She is one of the world’s most notable crusaders for water and perhaps the most dedicated too. Alexandra Cousteau is not only the grand-daughter of the famous explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau but also the woman behind Blue Legacy, a nonprofit that connects “mainstream audiences with their local watersheds and their water planet.”

As Halogen is working with charity: water in a campaign to provide clean water to 250 people in the Central African Republic for the next 20 years, we felt it most fitting to share the latest insights from Cousteau’s current exploration of water issues present not in Africa, but here in our own home of North America. Recognizing water problems that are directly affecting us might help us have a better understanding and compassion for those who are severely lacking the life sustaining element in Central Africa.

Expedition Blue Planet is Cousteau’s current 138-day investigation that aims to document and create films about the realities of what she calls “our water planet.”

After a stint that took Cousteau and her crew along the entire length of the Colorado River “from its source in the Rockies down to the sea in Mexico,” the expedition has reached the Gulf Coast. Here is a quick summary of 3 of Cousteau’s top 5 water issues her team has uncovered so far.

1. When you destroy water, you destroy community

Practically speaking polluted water is the same as having no water at all. We’ve spend the past week based out of Cut Off, Louisiana where we’ve been exploring the bayous and bays of this region with the help of our Cajun friends from the communities of Lafourche and Grand Isle… We never dreamed that one of the worst environmental disasters in American history – BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill – would be our reason for returning to the region… Down here it really is all about the water. And seeing that water destroyed has pulled a new rug out from under communities that have built their story from scrambling to stay afloat.

“How do you rebuild when the very stuff you define your life by gets taken away?” Cousteau asks.

2. Climate change pushes the limits of the Colorado River

We started our exploration of the Colorado River in its headwaters high in the Rockies, where the pristine peaks are marred by a film of red dust that turns snow packs pink.

This dust originates from agricultural lands and developments in states like Arizona and Utah along the Colorado Plateau and makes it way to mountaintops by dust storms, which are on the rise as the climate warms. The red dust attracts more heat and makes the snow melt earlier in the year and more rapidly, two factors that upset the river’s annual rhythm of flow…

3. The Colorado flows through all our lives and yet we’re trading it for things we could probably do without

Today nearly one out of every 10 Americans are supported by the Colorado River and its waters irrigate 3.5 million acres of farmland… For all of the wilderness we try to capture in our minds and imagination, the truth is a significant number of Americans bring the Colorado River home every day through their taps, garden hoses and on dinner plates… We’ve heard so many people, like Pat Mulroy, General Manager of the South Nevada Water Authority who is buying out Las Vegas residents’ lawns for $1.50 per square foot or Patty Limerick from the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, ask: is that a reasonable use of this endangered resource? One NASA study found that America’s largest irrigated crop isn’t alfalfa or corn, it’s lawns… We water them with 19 trillion gallons of water each year.

Continue reading about what Expedition Blue Planet is digging up about water by clicking here.

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