Water is the world's life source and essential to all living creatures. Although we live on the blue planet, only 3 percent of all our water is drinkable. Yet we've grown accustomed to using it with abandon - individuals consume about 80 to 100 gallons per day adding up to the equivalent of an Olympic sized swimming pool every year. By this decade's end, when the world population is predicted to reach 8 billion, we will face severe shortages. In this ground breaking and forward-looking book, Harvard professor Peter Rogers and former general manager of the San Francisco Utilities Commission, Susan Leal give us a sobering perspective on the water crisis-why it's happening, where it's likely to strike, and what puts the worst strain on our supply. They explain how water's unique status as a renewable but finite resource misleads us into thinking we can always produce more of it. They introduce exciting new technologies that can help revolutionize our consumption of water and explain how different areas of the world have taken the helm in alleviating the burden of water shortages. Rogers and Leal show how it takes individuals at all levels to make this happen, from grassroots organizations who monitor their community's water sources, to local officials who plan years in advance how they will appropriate water, to the national government who can invest in infrastructure for water conservation today. Informed and inspiring, Running out of Water is a clarion call for action and an innovative look at how we as a nation and individuals can confront the crisis.

Peter Rogers is a leading water expert and professor of environmental engineering at Harvard and a senior advisor to the Global Water Partnership. He has written for many scientific journals including Scientific American on this subject, and has received a Guggenheim, and a Twentieth Century Fellowship. Susan Leal is a senior fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University and an associate of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She is also an environmental and management consultant, and the former head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a large regional water and power utility. While at the utility, she established the nation's first coalition of large water utilities to address the challenges of climate change.

Turn the Tap and Out Comes the Water * Making it Last: Using Technology to Recycle Water * Taming the Big User: Improving Agricultural Efficiency * Wanted: Our Involvement * Valuing an Extremely Complicated Resource Leads to Wise Use * Waste Not Want Not * Trans-Boundary Rivers * Water That Lasts a Thousand Years: Bottled Water * Conclusion: So, Now What