Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Film chronicles world's water crisis

Southern Nevada Water Authority chief among those interviewed in documentary

From left, Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority; Patricia Simon, widow of Sen. Paul Simon; and actress Jane Seymour attend Monday's screening of "Running Dry" at the Desert Research Institute. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Nevada's top water official is featured along with Mikhail Gorbachev and Shimon Peres in a new documentary that premiered Monday in Las Vegas.

Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, discusses supply concerns along the Colorado River in "Running Dry," which chronicles the growing water crisis around the globe.

Much of the film focuses on life-and-death problems with water and sanitation in China, India, Kazakhstan, South Africa and the Middle East.

The film notes that an average of 9,500 children die worldwide every day because of a lack of clean water.

"It's a desperate situation everywhere," Jim Thebaut, the film's producer and director, said Monday. "We've got to put on a full court press, a global full court press."

In her scenes, Mulroy talks about the explosive growth in the American Southwest and the strain that has placed on the region's primary source of water, the Colorado River.

"Nobody ever expected Las Vegas to be created. Nobody ever expected Las Vegas to become what it is today," Mulroy says in the film. "For the last 50 years, people have been moving to the Southwest in defiance of the environment they are moving into, and they have tried to re-create the environment from where they came.

"It would be tantamount to trying to walk down the streets of Anchorage in a bikini in the month of March. It makes just about as much sense."

"Running Dry," which is still in search of a distributor, was inspired by the late Sen. Paul Simon's book "Tapped Out." Thebaut had been developing the project in association with Simon until the former Illinois senator's death in 2003.

Simon's widow, Patricia, continued to work with Thebaut to finish the film. She attended the premiere, as did the film's narrator, actress Jane Seymour.

Mulroy described the film Monday as "a call to action, and you're not going to get Americans to respond unless there is a connection."

That's why the problems on the Colorado were included even though they pale in comparison to what is going on elsewhere in the world, she said.

"It's shocking as an average American to see children who are dying" because they don't have clean water, Mulroy said. "It will rip your heart out, and that was the purpose of it."

As for sharing about the same amount of screen time as world leaders Gorbachev and Peres, both winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mulroy said, "It was like 'what am I doing here?' "

There are two versions of "Running Dry," an 80-minute feature and a 50-minute executive summary.

The documentary was paid for with grant money from American Water and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Since February, the film has been screened in California, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Beijing, China.

The Desert Research Institute sponsored Monday's premiere and a similar event scheduled for tonight in Reno.

The Hollywood premiere of "Running Dry" is slated for Sept. 7, and future screenings are being planned in South Africa, India, Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Eventually, the makers of the film hope to see it played in theaters and broadcast on television.