I tend to pay attention when water-related stories come across my homepage or the news feed on my phone. So maybe it’s just the algorithm noticing I read these stories and feeding me more, but it seems as though the coverage is greater and increasingly focused on the real and potential water-related disasters we’re facing.
“The Western U.S. Is Facing Its Worst Drought in 1,200 Years — Here’s What That Means”
“Freshwater Disappearing From the Earth at Alarming Rates: Study”
“The Decline Of The Colorado River And Its Impact On Millions”
The headlines go on and on. The takeaway from all of them is more or less the same: We’re in trouble.
That first story about freshwater disappearing at alarming rates references a new study published in Science Advances. The story highlights how researchers identified a tipping point in 2014-15, years generally characterized as “mega El Niño,” when climate extremes began accelerating, leading to a surge in groundwater use and continental drying that surpassed the rates of glacier and ice sheet melting.
Researchers noted that humans are failing to replenish groundwater reservoirs during wet years and are nearing “an imminent freshwater bankruptcy.” They stressed the need for research to help inform policymakers, and for community-level advocacy to try to affect meaningful change.
It’s a warning to all humanity, but you’re the people on the front lines, and you’re the ones with the knowledge and experience to affect that change. Maybe you can’t wrangle a group of fellow municipal water system operators and go solve all the water rights issues and diminishing flow of the Colorado River, but you can make it your mission to keep the severity and critical importance of these issues in the minds of those who are making policy and those who are affected. You and me, and everyone else who needs clean water to survive.
We need more effective conservation. We need more efficient infrastructure. We need better policies, and politicians with a stronger vision.
This shouldn’t all be on you, but no one else seems willing to really do what’s necessary to protect our future. And that’s exactly what it is, because without freshwater there is no future.
I read a book by Malcolm Gladwell called The Tipping Point a few years ago. It wasn’t about water, but about those critical points in the course of events where slow and manageable change suddenly accelerates out of control. Gladwell defined the tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”
If the news reports have it right, we might already be there.
The good news is that while you’re not necessarily paid to be agents of social change, you do have that power through outreach, education and the efforts of your teams to make your own water resources more secure, your infrastructure more resilient, and your customers more aware of where their water comes from and what they can do to help protect it.
It’s a tall order, but your local efforts, combined across regions, countries and continents, might be the only thing saving us from falling off the edge.
The work you do might not be as widely appreciated as it should be, but it certainly is here.
Enjoy this month’s issue.
