Al Jazeera asks how long it will be before the US is runing on empty.
That reality is dawning upon people across the US as the country faces unprecedented water shortages.Water-challenged native Americans in Orne, Tennessee, are forced to line up for daily water truck deliveries after their local water source dried up.
On the Texas side of the Rio Grande Basin there are Americans forced to live without running water just like their Mexican counterparts across the border.
Along Oregon's Klamath river, local farmers and native American fishermen have been fighting over what they consider to be their birth right to precious water allocations.
It is not just rural Americans facing chronic water shortage; the residents of Atlanta came within 90 days of running out of water last summer.
Many economists and climatologists believe profligate lifestyles and denial of the real value of water as a precious and diminishing resource are leading the US into a crisis far greater than its dependency on foreign oil.
Unlike global warming, the crisis is right here, right now. Peter Gleick, one of the country's leading water analysts, sets the factual context for the US water crisis from overpopulated desert areas in the Southwest, to the unchecked depletion of natural aquifers throughout the Midwest.
Pollution has made 40 per cent of the country's rivers and lakes unsafe to swim in, yet alone drink from.
Americans are often their worst enemy in the fight to maintain their traditional lifestyles which so depend on a diminished natural resource.
For example, a large hamburger takes 2,000 gallons of water to produce while a round of golf costs approximately 4,000 gallons of water.
Leaving the tap on while brushing your teeth or shaving uses an estimated 350 gallons, which is the daily per capita consumption of water in most African countries.
While the US is making billions of dollars by feeding the rest of the world, they are also exporting a third of their water supplies every year with the flow of "virtual water" to overseas markets in the form of food exports.
Watch Video here - We the People: Running on Empty aired from Thursday, April 02, 2009.
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