Breakthrough (2015) s01e06 Episode Script
Water Apocalypse
1 [MUSIC.]
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: Like most Americans, I never thought much about water or running out of water.
But in California, water shortages are now a fact of life and they are a problem for the rest of the world, too.
Although the Earth is filled with water, very little of it is the freshwater we need to grow our crops and supply drinking water for our homes.
Almost 97 percent of the water on Earth is salty, and nearly two percent is locked up in ice and snow.
That leaves just one percent of usable water.
The human population is rapidly growing, but our supply of clean water is not.
By 2030, demand for water may exceed supply by nearly 50 percent.
We're on the brink of a global disaster.
Can innovative science and engineering prevent a water apocalypse? [MUSIC.]
California has long been seen as an American Eden.
People flock here seeking fame and wealth and happiness.
The good life in a moderate climate.
But now, California is suffering through a brutal, historic drought.
Worst hit is the state's Central Valley.
This is one of the most fertile regions in the world.
Nearly half the US's fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown here and the Central Valley is dying.
In some towns, people are stealing water from their neighbors or simply leaving.
DONNA JOHNSON: This house is abandoned.
A farmer and his wife lived in it and it was a very nice house, but they had no water so they gave up and left.
NARRATOR: For most residents of East Porterville, California, there is no water at all.
Donna Johnson is one of them.
DONNA JOHNSON: When we ran out of water I was in denial like a lot of us are.
I assumed it might take a week or two but they'd get our well fixed.
NARRATOR: Homes here get their water from wells.
And the wells have run dry.
DONNA JOHNSON: A lot of people were faced with their losing their place to live.
Not being able to take care of their families.
They couldn't flush their toilets.
And a lot of them have just lost hope.
I just wanted to make sure that everybody's needs were met.
NARRATOR: Donna delivers bottled water to local families with dry wells.
Community groups give her donations that she brings to people in need.
DONNA JOHNSON: I started taking out water.
And the main thing they said is you came, somebody came.
Somebody cared.
Hi Juana, how you doing? Juana's been suffering through the drought for a couple years.
[MUSIC.]
She has lupus.
She's ill.
She doesn't feel well enough to work.
So they're very low income.
They have to walk a mile and a half to the shower.
[MUSIC.]
Is that enough water? For now? We have over 550 homes out of water in East Porterville alone.
I want to do it until I know everyone has running water and a permanent solution.
Then maybe I can really retire which I've been trying to do for the last ten years.
NARRATOR: But the day-to-day water use of 39 million people isn't what's draining California dry.
Farming consumes 80 percent of the human use of the state's water supply.
The rain that falls on land either runs off to rivers and oceans, freezes into snow caps and glaciers, or seeps into the ground.
Large deposits of groundwater are called aquifers.
With little rain and temperatures rising from climate change, there's not enough melting mountain snow to replenish the water in California's aquifers.
WEGNER'S WIFE: She'll probably want more macaroni salad.
JAKE WEGNER'S SON: Can I have some of this? JAKE WEGNER: Here let me give you some fruit.
Hey bring your plate over.
NARRATOR: For farming families like the Wegners, walnuts and almonds are the best way to transform water into money.
They generate tremendous profits with fewer labor cost than vegetables.
But they guzzle water.
This mature 20-acre walnut orchard consumes about 23 million gallons of water every year.
JAKE WEGNER: My family's been farming in this area for a little over a hundred years.
My dad when he planted this orchard, I was about the same age as my son is now.
And I can remember being out here with him when this orchard went in.
This year, we've had to make some very tough management decisions in our operation.
We had to tear out 10 percent of our walnut trees because we did not have enough water to maintain those orchards.
This is something that's been in our blood.
[MUSIC.]
When you tear it out it's like a little piece of you is gone.
NARRATOR: As some farmers rip out orchards, others frantically dig new wells.
Digging a well can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And there's no guarantee that will fix the problem, because no one knows exactly how much water is left underground.
With no water coming from the state controlled aquifer, this farm relies solely on this one well.
A well that may be running dry.
SARAH WOLFE: Hello, how are you.
AARON MANDELL: How you doing? SARAH WOLFE: Good.
Good to see you! Welcome.
NARRATOR: Aaron Mandell, chairman of the company WaterFX, has come to evaluate the problem.
SARAH WOLFE: This is one of our fields.
We have about 1200 acres in total that we farm and this year we're only able to plant about half of it because of the lack of water supply.
So that's what our wells can reach.
AARON MANDELL: Okay.
So 50 percent of the land is actually going to lay fallow? SARAH WOLFE: Exactly.
NARRATOR: The farm needs a new source of water and Aaron believes he has a solution.
AARON MANDELL: Sarah's facing the same problem a lot of farmers in the Central Valley face, which is lack of water supply that is causing her to have to fallow a lot of land.
She actually has all the water resources she needs right below her feet.
NARRATOR: There is a vast pool of subsurface drain water just beneath the Central Valley.
It's runoff from irrigation.
Unfortunately, the ground is naturally salty, so the water is tainted.
But Aaron has devised an affordable way to filter out the salt, reclaim the water and feed it into the aquifer.
The easiest way to desalinate water is to boil it.
But on a large scale, this consumes vast amounts of energy.
MATT STUBER: You know that'll open and close as we're tracking our temperature from the array.
AARON MANDELL: Okay.
MATT STUBER: This valve is at least half open.
NARRATOR: Aaron and WaterFX's co-founder and Director of Engineering, Dr.
Matt Stuber, are purifying salt water using an energy source California has in abundance, sunshine.
MATT STUBER: What we've done is developed this plant, which removes the salt from the soil, and returning this region with impaired soil back to arable farmland.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: This solar array works like a magnifying glass, it concentrates the energy of the sun 36 times.
That energy heats mineral oil inside these pipes to over 350 degrees.
This creates high-pressure steam that boils the salt out of water pumped up from beneath the plant.
MATT STUBER: So this is where the final product comes out.
It's completely pure freshwater.
So we create two products with this from one waste source, freshwater, and these salty minerals.
Now, the salt crystals are very valuable.
They can be captured and used in many industries.
NARRATOR: Water FX now has funding to build a plant that can desalinate 1.
6 Billion gallons of water per year.
Aaron and Matt believe this breakthrough technology can transform the Central Valley and many other arid regions on earth.
MATT STUBER: When we build this plant out, we'll be able to make a hundred thousand acres sustainable.
This is a new water source.
[MUSIC.]
AARON MANDELL: The faster we realize that this is the new normal, I think the better off we're gonna be.
The real reason why we came here to do this demonstration is to prove out something that can be a truly sustainable supply of water.
We can't just conserve our way to economic growth.
We have to actually find new sources of water, and that's what we're trying to do here.
[MUSIC.]
About a 100 years ago, C.
Y.
O'Connor had a dream.
NARRATOR: Like California, the coast of Western Australia may seem like a paradise.
But the problems here are even worse.
[MUSIC.]
From 1996 through 2010, Australia suffered through a major drought they called The Big Dry.
The nation responded by cutting water use and investing heavily in desalination plants.
But standard desalination plants consume massive amounts of energy.
As Australia's population grows, they are desperate for alternatives.
Pioneering engineers may have found one in the waters of the ocean.
ANDY MERCER: So it's about five AM, uh, we've gotta leave so early to get to site before sunrise.
So it just gives us the maximum amount of sunlight on site.
NARRATOR: These men are building a system that desalinates water and generates electricity at the same time.
It's called CETO.
Giant buoys are tethered to hydraulic pumps on the ocean floor.
The buoys are continually slammed by ocean waves; that raw kinetic energy shoots high-pressure water through pipes into a powerhouse on shore.
The high-pressure water spins turbines that generate electricity.
But the water also pushes seawater into a reverse-osmosis membrane.
The membrane filters out salt.
The end product is zero-emissions drinking water.
Now, after fifteen years and $100 million dollars, they are on a high risk mission to put the last piece into place, and they can't afford to fail.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: We're heading out today for the third unit installation.
This is the final unit to complete the construction of the plant.
NARRATOR: The goal is to put a 60-ton buoy into place, sink it, then attach it to the pump system on the sea floor.
It's a delicate operation to perform underwater and they are fighting against nature.
The CETO team has waited weeks for calm weather.
Three days ago, the coast looked clear, so they decided to make their move but now, a storm is coming.
ANDY MERCER: Given the weather, a lot of it's removing shackles and stuff like that, it's kind of low priority.
I'm just nervous about making sure we get the major portions of the work done in time before the weather really builds up.
There's some steps we have to achieve by a certain time.
NARRATOR: As the sun rises, Andy Mercer and his team meet up with the rest of CETO's small fleet including the star of the show, the enormous buoy that they are here to sink.
The sailors tie mooring lines to the buoy, then carefully maneuver it into position, directly above the undersea connector.
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Just doing an inspection to make sure everything's in line, make sure everything's okay.
ANDY MERCER: We're going to open the ballast chambers on the buoy itself.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: It looks like we're getting close to.
ANDY MERCER: Yeah, it's going down now.
NARRATOR: The buoy takes time to sink, too long, though it looks calm out, a storm is approaching.
The engineers need to move quickly to the next phase.
The pump arm dangles from the bottom of the buoy needs to be connected to a flange ring on the ocean floor.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: Really the turning point in the installation today is the stab, or the mechanical connection of the CETO unit to the foundation in the seabed.
We're very vulnerable then until we're hydraulically connected.
So I'm nervous.
NARRATOR: The stab will be handled by remote control.
But if something goes wrong, divers will do what they can to fix it.
LYLE MITCHELL: The divers will go down to the 25 meter water depth to visualize the connection and make sure we get that stab.
[MUSIC.]
To get everything lined up is, is a vital role.
To get that stab, first time.
If we miss the stab, things can go pear shape pretty quickly and we all have to be on our battle stations to get, get things retracted and, you know rectify the situation.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: But there's a problem.
[MUSIC.]
The swells have picked up.
DAN: This is extremely critical.
Right now what we're contending with is the swell, and wind conditions.
It's moving like a pendulum effect.
It's moving apart and pulling the actuator around in the water column.
NARRATOR: If the divers can't connect the stabbing arm, the mission will have to be scrapped.
[MUSIC.]
[MUSIC.]
The CETO n water project is in peril.
On the ocean floor, divers jockey to get the heavy pump arm into place.
They're fighting against rough current and the unpredictable movements of the arm.
[MUSIC.]
[MUSIC.]
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Yup! JONATHAN FIEVEZ: Yeah we're connected! NARRATOR: Finally, success.
ANDY MERCER: That's it.
Now the CETO unit is locked into the foundation, and that is effectively the hardest part of installation we've completed.
DAN: This is the best part of seeing it all come to fruition.
NARRATOR: Exhausted divers clamber back onto the ship.
ALL: Yay.
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Hey, one more, one more.
NARRATOR: Now that the third buoy is in place, the CETO plant can go online, the first of what they hope will be many energy efficient water processing plants around the world.
Australia is a rich country with a shortage of clean water.
But what of poor nations that have water, but no means to purify it? In the African nation of Ethiopia, the water problem is particularly acute.
Nearly half of Ethiopia's 97 million people lack access to clean water.
But the problem here isn't a shortage of rain, it's a lack of material resources.
In rural villages such as Dorze, there are no water treatment plants.
Dorze doesn't have electricity or plumbing.
Livestock roam freely and the villagers have no pit toilets.
Rains wash contaminants and bacteria from feces straight into the water supply.
Drinking or bathing in this water is dangerous so villagers must get fresh water from a distant stream.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: The three treks to clean water take up nearly six hours of this woman's day.
NARRATOR: But some tire of the walk especially children.
They drink or wash in contaminated water and get intestinal parasites and deadly infections.
One out of fifteen children in rural Ethiopia never makes it past their 5th birthday.
Some of the 1,800 children in the developing world who die from filthy water each and every day.
It's a problem Italian architect Arturo Vittori is trying to do something about.
ARTURO VITTORI: We discovered this amazing beautiful country where everything looks perfect, an idyllic place to live.
But there is a huge problem.
The lack of water.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: Arturo has spent his career designing easy-to-assemble structures for NASA and the European Space Agency.
Now he wants to build towers in Ethiopia that collect clean water from the air.
This prototype Warka tower stands 30 feet high and gathers water from fog, rain and condensation.
Arturo has built 12 of these test models in Italy.
Now he wants to erect a Warka Tower in the Dorze highlands a remote region he began scouting four years ago.
Early on, Arturo realized he'd never be accepted here on his own.
ARTURO VITTORI: So as a white person coming to these worlds, pretty sure that people look at me and wonder what I'm doing, and why I am here.
What about this shop? TSEHAI BOGALE: Here? ARTURO VITTORI: Yes.
NARRATOR: In Tsehai Bogale, Arturo found the perfect partner.
ARTURO VITTORI: Tsehai is a local but he also has an international understanding.
So he can interact directly with the people of the community.
TSEHAI BOGALE: [Speaks in foreign language.]
.
ARTURO VITTORI: So this is a big one.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah, this is the biggest house.
TSEHAI BOGALE: and his mind is always working.
NARRATOR: The Warka tower is assembled in five modules, tied together by rope.
The frame is made of lightweight but strong bamboo that can withstand fierce winds.
Mesh is tied inside the frame.
The mesh collects droplets of dew.
As cold air condenses, the droplets fall into a reservoir at the base of the tower.
The lakes below Dorze create humidity and fog that make the village a perfect site for Africa's first Warka tower.
ARTURO VITTORI: I'm completely sure that this way to collect water from the atmosphere is sustainable, is the future, and I want to demonstrate it.
What we construct here is a first prototype.
It's an experiment.
It's an emotional moment after seven years working on the project and dreaming the project to happen.
[MUSIC.]
Today is the first day that we start really working.
NARRATOR: To construct the clean-water collecting WarkaWater tower in Ethiopia, Arturo Vittori and his team must first excavate the foundation.
ARTURO VITTORI: The way we anchor the WarkaWater to the ground is very important because it's a tall structure, 30 feet.
And the wind is very powerful.
So we have to find a way to make it lightweight but also strongly, without using concrete.
NARRATOR: The tower is made out of local materials that are easy to procure mainly bamboo, rope and cheap netting.
It is meant to be the first of many towers, so a large part of Arturo's mission is to teach locals how to build them.
They will practice building many prototypes over the next few days.
Arturo's core team is composed of 10 architecture students from the Adis Ababa University.
Their leader is Professor Tadesse Girmay.
TADESSE GIRMAY: This an ax.
The size is very determined short, light.
They're used to split most of the time the bamboo.
NARRATOR: Together with a handful of local villagers, this is the team that will construct the Warka tower.
ARTURO VITTORI: At the end of the project, the intention is to leave here knowing that the local people will be able to make it them self.
Because if this doesn't happen, the project will fail for sure.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: While the team works, some of Dorze's residents have walked for hours to the nearest medical clinic.
Their children suffer from the painful effects of contaminated water.
Dr.
Alto Adane faces the same problems every day, diseases brought on by bad water.
NARRATOR: A clinic visit costs just two dollars but most parents can't afford it.
some wait weeks into a sickness to bring their children to the hospital.
NARRATOR: Even if this woman is giving her baby clean water to drink, she's likely washing her hands with dirty water, or not washing them at all.
And that can be just as dangerous for a child.
With proper treatment, 1-year old Mikah will recover but like all kids here, she'll almost certainly sicken from dirty water again.
Next, Dr.
Adane is rushed to another child in even worse condition.
This family lives in a remote village like Dorze.
It took them a week to get here.
The delay could cost 3 year old Gabriel his life NARRATOR: The boy faces complex surgery.
But the soonest they can get him into the O.
R.
is later tonight.
For now, his parents must endure the uncertainty that this evening will bring.
[CRYING CHILD.]
The next morning, Dr.
Adane checks the sick child.
An emergency operation removed blockage from his intestines.
ALTO ADANE: He is in the post-operative state.
He is well.
The signs of life were perfectly normal.
This baby is really lucky.
NARRATOR: The boy survived, but the 120 dollars surgery has taken nearly half the family's annual income.
It's one of the many ways the lack of clean water devastates the developing world.
NARRATOR: But working with local resources in an impoverished country is not easy.
ARTURO VITTORI: How much? It's enough then to put something behind.
TADESSE GIRMAY: The lumber is not precise, so.
[MUSIC.]
ARTURO VITTORI: Do you think we can find something straight and low? NARRATOR: The team's level, their one modern tool, is inaccurate.
Now, they're looking for a low tech replacement.
ARTURO VITTORI: Something like this would be fine.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah.
NARRATOR: They decide a long straight rod will do the job.
ARTURO VITTORI: There is a thinner one that's better? TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah.
Yeah.
ARTURO VITTORI: I'll take one piece.
TSEHAI BOGALE: What's the purpose of this? ARTURO VITTORI: Stick it to the ground.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Oh to stick it to the ground.
ARTURO VITTORI: Yeah.
[PHONE RINGING SOUND.]
Hello? Hi Tadesse.
How are you? NARRATOR: It's bad news.
ARTURO VITTORI: Let's go, let's go back to Dorze.
There's a, a little problem.
Yes.
What happened to the hill? NARRATOR: Heavy rains the night before flooded the foundation and caused it to collapse.
ARTURO VITTORI: We didn't know the ground very well.
It is very soft.
This is what you face when you work with natural material, again without using concrete or steel.
NARRATOR: Its bad timing.
Arturo has learned the Italian ambassador is planning to visit the site in four days.
The Italian government is providing critical funding for the project.
And Team Warka has to start over.
ARTURO VITTORI: The ambassador is coming here and my biggest concern is that we will not have enough time to finish it.
NARRATOR: For Arturo, the tower build is shaping up to be a heartbreaking failure.
For the villagers, this is a disaster.
NARRATOR: The city of Peoria, Arizona is geographically and financially a world away from Dorze, Ethiopia.
[MUSIC.]
Despite temperatures that regularly go past 110 and a drought that's lasted since the turn of the century, this wealthy bedroom community maintains 5 golf courses and 37 parks.
To outsiders, Peoria looks like a perfect example of a desert town built on the mistaken assumption Water is an infinite resource.
But there's more to this place than meets the eye.
For one thing, the water feeding these golf courses comes from the town's sewers.
Peoria cleans and reuses every drop of waste water it can collect, including toilet water.
[MUSIC.]
It all happens here, inside the Butler Water Reclamation Facility.
BEATI GUEVARA: Well most of the time, I would tell 'em, they say, oh where do you work? And like, you know what, I won't tell you where I work at.
What I'm gonna tell you, if you wanna send me a message, put that message in a bottle, a small bottle and flush it in the toilet and I'll get it.
Hi.
Good afternoon, welcome to Wastewater 101.
What we have over here is our system.
[MUSIC.]
So basically whatever you flush out of your toilet, whatever you grind on your kitchen sink, after you took a bath it goes to this plant.
NARRATOR: Water enters from sewers and goes through a series of strainers.
The most critical are the GE-built Zeeweed filters, which suck in water and filter out the feces.
BEATI GUEVARA: Poop or waste from your body, it's actually a food source for the microorganisms that we cultivate here in the plant.
It's called mixed liquor, and we filter it using the membrane filtration.
And the end of product water is this one we call it effluent or permeate, or re-used water.
NARRATOR: After the Zeeweed removes the toxins, the water is hit with ultraviolet light and chlorine, then is sent to an underground aquifer or to the city's gardens and golf courses.
The treated water from the plant mixes with groundwater in the aquifer and ultimately becomes a source of drinking water for other communities.
Even if the water is clean enough to drink, many Americans have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea of guzzling waste water.
CINDY WALLIS-LAGE: It's got various components into it.
You can have industrial waste that comes into that, but then the reality is most of it is what we're looking at is coming from the human body.
And that becomes a, a real psychological barrier for people.
That water that's been a used water source, we're reclaiming it, and we're bringing it back into our water supply.
It's no different than what nature does.
Conventionally we'll go through a treatment facility and where do we discharge that water? We discharge it to a river.
Where is our water supply from? It's from the river.
So we have been doing this for decades and decades.
All we're doing in a plant like this is we're just speeding up the process.
[MUSIC.]
We can get very prescriptive and say in a drought condition or a desert scape that we shouldn't have any green spaces.
Golf course or those recreational locations, baseball fields, soccer fields.
But it's part of the quality of life.
People expect that to be part of a community or a community is not going to grow.
NARRATOR: Making toilet water drinkable is something wealthy nations can afford, but fear.
In the developing world, this technology is scarce and so is clean water.
Back in Ethiopia, Arturo and his team are rushing to complete the WarkaWater tower before the arrival of the Italian ambassador.
After intense effort, the foundation is ready.
The base of the Warka is turning into the social meeting place Arturo hoped it would be.
To the students, the Warka project is about more than architecture.
ARTURO VITTORI: They are doing something with intention to improve life here in their country.
And this love is what they express with the work.
NARRATOR: For these college kids, loving Ethiopia is easy.
Loving Arturo however, is a little more difficult.
ARTURO VITTORI: No, that shouldn't be there.
That should be here.
HALIE: He is kind of a perfectionist.
So to put up with him seems to be a little bit tricky but, yeah.
TADESSE GIRMAY: What is special about Arturo is that probably he is working for the space agencies, the European and NASA, so I suppose he's experimented with a very high precision.
So all the time he pushes us you know to do things again and again.
So for me he's super demanding.
[LAUGHS.]
ARTURO VITTORI: Now let's do something, you take one, and let's start to work, and meanwhile you will take the others, otherwise they are waiting.
NARRATOR: Using every bit of time left, Arturo pushes the team into the night.
[FOREIGN DIALOGUE SOUND.]
[MUSIC.]
RRATOR: Villagers and foreign dignitaries are coming to see the finished tower.
But it's still far from complete.
NARRATOR: After traveling 300 difficult miles from Addis Ababa, the guest of honor finally appears.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: Buongiorno.
Buongiorno.
Del manager del villaggio.
[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE.]
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: So this is a very clever guy eh? ARTURO VITTORI: It's a collaborative work.
So from the University of Addis Ababa, this is the resident Professor Tadesse.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: Hello, nice to meet you.
TADESSE GIRMAY: Hello.
Nice to meet you too.
ARTURO VITTORI: Very important are the students all around.
So thanks to all of us, not only me.
This is really a team project.
NARRATOR: Arturo's decided on a live rising to show that locals can do this easily and on their own.
ARTURO VITTORI: There is a risk, because it's a huge structure.
It's always a gamble, every time you mount it.
Ready.
A little briefing before.
So this the really focul an important moment to show everybody, the community but ourselves that we can make it.
TADESSE GIRMAY and ALL: One two three: Warka! MAN: [Speaking in foreign language.]
Up! NARRATOR: This is the stage when the unmoored modules are at greatest risk of blowing over.
[MUSIC.]
The first two modules go up without a hitch.
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
But soon, the winds pick up and Arturo can't help but move closer for the final lift.
ARTURO VITTORI: [INAUDIBLE.]
.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: It's very tall, 10 meters tall.
If it tumbles down it's a disaster.
[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE.]
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
[MUSIC.]
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
[MUSIC.]
[APPLAUSE SOUND.]
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: It's done.
[MUSIC.]
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah, this is a really a wonderful moment! I'm very happy.
ARCHITECTURE STUDENT: The structure is up and I'm so happy because we worked so hard on this structure.
GIUSEPPE MISTRETTA: Looks also like a masterpiece of art.
This is really something special.
ALL: [Singing in foreign language.]
NARRATOR: This simple, elegant solution may bring much-needed relief to rural Africa.
But back in the land of plenty, the steadily mounting effects of climate change are taking their toll.
Southern California.
The Salton Sea.
Not so long ago, this was a tourist spot for weekend sailors.
Now, it's a sea of dry salt and, perhaps, a preview of things to come.
SANDRA POSTEL: We've seen civilizations come and go around water.
So this is not something we can take lightly.
NARRATOR: Sandra Postel is an expert on freshwater issues and she knows what will happen if we don't change our wasteful ways.
SANDRA POSTEL: We're already starting to see you know some of the signs of what this future may hold, if these projections pan out.
Very desiccated landscapes.
Blowing dust.
Dried up river channels.
Birds and, and wildlife not having habitats anymore.
There are two things we need to do.
[MUSIC.]
One is to shrink the water footprint of humanity.
So to live happy healthy productive lives but use less water in the process.
And the second thing we need to do is return some of that water to nature, um, to make rivers, lakes, wetlands healthy again.
NARRATOR: Sandra is leading efforts to bring water back to the once-lush Colorado Delta, which went dry because of water rerouting.
By leasing water rights from farmers, conservationists were able to channel four billion gallons back into this damaged ecosystem.
SANDRA POSTEL: I stepped into the water and 20 years ago I was at the Delta for the first time and I never would have thought this was possible.
And the fact that conservation groups have come together and accomplished this is an amazing thing.
NARRATOR: By working together, Sandra believes we can keep our water nightmares from becoming reality.
SANDRA POSTEL: So it's about getting more value per unit of water.
For every gallon we take out, to use that productively.
Through more effective use of technology.
What crops we grow in these drier places.
Um, our diets.
You know, half of the human footprint is our diet.
You know so I think we can all get involved in the, in the solution.
NARRATOR: Solutions to the water crisis must be tailored to who you are, where you are, and the extent of your resources.
But there are solutions and if we are willing to pursue them, we can prevent a water apocalypse.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: Like most Americans, I never thought much about water or running out of water.
But in California, water shortages are now a fact of life and they are a problem for the rest of the world, too.
Although the Earth is filled with water, very little of it is the freshwater we need to grow our crops and supply drinking water for our homes.
Almost 97 percent of the water on Earth is salty, and nearly two percent is locked up in ice and snow.
That leaves just one percent of usable water.
The human population is rapidly growing, but our supply of clean water is not.
By 2030, demand for water may exceed supply by nearly 50 percent.
We're on the brink of a global disaster.
Can innovative science and engineering prevent a water apocalypse? [MUSIC.]
California has long been seen as an American Eden.
People flock here seeking fame and wealth and happiness.
The good life in a moderate climate.
But now, California is suffering through a brutal, historic drought.
Worst hit is the state's Central Valley.
This is one of the most fertile regions in the world.
Nearly half the US's fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown here and the Central Valley is dying.
In some towns, people are stealing water from their neighbors or simply leaving.
DONNA JOHNSON: This house is abandoned.
A farmer and his wife lived in it and it was a very nice house, but they had no water so they gave up and left.
NARRATOR: For most residents of East Porterville, California, there is no water at all.
Donna Johnson is one of them.
DONNA JOHNSON: When we ran out of water I was in denial like a lot of us are.
I assumed it might take a week or two but they'd get our well fixed.
NARRATOR: Homes here get their water from wells.
And the wells have run dry.
DONNA JOHNSON: A lot of people were faced with their losing their place to live.
Not being able to take care of their families.
They couldn't flush their toilets.
And a lot of them have just lost hope.
I just wanted to make sure that everybody's needs were met.
NARRATOR: Donna delivers bottled water to local families with dry wells.
Community groups give her donations that she brings to people in need.
DONNA JOHNSON: I started taking out water.
And the main thing they said is you came, somebody came.
Somebody cared.
Hi Juana, how you doing? Juana's been suffering through the drought for a couple years.
[MUSIC.]
She has lupus.
She's ill.
She doesn't feel well enough to work.
So they're very low income.
They have to walk a mile and a half to the shower.
[MUSIC.]
Is that enough water? For now? We have over 550 homes out of water in East Porterville alone.
I want to do it until I know everyone has running water and a permanent solution.
Then maybe I can really retire which I've been trying to do for the last ten years.
NARRATOR: But the day-to-day water use of 39 million people isn't what's draining California dry.
Farming consumes 80 percent of the human use of the state's water supply.
The rain that falls on land either runs off to rivers and oceans, freezes into snow caps and glaciers, or seeps into the ground.
Large deposits of groundwater are called aquifers.
With little rain and temperatures rising from climate change, there's not enough melting mountain snow to replenish the water in California's aquifers.
WEGNER'S WIFE: She'll probably want more macaroni salad.
JAKE WEGNER'S SON: Can I have some of this? JAKE WEGNER: Here let me give you some fruit.
Hey bring your plate over.
NARRATOR: For farming families like the Wegners, walnuts and almonds are the best way to transform water into money.
They generate tremendous profits with fewer labor cost than vegetables.
But they guzzle water.
This mature 20-acre walnut orchard consumes about 23 million gallons of water every year.
JAKE WEGNER: My family's been farming in this area for a little over a hundred years.
My dad when he planted this orchard, I was about the same age as my son is now.
And I can remember being out here with him when this orchard went in.
This year, we've had to make some very tough management decisions in our operation.
We had to tear out 10 percent of our walnut trees because we did not have enough water to maintain those orchards.
This is something that's been in our blood.
[MUSIC.]
When you tear it out it's like a little piece of you is gone.
NARRATOR: As some farmers rip out orchards, others frantically dig new wells.
Digging a well can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And there's no guarantee that will fix the problem, because no one knows exactly how much water is left underground.
With no water coming from the state controlled aquifer, this farm relies solely on this one well.
A well that may be running dry.
SARAH WOLFE: Hello, how are you.
AARON MANDELL: How you doing? SARAH WOLFE: Good.
Good to see you! Welcome.
NARRATOR: Aaron Mandell, chairman of the company WaterFX, has come to evaluate the problem.
SARAH WOLFE: This is one of our fields.
We have about 1200 acres in total that we farm and this year we're only able to plant about half of it because of the lack of water supply.
So that's what our wells can reach.
AARON MANDELL: Okay.
So 50 percent of the land is actually going to lay fallow? SARAH WOLFE: Exactly.
NARRATOR: The farm needs a new source of water and Aaron believes he has a solution.
AARON MANDELL: Sarah's facing the same problem a lot of farmers in the Central Valley face, which is lack of water supply that is causing her to have to fallow a lot of land.
She actually has all the water resources she needs right below her feet.
NARRATOR: There is a vast pool of subsurface drain water just beneath the Central Valley.
It's runoff from irrigation.
Unfortunately, the ground is naturally salty, so the water is tainted.
But Aaron has devised an affordable way to filter out the salt, reclaim the water and feed it into the aquifer.
The easiest way to desalinate water is to boil it.
But on a large scale, this consumes vast amounts of energy.
MATT STUBER: You know that'll open and close as we're tracking our temperature from the array.
AARON MANDELL: Okay.
MATT STUBER: This valve is at least half open.
NARRATOR: Aaron and WaterFX's co-founder and Director of Engineering, Dr.
Matt Stuber, are purifying salt water using an energy source California has in abundance, sunshine.
MATT STUBER: What we've done is developed this plant, which removes the salt from the soil, and returning this region with impaired soil back to arable farmland.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: This solar array works like a magnifying glass, it concentrates the energy of the sun 36 times.
That energy heats mineral oil inside these pipes to over 350 degrees.
This creates high-pressure steam that boils the salt out of water pumped up from beneath the plant.
MATT STUBER: So this is where the final product comes out.
It's completely pure freshwater.
So we create two products with this from one waste source, freshwater, and these salty minerals.
Now, the salt crystals are very valuable.
They can be captured and used in many industries.
NARRATOR: Water FX now has funding to build a plant that can desalinate 1.
6 Billion gallons of water per year.
Aaron and Matt believe this breakthrough technology can transform the Central Valley and many other arid regions on earth.
MATT STUBER: When we build this plant out, we'll be able to make a hundred thousand acres sustainable.
This is a new water source.
[MUSIC.]
AARON MANDELL: The faster we realize that this is the new normal, I think the better off we're gonna be.
The real reason why we came here to do this demonstration is to prove out something that can be a truly sustainable supply of water.
We can't just conserve our way to economic growth.
We have to actually find new sources of water, and that's what we're trying to do here.
[MUSIC.]
About a 100 years ago, C.
Y.
O'Connor had a dream.
NARRATOR: Like California, the coast of Western Australia may seem like a paradise.
But the problems here are even worse.
[MUSIC.]
From 1996 through 2010, Australia suffered through a major drought they called The Big Dry.
The nation responded by cutting water use and investing heavily in desalination plants.
But standard desalination plants consume massive amounts of energy.
As Australia's population grows, they are desperate for alternatives.
Pioneering engineers may have found one in the waters of the ocean.
ANDY MERCER: So it's about five AM, uh, we've gotta leave so early to get to site before sunrise.
So it just gives us the maximum amount of sunlight on site.
NARRATOR: These men are building a system that desalinates water and generates electricity at the same time.
It's called CETO.
Giant buoys are tethered to hydraulic pumps on the ocean floor.
The buoys are continually slammed by ocean waves; that raw kinetic energy shoots high-pressure water through pipes into a powerhouse on shore.
The high-pressure water spins turbines that generate electricity.
But the water also pushes seawater into a reverse-osmosis membrane.
The membrane filters out salt.
The end product is zero-emissions drinking water.
Now, after fifteen years and $100 million dollars, they are on a high risk mission to put the last piece into place, and they can't afford to fail.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: We're heading out today for the third unit installation.
This is the final unit to complete the construction of the plant.
NARRATOR: The goal is to put a 60-ton buoy into place, sink it, then attach it to the pump system on the sea floor.
It's a delicate operation to perform underwater and they are fighting against nature.
The CETO team has waited weeks for calm weather.
Three days ago, the coast looked clear, so they decided to make their move but now, a storm is coming.
ANDY MERCER: Given the weather, a lot of it's removing shackles and stuff like that, it's kind of low priority.
I'm just nervous about making sure we get the major portions of the work done in time before the weather really builds up.
There's some steps we have to achieve by a certain time.
NARRATOR: As the sun rises, Andy Mercer and his team meet up with the rest of CETO's small fleet including the star of the show, the enormous buoy that they are here to sink.
The sailors tie mooring lines to the buoy, then carefully maneuver it into position, directly above the undersea connector.
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Just doing an inspection to make sure everything's in line, make sure everything's okay.
ANDY MERCER: We're going to open the ballast chambers on the buoy itself.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: It looks like we're getting close to.
ANDY MERCER: Yeah, it's going down now.
NARRATOR: The buoy takes time to sink, too long, though it looks calm out, a storm is approaching.
The engineers need to move quickly to the next phase.
The pump arm dangles from the bottom of the buoy needs to be connected to a flange ring on the ocean floor.
JONATHAN FIEVEZ: Really the turning point in the installation today is the stab, or the mechanical connection of the CETO unit to the foundation in the seabed.
We're very vulnerable then until we're hydraulically connected.
So I'm nervous.
NARRATOR: The stab will be handled by remote control.
But if something goes wrong, divers will do what they can to fix it.
LYLE MITCHELL: The divers will go down to the 25 meter water depth to visualize the connection and make sure we get that stab.
[MUSIC.]
To get everything lined up is, is a vital role.
To get that stab, first time.
If we miss the stab, things can go pear shape pretty quickly and we all have to be on our battle stations to get, get things retracted and, you know rectify the situation.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: But there's a problem.
[MUSIC.]
The swells have picked up.
DAN: This is extremely critical.
Right now what we're contending with is the swell, and wind conditions.
It's moving like a pendulum effect.
It's moving apart and pulling the actuator around in the water column.
NARRATOR: If the divers can't connect the stabbing arm, the mission will have to be scrapped.
[MUSIC.]
[MUSIC.]
The CETO n water project is in peril.
On the ocean floor, divers jockey to get the heavy pump arm into place.
They're fighting against rough current and the unpredictable movements of the arm.
[MUSIC.]
[MUSIC.]
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Yup! JONATHAN FIEVEZ: Yeah we're connected! NARRATOR: Finally, success.
ANDY MERCER: That's it.
Now the CETO unit is locked into the foundation, and that is effectively the hardest part of installation we've completed.
DAN: This is the best part of seeing it all come to fruition.
NARRATOR: Exhausted divers clamber back onto the ship.
ALL: Yay.
CETO'S CREW MEMBER: Hey, one more, one more.
NARRATOR: Now that the third buoy is in place, the CETO plant can go online, the first of what they hope will be many energy efficient water processing plants around the world.
Australia is a rich country with a shortage of clean water.
But what of poor nations that have water, but no means to purify it? In the African nation of Ethiopia, the water problem is particularly acute.
Nearly half of Ethiopia's 97 million people lack access to clean water.
But the problem here isn't a shortage of rain, it's a lack of material resources.
In rural villages such as Dorze, there are no water treatment plants.
Dorze doesn't have electricity or plumbing.
Livestock roam freely and the villagers have no pit toilets.
Rains wash contaminants and bacteria from feces straight into the water supply.
Drinking or bathing in this water is dangerous so villagers must get fresh water from a distant stream.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: The three treks to clean water take up nearly six hours of this woman's day.
NARRATOR: But some tire of the walk especially children.
They drink or wash in contaminated water and get intestinal parasites and deadly infections.
One out of fifteen children in rural Ethiopia never makes it past their 5th birthday.
Some of the 1,800 children in the developing world who die from filthy water each and every day.
It's a problem Italian architect Arturo Vittori is trying to do something about.
ARTURO VITTORI: We discovered this amazing beautiful country where everything looks perfect, an idyllic place to live.
But there is a huge problem.
The lack of water.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: Arturo has spent his career designing easy-to-assemble structures for NASA and the European Space Agency.
Now he wants to build towers in Ethiopia that collect clean water from the air.
This prototype Warka tower stands 30 feet high and gathers water from fog, rain and condensation.
Arturo has built 12 of these test models in Italy.
Now he wants to erect a Warka Tower in the Dorze highlands a remote region he began scouting four years ago.
Early on, Arturo realized he'd never be accepted here on his own.
ARTURO VITTORI: So as a white person coming to these worlds, pretty sure that people look at me and wonder what I'm doing, and why I am here.
What about this shop? TSEHAI BOGALE: Here? ARTURO VITTORI: Yes.
NARRATOR: In Tsehai Bogale, Arturo found the perfect partner.
ARTURO VITTORI: Tsehai is a local but he also has an international understanding.
So he can interact directly with the people of the community.
TSEHAI BOGALE: [Speaks in foreign language.]
.
ARTURO VITTORI: So this is a big one.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah, this is the biggest house.
TSEHAI BOGALE: and his mind is always working.
NARRATOR: The Warka tower is assembled in five modules, tied together by rope.
The frame is made of lightweight but strong bamboo that can withstand fierce winds.
Mesh is tied inside the frame.
The mesh collects droplets of dew.
As cold air condenses, the droplets fall into a reservoir at the base of the tower.
The lakes below Dorze create humidity and fog that make the village a perfect site for Africa's first Warka tower.
ARTURO VITTORI: I'm completely sure that this way to collect water from the atmosphere is sustainable, is the future, and I want to demonstrate it.
What we construct here is a first prototype.
It's an experiment.
It's an emotional moment after seven years working on the project and dreaming the project to happen.
[MUSIC.]
Today is the first day that we start really working.
NARRATOR: To construct the clean-water collecting WarkaWater tower in Ethiopia, Arturo Vittori and his team must first excavate the foundation.
ARTURO VITTORI: The way we anchor the WarkaWater to the ground is very important because it's a tall structure, 30 feet.
And the wind is very powerful.
So we have to find a way to make it lightweight but also strongly, without using concrete.
NARRATOR: The tower is made out of local materials that are easy to procure mainly bamboo, rope and cheap netting.
It is meant to be the first of many towers, so a large part of Arturo's mission is to teach locals how to build them.
They will practice building many prototypes over the next few days.
Arturo's core team is composed of 10 architecture students from the Adis Ababa University.
Their leader is Professor Tadesse Girmay.
TADESSE GIRMAY: This an ax.
The size is very determined short, light.
They're used to split most of the time the bamboo.
NARRATOR: Together with a handful of local villagers, this is the team that will construct the Warka tower.
ARTURO VITTORI: At the end of the project, the intention is to leave here knowing that the local people will be able to make it them self.
Because if this doesn't happen, the project will fail for sure.
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: While the team works, some of Dorze's residents have walked for hours to the nearest medical clinic.
Their children suffer from the painful effects of contaminated water.
Dr.
Alto Adane faces the same problems every day, diseases brought on by bad water.
NARRATOR: A clinic visit costs just two dollars but most parents can't afford it.
some wait weeks into a sickness to bring their children to the hospital.
NARRATOR: Even if this woman is giving her baby clean water to drink, she's likely washing her hands with dirty water, or not washing them at all.
And that can be just as dangerous for a child.
With proper treatment, 1-year old Mikah will recover but like all kids here, she'll almost certainly sicken from dirty water again.
Next, Dr.
Adane is rushed to another child in even worse condition.
This family lives in a remote village like Dorze.
It took them a week to get here.
The delay could cost 3 year old Gabriel his life NARRATOR: The boy faces complex surgery.
But the soonest they can get him into the O.
R.
is later tonight.
For now, his parents must endure the uncertainty that this evening will bring.
[CRYING CHILD.]
The next morning, Dr.
Adane checks the sick child.
An emergency operation removed blockage from his intestines.
ALTO ADANE: He is in the post-operative state.
He is well.
The signs of life were perfectly normal.
This baby is really lucky.
NARRATOR: The boy survived, but the 120 dollars surgery has taken nearly half the family's annual income.
It's one of the many ways the lack of clean water devastates the developing world.
NARRATOR: But working with local resources in an impoverished country is not easy.
ARTURO VITTORI: How much? It's enough then to put something behind.
TADESSE GIRMAY: The lumber is not precise, so.
[MUSIC.]
ARTURO VITTORI: Do you think we can find something straight and low? NARRATOR: The team's level, their one modern tool, is inaccurate.
Now, they're looking for a low tech replacement.
ARTURO VITTORI: Something like this would be fine.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah.
NARRATOR: They decide a long straight rod will do the job.
ARTURO VITTORI: There is a thinner one that's better? TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah.
Yeah.
ARTURO VITTORI: I'll take one piece.
TSEHAI BOGALE: What's the purpose of this? ARTURO VITTORI: Stick it to the ground.
TSEHAI BOGALE: Oh to stick it to the ground.
ARTURO VITTORI: Yeah.
[PHONE RINGING SOUND.]
Hello? Hi Tadesse.
How are you? NARRATOR: It's bad news.
ARTURO VITTORI: Let's go, let's go back to Dorze.
There's a, a little problem.
Yes.
What happened to the hill? NARRATOR: Heavy rains the night before flooded the foundation and caused it to collapse.
ARTURO VITTORI: We didn't know the ground very well.
It is very soft.
This is what you face when you work with natural material, again without using concrete or steel.
NARRATOR: Its bad timing.
Arturo has learned the Italian ambassador is planning to visit the site in four days.
The Italian government is providing critical funding for the project.
And Team Warka has to start over.
ARTURO VITTORI: The ambassador is coming here and my biggest concern is that we will not have enough time to finish it.
NARRATOR: For Arturo, the tower build is shaping up to be a heartbreaking failure.
For the villagers, this is a disaster.
NARRATOR: The city of Peoria, Arizona is geographically and financially a world away from Dorze, Ethiopia.
[MUSIC.]
Despite temperatures that regularly go past 110 and a drought that's lasted since the turn of the century, this wealthy bedroom community maintains 5 golf courses and 37 parks.
To outsiders, Peoria looks like a perfect example of a desert town built on the mistaken assumption Water is an infinite resource.
But there's more to this place than meets the eye.
For one thing, the water feeding these golf courses comes from the town's sewers.
Peoria cleans and reuses every drop of waste water it can collect, including toilet water.
[MUSIC.]
It all happens here, inside the Butler Water Reclamation Facility.
BEATI GUEVARA: Well most of the time, I would tell 'em, they say, oh where do you work? And like, you know what, I won't tell you where I work at.
What I'm gonna tell you, if you wanna send me a message, put that message in a bottle, a small bottle and flush it in the toilet and I'll get it.
Hi.
Good afternoon, welcome to Wastewater 101.
What we have over here is our system.
[MUSIC.]
So basically whatever you flush out of your toilet, whatever you grind on your kitchen sink, after you took a bath it goes to this plant.
NARRATOR: Water enters from sewers and goes through a series of strainers.
The most critical are the GE-built Zeeweed filters, which suck in water and filter out the feces.
BEATI GUEVARA: Poop or waste from your body, it's actually a food source for the microorganisms that we cultivate here in the plant.
It's called mixed liquor, and we filter it using the membrane filtration.
And the end of product water is this one we call it effluent or permeate, or re-used water.
NARRATOR: After the Zeeweed removes the toxins, the water is hit with ultraviolet light and chlorine, then is sent to an underground aquifer or to the city's gardens and golf courses.
The treated water from the plant mixes with groundwater in the aquifer and ultimately becomes a source of drinking water for other communities.
Even if the water is clean enough to drink, many Americans have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea of guzzling waste water.
CINDY WALLIS-LAGE: It's got various components into it.
You can have industrial waste that comes into that, but then the reality is most of it is what we're looking at is coming from the human body.
And that becomes a, a real psychological barrier for people.
That water that's been a used water source, we're reclaiming it, and we're bringing it back into our water supply.
It's no different than what nature does.
Conventionally we'll go through a treatment facility and where do we discharge that water? We discharge it to a river.
Where is our water supply from? It's from the river.
So we have been doing this for decades and decades.
All we're doing in a plant like this is we're just speeding up the process.
[MUSIC.]
We can get very prescriptive and say in a drought condition or a desert scape that we shouldn't have any green spaces.
Golf course or those recreational locations, baseball fields, soccer fields.
But it's part of the quality of life.
People expect that to be part of a community or a community is not going to grow.
NARRATOR: Making toilet water drinkable is something wealthy nations can afford, but fear.
In the developing world, this technology is scarce and so is clean water.
Back in Ethiopia, Arturo and his team are rushing to complete the WarkaWater tower before the arrival of the Italian ambassador.
After intense effort, the foundation is ready.
The base of the Warka is turning into the social meeting place Arturo hoped it would be.
To the students, the Warka project is about more than architecture.
ARTURO VITTORI: They are doing something with intention to improve life here in their country.
And this love is what they express with the work.
NARRATOR: For these college kids, loving Ethiopia is easy.
Loving Arturo however, is a little more difficult.
ARTURO VITTORI: No, that shouldn't be there.
That should be here.
HALIE: He is kind of a perfectionist.
So to put up with him seems to be a little bit tricky but, yeah.
TADESSE GIRMAY: What is special about Arturo is that probably he is working for the space agencies, the European and NASA, so I suppose he's experimented with a very high precision.
So all the time he pushes us you know to do things again and again.
So for me he's super demanding.
[LAUGHS.]
ARTURO VITTORI: Now let's do something, you take one, and let's start to work, and meanwhile you will take the others, otherwise they are waiting.
NARRATOR: Using every bit of time left, Arturo pushes the team into the night.
[FOREIGN DIALOGUE SOUND.]
[MUSIC.]
RRATOR: Villagers and foreign dignitaries are coming to see the finished tower.
But it's still far from complete.
NARRATOR: After traveling 300 difficult miles from Addis Ababa, the guest of honor finally appears.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: Buongiorno.
Buongiorno.
Del manager del villaggio.
[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE.]
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: So this is a very clever guy eh? ARTURO VITTORI: It's a collaborative work.
So from the University of Addis Ababa, this is the resident Professor Tadesse.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: Hello, nice to meet you.
TADESSE GIRMAY: Hello.
Nice to meet you too.
ARTURO VITTORI: Very important are the students all around.
So thanks to all of us, not only me.
This is really a team project.
NARRATOR: Arturo's decided on a live rising to show that locals can do this easily and on their own.
ARTURO VITTORI: There is a risk, because it's a huge structure.
It's always a gamble, every time you mount it.
Ready.
A little briefing before.
So this the really focul an important moment to show everybody, the community but ourselves that we can make it.
TADESSE GIRMAY and ALL: One two three: Warka! MAN: [Speaking in foreign language.]
Up! NARRATOR: This is the stage when the unmoored modules are at greatest risk of blowing over.
[MUSIC.]
The first two modules go up without a hitch.
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
But soon, the winds pick up and Arturo can't help but move closer for the final lift.
ARTURO VITTORI: [INAUDIBLE.]
.
AMBASSADOR G.
MISTRETTA: It's very tall, 10 meters tall.
If it tumbles down it's a disaster.
[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE.]
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
[MUSIC.]
[CROWD CLAPPING.]
[MUSIC.]
[APPLAUSE SOUND.]
[MUSIC.]
NARRATOR: It's done.
[MUSIC.]
TSEHAI BOGALE: Yeah, this is a really a wonderful moment! I'm very happy.
ARCHITECTURE STUDENT: The structure is up and I'm so happy because we worked so hard on this structure.
GIUSEPPE MISTRETTA: Looks also like a masterpiece of art.
This is really something special.
ALL: [Singing in foreign language.]
NARRATOR: This simple, elegant solution may bring much-needed relief to rural Africa.
But back in the land of plenty, the steadily mounting effects of climate change are taking their toll.
Southern California.
The Salton Sea.
Not so long ago, this was a tourist spot for weekend sailors.
Now, it's a sea of dry salt and, perhaps, a preview of things to come.
SANDRA POSTEL: We've seen civilizations come and go around water.
So this is not something we can take lightly.
NARRATOR: Sandra Postel is an expert on freshwater issues and she knows what will happen if we don't change our wasteful ways.
SANDRA POSTEL: We're already starting to see you know some of the signs of what this future may hold, if these projections pan out.
Very desiccated landscapes.
Blowing dust.
Dried up river channels.
Birds and, and wildlife not having habitats anymore.
There are two things we need to do.
[MUSIC.]
One is to shrink the water footprint of humanity.
So to live happy healthy productive lives but use less water in the process.
And the second thing we need to do is return some of that water to nature, um, to make rivers, lakes, wetlands healthy again.
NARRATOR: Sandra is leading efforts to bring water back to the once-lush Colorado Delta, which went dry because of water rerouting.
By leasing water rights from farmers, conservationists were able to channel four billion gallons back into this damaged ecosystem.
SANDRA POSTEL: I stepped into the water and 20 years ago I was at the Delta for the first time and I never would have thought this was possible.
And the fact that conservation groups have come together and accomplished this is an amazing thing.
NARRATOR: By working together, Sandra believes we can keep our water nightmares from becoming reality.
SANDRA POSTEL: So it's about getting more value per unit of water.
For every gallon we take out, to use that productively.
Through more effective use of technology.
What crops we grow in these drier places.
Um, our diets.
You know, half of the human footprint is our diet.
You know so I think we can all get involved in the, in the solution.
NARRATOR: Solutions to the water crisis must be tailored to who you are, where you are, and the extent of your resources.
But there are solutions and if we are willing to pursue them, we can prevent a water apocalypse.