water around 2018. In the meantime, the problem is getting worse. Deputy director of the Mexican
National Water Commission Cantu Suarez reports, "In Oaxaca, south of Mexico City, women line up at
dawn to fill a few plastic containers from a passing water truck."
Mexico is only one example of desperation in a world running short of water. Parts of the earth are
dying, with fields poisoned by salt and village wells running dry. And there are legal battles
emerging. The Colorado River, drained by 10 U.S. states with their own water crises, is a muddy
trickle by the time it reaches the rich farmland of Baja Califomia. Under complex water agreements
with the United States, Mexico can take water from the Rio Grande but must pay it back. President
Vicente Fox has promised to pay the debt, which amounts to enough to put the state of Delaware
under
a flood of water. But with Mexico already so short of water, it is not realistic to think it can
happen.
Canada, with its thousands of lakes and rivers, would be viewed by most people as having an
inexhaustible water supply. In comparison to Africa and other dry places, most of Canada's waters
are pristine. But the increasing effect of mistreatment over the years has taken an evident toll.
The cities of Victoria on the west coast and Halifax on the east still dump billions of liters of
raw sewage into their oceans. The world's biggest freshwater basin, the Great Lakes, is described
as
* FUO
