but we're headed in that direction because we're taking more water out of the river and nature puts back in every year from its headwaters and the rocky mountains the colorado river snakes its way 1450 miles down towards the gulf of california on route more than a dozen dams reservoirs and some of the longest water canals

13:10 in the world serve seven states in the u.s and two in mexico but a long and severe drought has put this entire system under stress it's been going on for almost 20 years is that right 20 years of dry flow on the colorado river among the driest 20-year periods like this you know maybe in 500 or a thousand years wow so that's a really long time it is there any thought about whether or not we will get back to normal again or is this just a new normal the climate is getting drier as greenhouse gases rise and earth's temperature rises we're seeing more evaporation and we should not expect it to just bounce back at some point that's a bit scary it is a little unnerving yeah

13:57 looking at the river here touching it even doesn't give me the sense that the colorado is in jeopardy but when john takes me to see the reservoir on the other side of the dam the depth of the crisis hits home we call this the bathtub ring it's minerals left behind as the lake drops and that shows the lake has dropped 120 feet in the last 20 years why is that happening less water coming in from upstream more water going out downstream because we're using it for our farms in our cities you know you can stand here and see get this visceral feeling of how much water is gone the largest reservoir in the u.s is half empty another couple hundred feet is what we call deadpool

14:42 when you just can't get water out of the lake anymore and that would be an absolute disaster for millions of people downstream that is a calamity that we cannot afford to let happen and that's sort of what i'm dedicating my life to is trying to help us work through these problems the colorado river's water supply is critically low [Music] and just down the road is a fast-growing desert city famed for its culture of excess las vegas i'm here trying to understand something that's really puzzling me with over 42 million tourists every year

15:28 how does this city stay hydrated during a mega drought former water manager for southern nevada pat mulroy may have some answers not many people have had to face water scarcity on the scale that she has so pat you've managed las vegas water for about 25 years that's a very long time and as it's grown then have those challenges changed over the years when i came here in 1974 none of this was here it was truly a weekend gambling town it was in the early 90s that the little weekend gambling town started to reinvent itself as a full-scale metropolis we were going through the first big growth bubble and we were seeing water

16:15 increase uses of 17 annually which was pretty daunting and then in 2002 the drought hit it was one of the driest years on record pat remembers the morning her deputy broke the bad news when she came in and said we've got problems we had huge problems there had been virtually zip snowpack in the upper basin so obviously conservation was the bedrock we sat down with all the communities in southern nevada and had to change their building codes landscaping codes everything a new home could only have a quarter of their backyard grass the

17:00 front yard could have no grass whatsoever and we were paying people to start ripping grass out by the time 2004 hit we had cut our use by a third it was phenomenal that is also very impressive that you were able to bring all these different conservation efforts together and people together we didn't have time to fight you know failure was not an option this whole community would have disappeared it seems to me that managing this unpredictability requires an extra level of resourcefulness and on a tour of the resort's golf course i'm intrigued to find out why this one hasn't been torn out like most of the others you're on

17:45 probably the oldest golf course in southern nevada that goes back to the 40s and it is been transformed through applying technology with soil sensors and weather stations it uses only as much water as it absolutely has to have at the right time and every drop has been recycled so when you say i can combine a really water efficient historic open space with the state-of-the-art technology to where it uses absolutely the least amount of water possible to me that's a success story 30 years from now two-thirds of the

18:31 world's population is expected to live in a city and as our cities get bigger and thirstier it won't just be desert cities like vegas taking drastic measures like ripping up lawns i'm on my way to arizona one of the hottest states in the u.s the innovators who are finding ways to thrive in this desert could be the pioneers our dry planet so badly needs [Music] in the average california home most of the water use isn't in the house it's in the yard and this house is no different it's time i did something about that this is your blank slate i love a blank

19:16 slate i've enlisted the help of jackie serber an expert in sustainable gardening there's a lot of existing elements that i think are good for conservation these pipes are connected to a system that bring the water off the roof and water this area which i think is good it is good that it's back here but when you have a lot of water coming out of a small pipe onto just bare soil that's a situation where runoff can start to occur and erosion so we want to find a way to slow that water down and sink it into the soil so by the time we're done transforming it with compost mulch we're going to build a swale a rain garden so when you have a rain storm and there's a surge of water we're creating a place for that water to go and then over time it will slowly permeate into the soil and the plants

20:03 around it are going to take up that water can i help yes if you can dig i actually my favorite thing to do okay great put me to work we will jackie's design features native plants that not only need very little water they also support local populations of insects and birds bonus by remodeling this yard i'm going to be reducing my water footprint by a lot and yards are where homes use the most water and i'll be capturing rainwater where it falls that rain water nourishes tree roots and ultimately replenishes aquifers very deep underground i feel really good doing my tiny part directing groundwater back into the aquifer these underground layers of porous rock store vast volumes of ancient rainwater

20:51 but all across the u.s cities farmers and industry are extracting this vital water reservoir far faster than nature can replenish it about 30 of the water once stored beneath kansas is already gone some freshwater springs in florida now produce less than half the flow they used to climate change appears to be making droughts longer and drier there you go so i want to do everything i can to conserve water okay so this 60 gallon barrel will fill up in one day of heavy rain it's a gift from the sky can't wait for it to rain now

21:38 tracking rainfall over time is essential to understanding drought patterns but with something as infrequent as a mega drought how do you know what's normal i'm heading south east from vegas toward tucson to meet a special kind of meteorologist not one who looks at radar and satellites but one who looks at ancient trees connie woodhouse from the university of arizona is taking me to mount lemmon just north of tucson to collect some tree ring samples we're looking for the oldest tree that we can core because the oldest trees are going to give us the most information and then once the threads engage it's just a matter of turning it all

22:23 right and this doesn't hurt the tree it's kind of like getting a shot you know the whole will fill what's up it's a healing and we want to get the spoon upright and then we'll pull it out there it is so there's the core connie's tree ring research lab contains half a million tree samples okay so here's what the core looks like after it's sanded down so you can see it's much clearer yeah that's really beautiful yeah here's the bark again can you show me the dry and the wet ears on here um these little rings here the 1930s drought here's the 1950s trout is it tiny because it's a from a drought year yeah it's tiny because it's super super dry but the crown jewel in connie's collection comes from a tree that

23:10 started growing 900 years ago all right so here's a piece of the colorado river actually this site uh trail gulch is is right in the headwaters this is pinyon pine um the inside date on this tree so about when it started growing was in the 1100s do you think that these droughts that you're seeing in the past are any different from this drought we're currently seeing based on the record of tree rings from the colorado river you know 20 years of drought is a pretty long drill however if we go back to the 1100s we see a drought that's about six decades and so that's really quite a bit longer than what we've seen at least to date in the recent drought

23:55 the drought in the west is already having dramatic effects in california with some rivers running dry industry and agriculture have been drawing billions of gallons of water a year from underground aquifers so much that nasa satellites have detected the ground sinking by up to two feet a year and cutting back on this water usage is a huge challenge because most of the time we don't even know we're using it i'm working on trimming my daily water use by around 100 gallons that's great but i recently heard a shocking statistic every pound of beef we eat takes 1800 gallons of water to produce

24:43 so the most water-saving action we can take is cutting down on meat [Music] but getting people to do that can be really hard so i'm going to make it a little easier i'm taking a trip across town to meet chef babette davis owner of stuff i eat in inglewood she's been preparing vegan delights for the last 30 years voila her food is so hard to resist you started with dessert and you started without me you put yum in front of me i'm gonna have some come on hmm okay so what do we got here so right here you've got a little faro you've got black beans enchilada pie you

25:28 like it it's amazing are you kidding me i'm from new mexico oh okay this is very similar is it yeah to what my mom used to rock we call it enchilada pie how long have you been vegan since 1990. i was turning 40. i'll be 70 in december get out of here no oh are you serious i can still do a four-minute plank i don't think i could do a four minute plane probably can't boom [Laughter] it's the best thing i ever did we've got to do something because the planet can't sustain itself with the way that we're behaving cattle farming is responsible for about 90 percent

26:16 of the amazon deforestation 90 that's ridiculous these light green patches are farms that have been clear-cut into the amazon to raise cows or to grow soy to feed pigs in asia every cow and every pig eats tons of feed in its lifetime so when you eat meat you indirectly guzzle all the water it took to grow all these crops a lot of people are saying that um eating sustainably or being an environmentalist is a privilege is that true sweetheart they sell organic produce at the 99 cent stores it don't cost you much to cook up some beans it depends on where your head is where your heart is and what you want to do

27:03 i introduced this concept called hefetarianism where you cut your meat consumption by half so every other day you eat plant-based it's easier and you know arguably anybody could do it i'm humbled now to be here eating with you and you know what i'm so happy to have you now i have literally ingested your wisdom thank you and it is tasty i have to say really really good that's wonderful i love you for this by 2050 we're going to produce half a billion tons of animal meat a year at 1800 gallons of water per pound of beef that's an enormous waste of water if you really look at yourself in the mirror and you're honest i i think it's

27:49 hard to deny that it's time to at least make somewhat of a change towards a vegan lifestyle [Music] livestock farmers in the amazon don't have to worry about where their water comes from but in arizona the largest reliable influx of water has to be pumped uphill from the colorado river the central arizona project is a 336 mile canal which delivers water to phoenix and tucson and to most of the farms between [Music] as i drive through this parched land i expect the farmland around me to be growing low water desert desert-friendly crops but what i mostly see is arizona's biggest agricultural export

28:36 cotton a notoriously water-hungry crop to find out why i've come to tucson to meet brian wong a third generation arizona farmer my grandfather planted his first crop back in 1939 so that's what 81 years ago yes one of his first crops was cotton and it really wasn't native to the region back in the late 30s but growing here in a hot and dry climate actually allows cotton to thrive a lot more because you don't have a whole lot of bugs since it's kind of too hot for them to live so how is all of this water actually getting to your farm for you to use yeah so we actually have seven different uh pump stations on the cap canals

29:22 so you know you hear the noise in the background that's actually our pumps running we apply the water right out of the ditch into the field and then it you know evenly moves across the field and irrigates efficiently the way we achieve that is laser leveling our fields and even doing laser leveling in between crops so that helps us be very efficient with our irrigation but the current 20-year drought forced brian to rethink his family's traditional cotton he began looking for less thirsty more desert hardened species one of our very first grains that we started with was called white sonora wheat a lot of the native american tribe south of here used to grow white sonora wheat but in the early 1900s that was kind of pushed out by the more modern grain

30:08 varieties so you know we're one of the major producers of white sonora wheat and you know we're very happy to bring it back to this area brian's switch to a traditional desert crop has helped him cut his water use nearly in half compared with his grandfather's cotton farm [Music] some steam and his grain has found an enthusiastic local market artisanal baker don guerra often makes themselves a thousand loaves in three hours cheers cheers customers of barrio bread often tell him his loaves remind them of the bread they used to eat decades ago that is so delicious oh my goodness

30:53 when you realize that it can take more than 700 gallons of water to grow the cotton for just one t-shirt it really doesn't make a lot of sense to grow cotton out here in the desert that's why what brian is doing is so impressive in the face of a punishing drought he's managed to grow less thirsty crops and he's been a huge success he's truly inspirational growing cotton is water intensive and the production process of making clothes out of it uses even more but i just can't live without my genes i was told that you have some genes that use a lot less water to make cool yeah so that's going to be our sea gene okay these guys yeah so these are made out of 100 organic cottons and they use about 130 gallons per pair of jeans they also happen to feel really good if there's any rips or tears or anything

31:39 bring them back in and we'll patch them up and get them all fixed for you so you extend the life of them zach that's great yeah reduce on the waste exactly awesome cool you know we shouldn't underestimate as consumers we have a lot of purchasing power and we can vote with our dollars did you know that it takes 3 000 gallons of water to make a smartphone that's why i haven't upgraded mine in five years or so so if you want to save water i think we just have to kick the habit of constant consumption but getting a grip on water is not just about using less of it it's about putting back the water we've been over extracting from the ground for decades

32:26 can we turn a desert into a sustainable oasis [Music] phoenix arizona the hottest city in the u.s that gets only eight inches of rain a year [Music] this place was built by draining trillions of gallons of ancient water stored in aquifers deep below it but i'm here to meet someone who's turning this idea on its head a woman who has helped to create a miraculous oasis in the sonoran desert catherine sorensen was phoenix's director of water

33:12 management for seven years we wanted to show you the tres rios wetlands that basically polishes our reclaimed water after it leaves the wastewater treatment plant it creates this amazing wetland that is home to dozens of different species of animals and birds if you told me this was water from a sewage plant i absolutely would not believe you you know the technology is really um very advanced uh we clean the water to very high standards and then of course mother nature does her bit basically you can think of a wastewater treatment plant as a big iron stomach it works essentially the same way there's bugs and bacteria that break down the

33:58 liquids and the solids the liquids we then further treat and filter and reclaim and then we deliver them here to the wetlands before this was a wetland what was here just desert um and it's taken us really decades to create this and build it to what it is today and is that helpful for for replenishing the aquifers it is there's infiltration to the aquifers through the riverbed and the surrounding area and that's important too because we really want to manage our groundwater for the very long term phoenix used to be very dependent on groundwater supplies and we were basically draining the aquifer which is obviously not a good water management strategy the ability for phoenix to survive over the very long term is really

34:44 entirely dependent on how well we manage our aquifers over the past two decades phoenix has worked hard to replenish its depleted aquifers not just with reclaimed water but by banking extra colorado river water delivered by the cap canal it now has enough supply to last for years even if the rivers were to run dry we're here in the trenches right this is a desert city and you can't go through a summer here without understanding that water here is really a life or death issue i think this is a good example of how you can meet those challenges and leverage mother nature while you're doing it these wetlands remind me that smart water management is not just about using

35:30 less it's also about maintaining the massive stores of fresh water beneath our feet every homeowner can join this effort too i can collect the water uh into a pipe and direct it to the tanks over there in my yard project the job is in the hands of landscape designer jackie serber and landscape contractor salvador razo perfect and so then on top of the tanks we'll install some gravel and then fabric to keep the soil from getting into the tanks that's correct they're working to make the most of water that falls from the sky wow this is really coming along walk me through it what's going on here yes so

36:15 it's coming together this is the uh beginnings of our swale and our rain garden here there were two downspouts coming off of the roof and all the hard surfaces around the property one of those we've redirected to the swale here which is this kind of ditch and one is going into the infiltration pane right can we check it out yes okay salvador how's it going do you want to give adrian a little explanation here um what we're doing it's uh collecting the water that comes from the roof that's why we did this uh infiltration tank you can see salvador's adding gravel the fabric is a barrier between the soil and the gravel so we're basically trying to maintain the voids so that it can fill with water in a heavy downpour in the event for some reason this tank

37:01 fills all the way up this little pop-up device will pop up and then it will flow through the garden naturally yes through the mulch so this is just a great way to get a surge of water into the soil and then it can soak in and all these trees can take it out right surge and soak and it looks beautiful which is i mean i i was not expecting it to be as gorgeous yeah we just we want this garden to put a smile on everyone's face that comes through bring in the habitat and everything for you to enjoy for years to come and i would argue that happiness is sustainable it gives me hope that even a city like los angeles long a symbol of humanity's conquest of nature and concrete and steel can get back into balance with the local ecosystems

37:48 but it starts with water and with each one of us changing the way we think about it after traveling through the desert states of nevada and arizona following the life-giving water of the colorado river i'm back home in the bay area a home where i'll soon be raising a child and needing to nurture that new life with clean fresh water so i'm encouraged to see drought tolerant yards appearing all over my neighborhood my local library has cut its potable water use by 90 percent and it looks stunning [Music]

38:35 drought tolerant yards don't just save water they protect fragile ecosystems like the san francisco bay from polluted runoff live next to this incredible beauty and to know that it can be preserved if we all work together makes me feel like this is a good place to put down roots we need to spend more time out here it's beautiful so gorgeous every person i met on my journey is doing their part to turn the tide on their water crisis whether it's cutting water use on one farm or for a whole city and for all these people it just started with a change in their mindset and that gives me hope for the future and it's why i feel good about starting

39:21 a family here in california we'll be another family that truly appreciates the value of water and we'll be here to spread that new way of thinking about water [Music] ah look at this i mean looks done yes it's pretty much done this is the completed rain garden uh this is the meadow that we talked about using the meadow grasses that are very low in water needs and they will get fed by all the runoff from the rain garden so water comes from the roof down through the beds fills up and then gets soaked in exactly so the idea is that the water's sinking in and it's spreading out and so all these plant roots are able to take

40:07 up that water and it's staying in the backyard not going exactly all the water that falls here is staying here and uh one more thing we'd love to show you if you follow me we got a little surprise surprise okay do you have any idea what this is not exactly but i have a feeling it has something to do with conserving water yes this is a very cool regenerative guarding technique called hugel culture hugo culture yes it means mound culture in german and it's basically a swale using a lot of logs that you had lying around and so the idea is these logs are becoming spongy and they're breaking down and they're turning into soil it's all very underneath that you

40:54 can see um now it's just coated with the plants it was like a sponge correct so we have herbs we've brought some strawberries for you to plant yeah for me to plant yes i'd be honored [Music] alrighty voila i am so absolutely grateful for you two and for your whole team for coming in here and making this ignored and abandoned wasteland into something useful and beautiful look how gorgeous this is we just really hope that everybody that sees this and sees these gardens is inspired to do something in their own home

41:39 and slowly but surely one garden at a time we can really change the way water is used in landscaping when i first met christa guerrero from the metropolitan water district i was shocked to discover how much water i've been wasting even on small things like rinsing my dishes so i set myself a challenge to reduce my indoor and outdoor water use by 30 so now is the moment of truth we'll see how i did so i hear you've been busy what changes have you made yes a couple things i did i changed the toilet from a 1.6 to a 1.2 gallon toilet excellent installed water efficient kitchen faucet that's great i installed low flow shower head

42:26 and i stopped rinsing the dishes before i put them in the dishwasher they're just such a good one i installed a rain garden oh i didn't personally i helped a little bit we have an efficient mp rotator irrigation system nice swallowing rain barrel which is pretty cool so i did good you did great you want your total number for the whole house give it to me okay so you remember you about just under 300 gallons per day originally you came all the way down to 136 gallons per day that's a 55 reduction in your water use and again it was appliances and small changes around the house you didn't do anything did it feel drastic no it was no sweat at all excellent see so you can absolutely

43:13 start to put in a little sweat and see how low you can go guys come on join me let's do this simple choices it's easy to assume there's plenty of water to grow food to drink and to live our lives with but less than two percent of the planet's water is clean accessible fresh water this program has paid content for finish there's enough water on earth to sustain us but only if we use it right and don't abuse it we need to start thinking about our relationship to water in everything we do before we get down to the last drop

44:11 you