Water, Water

By Marshall Loeb

Gerald Ford once tried to recruit David McLaughlin. But the Grand Rapids high school football hero turned down the local Congressman's come-on for the University of Michigan; instead McLaughlin yearned for Dartmouth. There he set pass-catching records that stood for more than 20 years, made All-Ivy and Phi Bete and spurned a Philadelphia Eagles offer in order to go to graduate business school. Now, at 47, rangy Dave McLaughlin invests a quarter of his time as chairman of his college's board of trustees and the rest as chief executive of Minneapolis' Toro Co., which makes lawnmowers, snowthrowers -- and a ton of money. A blizzard winter helped Toro's profits double last year. If a witch doctor could make the snow fall, he would be on McLaughlin's payroll.

McLaughlin is one of those far-reaching business chiefs who think about a lot more than balance sheets. He is a big gun in the country's most socially aware and alert business community. Prodded by McLaughlin and others, 45 Minneapolis-area companies donate 5% of pretax profits to charity and are active in all manner of civic uplift projects. And so it is not surprising that McLaughlin is concerned much less about snow than about something more universal: water.

From every bully pulpit, he preaches that the world is using, wasting and polluting so much of its most necessary resource that a crisis is building, one that could make the energy crunch seem like a tempest in a gas tank. The world has not a drop more water than on the first day of Creation, he observes, but the thirsty family of man is expanding every moment. People are digging deeper for water, depleting underground sources faster than they are being replenished -- so fast, in fact, that land is sinking.

Battles between communities over water rights, he notes, are now arising in Colorado and are likely to spread into states downstream of the rivers that flow from Colorado to the Midwest and South. Brackish water seeping into overworked underground sources is a growing woe in Florida. The energy shortage will worsen the situation because more and more water will be needed to produce coal slurry, shale oil and other synthetic fuels.

McLaughlin's warnings are not totally disinterested, as he is the first to point out. His company also manufactures underground sprinkler systems for suburban lawns and golf courses. Toro stands to benefit if people buy more systems to irrigate with controlled rations of water. But that would be only a tiny part of a comprehensive solution.

First, says McLaughlin, governments must take stock of water supplies. "There has been very little work done on making an inventory of our water. Nobody intelligently can say that we have this much supply left or that we are depleting it at this rate."

Second, steps are needed to prevent wasting and polluting. The obvious place to improve water use is on the farm. Agriculture consumes 80% of U.S. water, notably because farmers pump out more than they really need when irrigating.

Third, recycle water. Filtration systems can now clean up even the dirtiest water, making it available again to swim in, wash with, even drink. When used for irrigation, untreated "waste" water does a superior job of nourishing the soil.

Finally, conservation has to be supplemented by renewed efforts to desalinate water, particularly in regions of intense shortage. The Saudis, besides their ballyhooed idea of hauling icebergs and melting them down in the Red Sea, are wisely spending some of their petrobillions on a huge desalination project.

What the U.S. needs, argues McLaughlin, is a national water policy, one that calls for considerable participation by businessmen. The Government should identify the scope of the problem, set conservation and recycling standards, then offer incentives. Perhaps there could be tax breaks for buying conservation equipment, or tax penalties for waste. Most important, the Government should fix goals for private people to meet -- but not dictate how to meet them.

Given rewards and penalties, free people will figure out the smartest ways to turn shortage into surfeit. If this sounds like the businessman's typical gospel, it also makes sense. Says McLaughlin: "Somehow, Government incentives must combine with the technical knowledge that business has to create an efficient partnership. I just don't know of any other solution."

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