By John Hood

At a recent Shore Club-hosted confab for charity:, the great good group that builds wells for the Third World, Scott Harrison, the nonprofit organization’s hands-on founder and president, let slip a startling stat: Floridians consume an average of 481 gallons of water a day.

To be fair, Miami-Dade rinses through about half that (Harrison’s figure takes upstate agriculture into account), but by any measure, it’s an obscene amount. And if we’re not careful, it might just be enough to drown us into drought.

For more than a month now, the South Florida Water Management District has had us under mandatory restrictions, yet wading through the flooded streets of our fair city it’s hard to believe we’re experiencing any shortage of wet stuff whatsoever.

One read into Cynthia Barnett’s Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (University of Michigan Press, $24.95), however, will tell you different.

Much different.

According to Barnett, who’s been on the beat with Florida Trend since 1998, Florida’s conservation ethic, or, more specifically, the lack thereof, is threatening to dry us into an arid wasteland. Not only are we consuming more, we seem to be caring less. And as a result, we’re parching ourselves to death.

And, strange as it may seem, the less water we have, the more likely it is we’ll drown.

Think about it.

As fresh water recedes, salt water encroaches, which means our aquifers have been unduly imperiled. Once those repositories are contaminated, it’ll take years for them to replenish — if, that is, they ever replenish at all. Worse, where the sea can’t seep, the limestone collapses in on itself, which means sinkholes, dig? And if you’ve ever seen a car or a truck or a road or a home swallowed whole by the ground upon which it sits, it’ll sore your eyes forever.

Just ask some of the many citizens of Central Florida who’ve for decades seen sinks (as they’re called) replace the aquifers drained by us greedy southerners. In fact, so pervasive is the situation, that most insurers have stopped writing policies for the region.

Add the rising oceans to the equation and you’ve summed up one bone-wet disaster.

This means water wars, of course, and, as you might suspect, it’s very much like the battles that drove Towne’s Chinatown to the brink. There are shady developers, shadier politicians, a thicket of lobbyists and some genuinely good folk who seem to have little chance but nevertheless continue to fight for our lives.

Folk like Barnett, who knows enough to mark her Mirage with some very vivid story. Impeccably researched and breezily read, it’s the kinda stiff drink we’d do well to swallow. Whether we lap up all there is to offer remains to be seen, but it’s guaranteed to be a great first sip.

“Serve to Preserve: A Florida Summit on Global Climate Change,” hosted by Gov. Charlie Crist, takes place July 12 and 13 at InterContinental Miami Hotel, 100 Chopin Plaza, Miami. Keynote speakers are Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Theodore Roosevelt IV. Register at http://myfloridaclimate.com.

Hood is online at www.therealjohnhood.com.

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