Man's Problem (1953)

[Music] man need incredible amount of water. [Music] Yes, man needs an incredible amount of water even for the making of artificial ice. But water created a problem because this natural system was not devised for man's special benefit and nature does not always deliver the water at the time and the place where he most needs it. The people who live in the city could be told something about the importance of water by the people who live in the country. They could be told that it took 5,000 pounds of water to raise the hay and alalfa that went into a single pound of steak. And they could be told that it took almost 5,000 lb of water to produce a single loaf of bread. Yes, man uses an incredible amount of water. And we shall see some of the problems that are faced in the use of this water. and what steps man may take to solve them. For example, the city of Los Angeles was once supplied with water from the Los Angeles River, which carried enough to meet the community's needs. But the city grew, and each new house and factory took its added share of the dwindling supply. Today, the entire flow goes into the pipes of the city's water system. This dry channel is all that is left. But there is another hidden supply of water flowing through the soil. This water is part of the great underground river moving from the waterheds on the hills back again to the ocean. And thousands of wells were dug to draw up this water. And for many years they were able to supply the growing demand until their increasing numbers drew up more water than the earth could supply. The water in the ground began to fall farther below the surface. Some shallow wells went dry, and some land owners began to drill their wells deeper to reach the sinking water. But each man who did this drew off water from under the land of his neighbor. And now the neighbor must in turn go deeper until at last the cost of reaching water became more than some could bear. This farm is bankrupt simply because other farms around it have drawn off more water than the land could supply. As the water level continued to drop, the farms and factories and homes that had depended on it must find new sources of supply. And so the city spent many million dollars building an aqueduct into the mountains to draw water from the distant Owens River. And still the demand grew. But beyond the mountains lay the Mojave Desert with no water at all. And now the nearest new source was the Colorado River. more than 200 miles away. Summer, this rivers flow more than 600,000 gallons of water each second, enough to supply the entire daily needs of the city of Los Angeles in 10 minutes. In the winter, when the snows are frozen, the flow may drop to 120th of that amount, and the river's value is thus reduced to its smallest dependable flow. But the cities and towns depend on the river the whole year round. Therefore, to give this water its true value, it had to be stored in huge reservoirs that could hold the surplus flow till it was needed. But this water was owned by all the seven states that border on the river. And together, their claims totaled more than the entire yearly flow of the river. No dam could be built to supply California until the states on the river above would agree to let enough water flow down to fill the reservoir. At last, an agreement was reached among the states reducing their claims to allow a share for all. And so the Hoover Dam was built, the first in a system to be built for control of the water along with an aqueduct that could carry a billion gallons every day across the desert into California. In this way, the engineers were able to multiply the value of the river, storing its water and carrying it where it can be useful as needed. And so the water came to Los Angeles. And the building of a dam helped the city to grow and prosper. But the building of a dam sometimes creates problems. This is a fish ladder built to carry fish over the Bunnyville Dam. The salmon can swim up its steps with little trouble to lay their spawn in the streams above. But when the young salmon journey back to the sea, many of them are killed by their passage through the turbines. It is estimated that the dam kills nearly 17th of all the young salmon that go through it. When many other dams are built on the Colombia River, this may wipe out the 17 million salmon industry and the hundreds of jobs that it provides. Here is the beginning of the Hungry Horse Dam. When it is finished, the reservoir behind it will cover 20,000 acres of this cleared land that was once covered by a rich forest. The watershed above it bears millions of acres of forest which can be reached by a level road along the river. This road will soon be covered by the reservoir. Then these forests can be reached only by long and difficult roads through the mountains. This will raise the cost of bringing out the timber for all the years to come. Yes, dams present many problems. Here is the coolage dam in Arizona built to store the huge San Carlos reservoir. Today it stands nearly empty. It was built without sufficient study only to find later that there was not enough water to keep it filled. But farms and cities in the desert depend on these dams for their life. When the water fails, they must go back to the desert like this abandoned farm. So we see that the building of a dam entails grave responsibility. For the reservoir may hold the power of life and death over vast areas of land that become dependent on it. And the life of the reservoir in its turn depends upon the health of the land that supplies its water. A river can tell us many things about the land it comes from. This muddy water tells us that it is filled with the good soil which was once nature's reservoir in the earth. This boiling flood tells us that nature's reservoir has been damaged and lost its power to store the water. Let us go back into the hills where this water started and look for the causes of the flood. One of the most important causes lies in too heavy grazing by sheep and cattle. For when the animals eat off too much grass, leaving the surface bare and exposed like this, the soil loses its protection against the hammering raindrops. When the heavy-footed animals compress nature's sponge like this, the soil loses its power to absorb the rain. Now the water runs off, tearing great wounds in the earth that show us where the water was once stored. But the greatest danger to the watersheds lies in forest fires that destroy the forests and the smaller plants, leaving the ground exposed and vulnerable. The rain which once helped to fill the soil now tears it away. Nature's reservoir has been entirely destroyed. On this bare rock, there is nothing left to hold the moisture. As this snow melts, its water should be stored in the soil. But now its reservoir is gone. The water runs off, leaving no provision for the future. And the process of destruction may be repeated on the farmlands. For when a plow improperly and thoughtlessly used breaks the poorest sod, this land too loses its power to absorb the rain in the dry areas. The runoff from the fields joins the water from the hills. Each new addition gives it greater power to destroy. destroying crops, flooding highways, destroying homes and farms, carrying away the soil that should have stored the water, dropping the soil to destroy the reservoirs built by man. This was once a reservoir filled with water. The red earth that fills it now was once a part of nature's reservoir on the hills above, carried down by flowing water to bury two reservoirs in a single grave. But these dead reservoirs are merely symptoms of the real disease. Here is where that red soil came from. This sick land was once covered by a protecting forest, but the forest was destroyed by man. The dying earth has lost its power to absorb the water. So the river tells us the story of the land it comes from. First with floods and then with drought. The land is losing its power to support life. This damage could have been prevented and much can still be repaired by wise management that will protect the soil and restore its power to absorb water. This wise farmer is harrowing the stubble from his wheat crop back into the surface. This will anchor the soil in place and make the surface porous to absorb the rain. The good farmer draws his furrows along the level contours of the slopes. So creating a thousand new reservoirs to replace the old ones broken by the plow. No runoff here. Even on the mountains, man may sometimes repair the damaged earth. This land was once destroyed by grazing sheep. But at last, the animals were removed and engineers covered the slopes with level trenches that act like miniature reservoirs to hold the water. In this way, at tremendous cost, the farms and towns below are protected from floods until you can rebuild the natural cover on the slopes. And in the valley, slopes that have been ruined by fire or grazing, walls may be built like these to check the flow of the flood water and let it sink into its proper place in the soil. And so it lies within man's power to preserve the natural reservoirs from destruction even while he uses the earth. But another danger to the water supply lies in the destruction of water itself. For a river's true value lies not in the number of gallons it carries, but in the number of times it can be used. Here is a great city, and beside it run two rivers. But for the needs of this city, the rivers are not water. They are poison. The water's usefulness has been destroyed by the acts of other cities on the watersheds above. Along the river's banks are many cities, each discharging into the water its share of sewage and of poisons from the mills. Nature can partly remedy this pollution, diluting the poisoned water and letting the filth settle to the bottom. Bacteria in the water helps to destroy the sewage, using great quantities of oxygen in the process. Plants growing in the water use the sewage for fertilizer and add fresh oxygen for the bacteria to use. Fish and other animals eat the plants and sewage. But when the pollution becomes too deadly, killing the cleansing bacteria, the fish and the plants, the water loses the power to clean itself. Now man must clean it for his own preservation. For this foul water must be used for drinking by the cities farther down the stream. This is the water in a typical Midwestern river. It is fed by the discharges from city sewers like this. In the winter when the flow of the river is low and there is little oxygen under the ice, this flow may be as much as 1/2 straight sewage. Here the foul water of that river is entering the water system of a city to be cleaned and used for drinking. At first chemicals are added to it which cause the dirt to settle. Then chlorine gas is pumped into it through this glass gauge to kill the bacteria. Now it is filtered through charcoal and at last with the sewage removed it comes out looking and tasting like the pure drinking water we know. Now it will be used in the homes and caneries and factories and then returned again to the sewers and back into the river to be cleaned and used again by the next city downstream. Such rivers are a disgrace to the cities and factories that pollute them and a menace to the others which must now use the dirty water. It must be the responsibility of every user of the river to return its water clean and fit for further use. Yes, there is a water problem, but it is man's problem. And if you and your neighbors and your fellow citizens refuse to face it, all the dams built at tremendous cost to you and your government will be of little use someday in the future if the watersheds are neglected and destroyed. By thinking ahead, by planning, by preserving nature's resources, by combining scientific techniques with common sense, by working together with engineers and conservationists and ordinary citizens, by taking care of the forests and land and rivers that make up these watersheds, man can assure himself that he will have water where he wants. wants it when he wants it for himself and the generations of Americans yet to come. The water problem can be solved with nature's help. [Music] But only you working with nature can solve it. [Music]