Long before Saddam, the Six-Day War and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, before the Soviet invasion that destabilized Afghanistan and the Khomeini revolution that toppled the corrupt government of the Shah of Iran, Utah State water scientists were offering their expertise in one of the most densely populated deserts on earth. Now that the Middle East has melted down into one of the hottest spots on the globe, literally and politically, Utah State water expertise has never been more needed.

While the media fixes our attention on seemingly insurmountable religious differences, Utah State water scientists try to diffuse conflicts over scarce resources. "If you want to know why a Palestinian kid picks up a gun or straps himself to a bomb, look at the water situation,”"says Mac McKee '72 '82MS '86PhD, a veteran of nearly 30 international water projects, who recently returned from the West Bank, where he has been working with Palestinian academics and water officials.

With no system of enforceable water rights to protect access and quality, Palestinians who live on the Gaza Strip are squeezed between the hard rock of rapid population growth and the dry place of overallocated resources. Not only is there not enough drinking water for a hemmed-in population that is bursting at the seams, the drinking water is infested with toxic doses of parasites and chemicals. What little water there is goes primarily to agriculture, the principal economy. "With the unemployment rates they have, it would be very difficult for the Palestinians to divert that water to domestic use. It would put a lot of malnourished people out of work," says McKee.

Like his colleagues elsewhere in the Middle East, and in Asia and South America, McKee is assessing water conditions, recommending policies and strategies, and training technical personnel and future government leaders. "From Morocco to India - we have produced a staggering number of Ph.D. graduates in water management," says McKee.

After 60 years of international development work, Utah State has graduate students and alumni all over the world, working on critical water management issues. Associate engineering dean Wynn Walker '69 says, "If we could marshal that intellectual capacity into a global network, that's would be a powerful institution right there. Can you imagine what that would do for the image of the United States overseas? What a public relations coup that would be for this country?"

Walker isn't thinking of just the crisis in the Middle East. "The population of the world is going to double in the next 35 years, and that's a conservative estimate predicated on lots of wars and famines. We're already using double the amount of water we should be to feed our current population. Even if we develop every remaining water source on the planet, we will be able to support less than half the projected population for 2040. Where do you get the water for the other four billion people? Conservation and efficiency, both of which are achievable, but only if you have the institutions and the policies in place, and your people are educated. Utah State University excels at all three." -Jane Koerner