Jim Thebaut's New Film: 'The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?'

Jim Thebaut, president of the non-profit The Chronicles Group and the man who made the landmark film Running Dry about the world humanitarian water crisis, is back behind the camera.

Until about two weeks ago I had not encountered Jim for about two years, after having seen his film and met him at the Third World Water Forum (3WWF) in Kyoto, Japan, in March 2003.  The film so impressed me that I invited him to the University of New Mexico, my former institution, to show the film and meet with the university and local communities. Both he and the film were huge successes.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Jim sitting in the breakfast room st the Embassy Suites Hotel in Albuquerque, NM, during the AWRA meeting. He told me he was in New Mexico waiting for the film crew for his new water documentary, The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry? Below is a copy of the press release.

Download southwest_press_release_14_nov_2007.pdf

Grants to support the flim have been made by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), American States Water Company (ASWC), as well as other organizations. Vegas PBS will present the film, which will debut in Fall 2008 on Western PBS stations followed by live in-studio simulcast town hall meetings.

Jim's skills as a filmmaker will be welcomed to depict a complicated problem, one that affects us all, not just the USA Southwest. My hope is that, given the sponsors, this will not be more of the "SOS" but a critical look at what needs to be done and what might happen if no substantive changes are effected. Jim assured me that this will be the case - it will be a solutions-based approach. 

I hope to see discussions of:

• coordination of land use planning and water planning (both quality and quantity);
• regional approaches, even those involving parts of different states (e.g., NW Arizona and Southern Nevada) ; and
• what will happen if the Southwest is in fact in the midst of a "megadrought" period (c. 40-50 years), i.e., a view of the apocalypse and how we will cope with it.

See my 21 July 2007 post, "The Struggle to Secure Water in the Southwest USA".

But if anyone can present the real story, it's Jim Thebaut. I'll anxiously await The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?

"Civilization exists by hydrological consent, subject to change without notice" -- my apologies to Will Durant (his original quote had "geological")

"The greatest national folly we could commit would be to exhaust the Treasury trying to make over the West in the image of Illinois."  -- Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb, Harper's magazine, May 1957, as reported by Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 1986 (p. 5)