I am the clouds and the lakes.
I am the oceans and the rain.
I am a river and I run through everything.
Of all the water on this ocean planet,
only a littIe bit resides in rivers, glaciers and lakes.
And those fragile treasuries of fresh water are being depleted fast.
In Africa, Lake Chad has been beset by drought
and a fast-growing population.
90% of the lake has vanished.
Beneath the American heartland lies a massive underground lake.
We're pumping it so fast
that farms will lose this water source in just 25 years.
The glaciers so crucial to Europe's water supply are melting fast.
Global warming has already reduced their volume by half.
In some places, there's still such an abundance of water,
it's hard to believe we're running out.
But we are.
The growing worldwide water shortage
has hit hardest in regions of rapid population growth,
Like Africa, India, china and the southwestern United States.
A thousand years ago, the Anasazi people built an astonishing civilisation
here at Chaco Canyon.
To farm this desert, the Anasazi taught themselves to store and channel water,
but it was only when I got here, I saw the stonework that just blew me away.
That's why I like to touch the things I write about.
Author and anthropologist Wade Davis
is writing a book about one of the most threatened rivers in the world,
the Colorado.
My friend Shana Watahomigie has the Colorado River in her blood.
You have to admire the Anasazi.
Living here a thousand years ago,
they built their homes in a place without water.
But after thriving for 300 years,
the Anasazi were hit with a prolonged drought.
People began to starve. Wars broke out.
As the 50-year drought dragged on, everything just turned to dust,
and the Anasazi disappeared.
Chaco Canyon stands as a haunting reminder
for desert cities that depend on the Colorado River.
Beginning high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River runs for 1400 miles.
It's the lifeline for seven western states in Mexico.
Today, like most major rivers of the worId, the CoIorado's in troubIe.
75% of the river's water comes from the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains.
But then this vulnerable river crosses a thousand miles of scorching desert.
At the entrance to the Grand Canyon, the Colorado is dammed,
forming a huge reservoir, Lake Powell.
Every year at Lake Powell, billions of gallons evaporate in the desert sun.
Whenever we mess with nature,
there are always, always some kind of unintended consequences.
Glen Canyon Dam provides clean, cheap electricity.
But when we built it in the early '60s, we changed the river's ecology.
Environmental groups are weighing the pros and cons
of removing the dam altogether.
The controversial decision to build the dam
was based on rainfall projections that have proved drastically wrong.
Throughout the southwest, rainfall has been declining for about a century.
Most scientists expect the so-called dry spell
to get even worse in the coming hundred years.
Global warming will only intensify the drought.
This long drought in the American southwest
is gonna be a huge challenge for the next generation,
including my daughter, Tara.
There's a trail over here.
l think it's gonna be something that's gonna affect people my age tremendously.
In just eight years, Lake Powell has lost over half of its volume.
It'll probably never be full again.
The top of that white band is where the water used to be.
It's not just drought.
The reservoir has been drained also by increased water consumption.
Still, it was hard to imagine the unthinkable,
the Colorado River gone dry.
But when l saw Lake Powell half empty,
it gave a whole new sense of urgency to this trip we were about to set out on.
Tara's a bit of a river rat, just like me,
and this will probably be our last trip together
before she starts college next month.
Dad's pretty lucky. His work has taken him to some really amazing rivers.
I go along every chance I get.
There's that nice perspective coming down.
The river coming down. Let's give this a go.
The main character of my book is gonna be the Colorado River.
I hope what I learn about the Colorado
is gonna shed light on similar problems throughout the world.
Seismic upheaval began the process of shaping the canyon,
but the Colorado River did the rest.
The river had the power to cut through rock
and form a canyon a mile deep.
Until the dam was built,
the Colorado was ten times muddier than the Mississippi.
Over millions of years, all that grit worked like sandpaper,
as abrasive flash floods sculpted
the most spectacular canyon in the world, the Grand.
Once you set off in a raft down the Grand Canyon, it's 250 miles.
There's only one chance to hike out.
Shana's a park ranger,
and she's also the only Native American river guide in the canyon.
I had to open up my hatch and get my hammer.
- In the middle of the rapid? - Yeah.
My daughter, Cree, can't wait until she's old enough to come along.
She is looking forward to it.
- Is it as bad as they say? - Yeah, it can be.
I love being on the river and sharing it with my friends.
You come out being more of a beautiful person.
It's a little strange how the continent's muddiest river
suddenly turns crystal clear here, just below the Glen Canyon Dam.
All the silt is trapped upstream in Lake Powell.
Summer thunderstorms bring flash floods
racing down the canyons and into the river.
Today muddy tributaries restore some of the rich brown colour
that earned the Colorado its name.
But this river's a far cry from its natural state.
Also joining us is an old friend of mine from my Harvard days,
Robert Kennedy Junior, and his daughter Kick.
You're good right here. Stop right here. Perfect.
Bobby began the river conservation group, Waterkeeper Alliance.
My dad's devoted his life to rivers.
He is best known for saving the Hudson,
but he's actually travelled all around the world
helping bring rivers back to health.
My father loved to take us on white-water trips when I was young.
It was the greatest treat when we got to boat the Colorado River
when I was just 12 years old.
I only later realised how much I'd learned
about our country and its rivers.
It's hard to believe a river I can throw a stone across
can quench the thirst of 30 million people.
I mean, there are only so many buckets in this river.
At home we drink water from a tap.
But here we touch the water at the source.
We need that touch.
As drought gradually shrivels up this river,
you really have to wonder,
will Kick and Tara be able to take their kids on a trip like this?
I wanted my daughter Tara to experience the river while she still could.
Shana speaks in gestures more than words.
She let me take the oars on her river, and that meant a lot.
The water's so strong that it's gonna pull you out here.
- So you have to keep pulling... - These are all waves?
Yes. And these two can flip you.
Like the first men to go down this river,
we found these rapids tough on our boats.
- Here, Dad. I got it. - Thanks, honey.
The first explorer to descend the entire length of the Grand Canyon
was a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell.
In this remote canyon, you can almost conjure up Powell's expedition.
I mean, think about it.
These guys lost two boats and nearly all of their supplies.
Three of the men mutinied and they never made it out of the canyon alive.
Starting far upstream in 1869,
Powell and his team took 99 days to cover one thousand miles.
He did what no one else had even dared to try.
In many ways, Powell was a visionary.
He warned against bleeding the river dry
to build thirsty cities in this desert.
Powell later returned to make detailed maps
and to photograph the entire Grand Canyon in 3-D.
Saddle Canyon. We passed that.
l asked Regan, our head guide,
to pinpoint the locations where those old photos were taken.
That's at Bass, just above the rapid, on the right.
But this is one I can't figure out. Where the heck is that?
This is from the mouth of the Little Colorado, looking upstream.
Bobby, I think this is it.
To see how the river has changed since Powell was here,
Bobby and I searched for the exact spot where the original photograph was taken.
These 3-D images, taken just 30 years after the invention of photography,
must have seemed as alien and awe-inspiring
as the first video images taken on the moon.
We could see that the sand bar on the opposite shore had disappeared.
The dam upstream had drastically altered the river and its banks.
All the way downriver, we kept trying to find the spots
where these historic photographs had been taken.
That flat-sided rock was a tip-off.
The tamarisk tree, brought in from Asia,
has run wild in the canyon, crowding out the native plants.
Before the dam, the spring floods used to wash away the vegetation every year.
But now, to control tamarisk,
park rangers like Shana have to cut it down and poison its roots.
This river, because of short-sighted engineering solutions,
is very different than the river my father showed me 40 years ago.
We had beaches that were vast at that time.
There were many different kinds of animals in this river.
There were otters and there were muskrats, which are gone today.
The water released today from the dam
is about 20 degrees colder than the natural river once was.
The warm-water fish native to the Colorado struggle to survive.
Sex is undetermined. Let's check for a tag.
Damaging the habitat affects all species in the canyon.
The Gila monster thrives in this arid land
because of its unique ability to store water.
Oh, wow. Look at it.
Dad's so excited to see the Gila monsters here, and rattlesnakes.
It blends in perfectly with the desert. They're not dangerous.
Biodiversity isn't just a luxury.
We need other species for our own survival.
The Anasazi left reminders of the animals
that once roamed these river banks.
But many have vanished along with their habitat.
This is not the same river Bobby came down 40 years ago.
When I was a kid, there was none of this vegetation here,
and the sand bars were huge, where the Indians grew their crops long ago.
Now, with smaller sand bars and more vegetation on the beaches,
we can't grow vegetables here any more like our ancestors did.
- Not at the river, just at the creek. - The creek there?
Yes, and spend time jumping into the creek and playing games.
All summer long? Most come down in the summertime?
Yes.
After harvest, the Anasazi carried their grain way up here
and stored it in this cave.
These ancient granaries were abandoned a thousand years ago.
They still remind us of the people who once farmed these river banks
until their way of life was devastated by drought.
It's easy to forget and start taking these waters for granted.
But the river reminds me not to,
especially here, in this empty place where the Anasazi's dream ran dry.
Every day as we went downriver,
I kept seeing subtle ways in which the dam had impacted the canyon,
but it was still the most hypnotic river trip I'd ever been on.
For a mile upstream, you can begin to feeI the river acceIerate,
and you know you're approaching a big rapid.
Can you imagine Powell's terror?
I mean, there he was, trapped in this slot canyon, no way out,
and no idea whatsoever how violent the rapids up ahead might be.
Can we ride again?
I love my dad,
but I'm actually really happy that I learned how to row my own boat.
I think you'd have to be either a fool or a liar
to pretend that this river can't be scary,
especially when you're watching your daughter challenge it in a kayak.
Tara has years of experience on rivers.
She flips upside down in a kayak, she knows how to right herself.
But when she went over this time, she really had trouble.
It comes out of nowhere,
and then it's really disorienting when you're under the water.
And then at the end you're like, "I can't believe I just did that."
It's just really good.
- I don't know. Really fun. - But you did this kind of one flip.
And then you flipped and then you came back over.
- I had no idea what I was doing. - You came up great, though.
A river can kill you.
But to face those dangers and overcome them, the way Tara just did,
l think that builds character and a certain toughness.
For 10,000 generations, we struggled with nature for our survival.
Many of our values emerged from that struggle.
Today most of us live in cities.
But struggling with the river in this remote canyon
connects us back to the wild.
In a certain way to who we really once were.
Rivers can heal our spirits.
But sometimes we have to fight for them.
Shana's tribe is the Havasupai.
They've lived in this lush canyon for over 800 years.
At one point, this tributary was very nearly destroyed.
Just before I was born, politicians decided to build a dam here.
It was going to flood our canyon under 200 feet of water.
But the tribal elders fought the dam and won.
They saved their homeland and a big stretch of the Colorado River.
The last night on the river I didn't sleep much,
thinking about what was to come.
So how should Wade do, do you think?
He'll have a wild ride.
Of course you're nervous before you do something you've never done before,
but that's all the more reason to do it.
I took the last raft through Lava.
All I wanted to do was find the right line and not flip.
- More? - No, it's pushing you.
You're fine. You're fine.
Heading right.
Running Lava's a rite of passage.
When you finally emerge, you're so connected to the river,
it's like you're part of it.
Shana's quietly shaping my own thoughts about my book.
She's agreed to join me after this river trip
to explore other parts of the Colorado.
Now the raft trip's behind us, Tara's setting off on a much longerjourney.
But I was so grateful that before she went off to college,
she had a chance to know this great river.
We may have changed the shape of the Colorado,
but we haven't diminished its ability to shape us.
To really see the river, you have to look beyond these canyon walls.
The colorado may look healthy here,
but below the Grand canyon, the river is sick and dying.
Just ten miles downriver, Lake Mead is drying up,
just like Lake Powell.
Formed by Hoover Dam, Lake Mead is the main water source for Las Vegas.
But nearly 80% of the Colorado's water is used for growing crops.
Farmers pay almost nothing for water,
so they have no incentive to conserve.
Flood irrigation is incredibly primitive.
It's what the Anasazi used a thousand years ago.
Today there are far more efficient ways to irrigate a field.
We make choices whenever we grow crops or build cities.
Exploiting the Colorado has made cheap land valuable.
Lake Mead allows the desert to bloom.
Las Vegas and other cities are spreading like tamarisk.
But there's just not enough water to sustain this growth.
Las Vegas is starting to conserve.
But on a per capita basis, few cities use so much water.
Our indulgence comes back to haunt us hundreds of miles downriver near Mexico.
50 years ago, this bridge spanned a river 200 yards wide,
but not any more.
Only 8% of the river's water even reaches Mexico.
These Mexican fishermen once lived on a wide, rushing river.
Now it's a stagnant, shallow channel without fish.
Many families have been forced to move away.
As the river approaches its delta, it runs bone dry.
The Colorado will never flow to the sea again.
But some of the river's greatness remains,
waiting to be nursed back to health.
Just as Shana's people protected their beloved canyon home,
we can heal the Colorado if we have the will.
This river gives us so much.
A trip like this inspires you to give something back.
I am the river and the ocean.
I am every rain-filled cloud.
I am water and I make this world whole.
We're all in this together.
We could grow more food with less water
by using efficient methods, like drip irrigation.
Farmers should conserve when they grow crops
and we've gotta learn how to save water at home.
If we use a loafer or showerhead,
then we can save up to 5,000 gallons of water a year.
- Has it worked? - Yeah, it really can make a difference.
If you use a hose with an on-and-off nozzle when you're washing your car,
you can save 6,000 to 7,000 gallons of water every year.
A quarter of household water goes down the toilet.
An efficient toilet like this one here can save up to 12,000 gallons a year.
It's very cool and saves water.
Use a broom instead of a hose to clean your driveway.
Homeowners can replace their thirsty lawns
with native adaptive plants like these.
And you can use smart controls on your sprinklers
so you don't overwater.
In some places, the water shortage is catastrophic.
Every year in Africa alone,
over a million children die from a lack of safe drinking water.
Yet even here there are solutions.
A nine-year-old boy raised the money
to build over 250 wells in African villages
which had never had clean water before.
The solution to every big problem starts with one determined person.
Water conservation takes commitment and political will.
We've gotta make sure the water we save actually stays in the river.
For more information, visit our website.
It's updated frequently with new ideas and solutions.
Check back often. Get involved.
- Right, Cree? - Right.