As the country with the world’s largest water footprint, we’re used to spurning tapwater, relying on the bottled stuff, and having enough to flush our toilets, wash our cars, and water our lawns. That kind of reckless usage means that some households can use 50-75% of their water usage on their backyards alone. Oh, and we produce a bunch of industrial and agricultural pollution, so much that we’re using and ruining water at too fast of a rate to naturally produce more.
Writer-director Jessica Yu, inspired by the book “The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the 21st Century” by Alex Prud’homme, uses these kind of statistics and facts to drive home how we’re in a total quagmire when it comes to water. And a series of interviews with in-the-know scientists, academics, and famous activist Erin Brockovich helps spin together a narrative that simultaneously educates viewers about the water cycle while also telling us how we’re ruining it.
Do you know anything about the pesticide atrazine? Or “new water”? Well, the former, even in incredibly small parts per billion amounts, pumps male frogs full of estrogen and turns them into females. And the latter refers to sewage water that has been treated, purified, and provided back to citizens for their use—something Singapore has found success in doing, and the U.S. just can’t get off the ground. Seems like as a country we’re OK with using as much water as possible—6 billion gallons to flush our toilets, every day—but we’re totally not alright with drinking anything that could have come out of our bodies. “Our disgust is immediate—and irrational,” says psychologist Paul Rozin, and Brockovich warns, “You can’t survive on Diet Coke.” What?!
And yet, “Last Call at the Oasis” makes it pretty clear that we have to get over fears. By 2025, it’s possible that half the world’s population won’t have adequate access to water. Our stored-up groundwater is disappearing at an accelerated rate, even though it took thousands of years to accumulate. And water-sapping areas, like Las Vegas and Central Valley in California, are not only sucking water out of their own regions, but trying to get at other places’ water—for example, there are plans for Las Vegas to help build a $3 million pipeline to draw water from the 150-person town of Baker, in the northern part of the state. The beautiful, lush ranchland could turn “into a dustbowl,” one resident says, and another warns, “This project may succeed, over my dead body.” But when Las Vegas has more than 2 million people who are already draining nearby Lake Mead, it seems like Baker may be doomed.
That “seem,” however, is the greatest flaw of Yu’s work. Her sources, like Brockovich; University of California, Berkeley, biologist Tyrone Hayes; Jay Famiglietti of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling; and Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California; all vehemently attack the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration for not doing enough to combat the problem, but the documentary itself doesn’t really a take a stand. No real rebuttals, denials, or interviews with either agency are included in Yu’s piece. And although her sources are clearly, undeniably knowledgeable about their work—even though Brockovich is the big name, all these people are waging their own crusades—Yu just lets them say what they want without really pursuing it either way.
“Last Call at the Oasis” similarly stays away from talking about global warming or climate change, only mentioning them in the context of how they impact the water conversation cycle. And when a portion near the end of the documentary involves actor Jack Black trying to sell random Americans what he says is prepackaged sewer water, as a way of showing our national squeamishness, the initiative comes off as too gimmicky in tone. It doesn’t jibe well with the gloomy feel of the rest of this disaster documentary.
Because the parts of “Last Call at the Oasis” that are more most meaningful are the wholly undeniable ones, like rivers so drastically dried up that fish have been caught in the solidified claybeds; dead crops and animals on Australian farms, covered by a layer of dust; and those hermaphroditic frogs, transformed by atrazine. The story of Michigan farmer Lynn Henning, who patrols the lagoons of cow manure created by dairy farms in her state that pollute surrounding areas, is particularly unforgettable, and unbelievably gross.
But while those strung-together vignettes serve their purpose, “Last Call at the Oasis” isn’t the rallying cry Yu wants it to be because of her own hesitancy to jump fully into a zealous exploration of who is causing all this badness. Nevertheless, it’s hard to forget what Famiglietti says: “It’s hard in the United States to fathom the scope of the potential change. … We’re screwed.” Unfortunately, that sounds about right.
