Water Is Broken. Data Can Fix It.

Excellent article!

Thanks.

The conversation has always been Energy, Energy, Energy. People are beginning to understand that the real deal is Water, Water, Water!

I) In California, farming accounts for about 80% of water usage. In many areas of Ca., farmers drilling the deepest wells were able to extract the most water; often to the cost of their neighbors. As a result of these unregulated drilling practices, ground water resources are being drained at rates which destroy their sustainability. Deep drilling simply defers some of today's short-term water problems into the intermediate future. II) As ambient temps rise, via global warming, and the temps of water resources which are affected by this ambient temp rise, rise also; will nuclear power plants need more water resources for cooling purposes? Will extended droughts affect their ability to maintain power production when the increased temps of these resources interact with the drought-reduced quantities of these water resources? Or, is such concern unwarranted? III) In Flint, municipal decisions were driven by scarce financial resources. The Flint River water was not treated with sufficient chemicals or additives to reduce the effects of the increased salinity of this water. This salinity accumulated over years as runoff from treating icy roads with salt. If some regions have increased snowfall from warmer ambient air retaining more moisture, will such instances of increased snowfall as occurred in Boston's winter of 2015 become more common? Will neutralizing the consequences of increased salinity from icy roads affect water quality in these regions?
3/17 Th 11:18a Greenville NC

I) In California, farming accounts for about 80% of water usage. In many areas of Ca., farmers drilling the deepest wells were able to extract the most water; often to the cost of their neighbors. As a result of these unregulated drilling practices, ground water resources are being drained at rates which destroy their sustainability. Deep drilling simply defers some of today's short-term water problems into the intermediate future. II) As ambient temps rise, via global warming, and the temps of water resources which are affected by this ambient temp rise, rise also; will nuclear power plants need more water resources for cooling purposes? Will extended droughts affect their ability to maintain power production when the increased temps of these resources interact with the drought-reduced quantities of these water resources? Or, is such concern unwarranted? III) In Flint, municipal decisions were driven by scarce financial resources. The Flint River water was not treated with sufficient chemicals or additives to reduce the effects of the increased salinity of this water. This salinity accumulated over years as runoff from treating icy roads with salt. If some regions have increased snowfall from warmer ambient air retaining more moisture, will such instances of increased snowfall as occurred in Boston's winter of 2015 become more common? Will neutralizing the consequences of increased salinity from icy roads affect water quality in these regions? 3/17 Th 12:28p Greenville NC
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About a billion human beings lack access to clean fresh drinking water. Another billion people do not have sanitary sewer and garbage disposal systems.

Although the Earth is 70% covered by water about 97% of that is salt water. And about 2/3rds of the 3% fresh water is frozen in glaciers and ice caps. Changing climate plus growing population and habitat destructions threatens human life and limb via changing sea levels along with dynamic weather including air/water temperature and precipitation. Water is essential to every form of life as we know it.

America has a Pearl Harbor mentality. When the bombs start falling we realize we are in trouble. We are doing everything wrong with water from poisoning, wasting, fracking waste disposal and drilling to deforesting the land to build McMansions with impervious surface where trees absorbed water for return in water cycle. You would think we had a PLANet B where we could escape to when this planet becomes a new Mars. We need to change our ways now if we care one iota for our grandchildren.

Good points, but it doesn't matter. Most governors and a majority of Congress are GOP. They are, thus, a group of climate change deniers, believing that God controls the weather rigorously and allows for no changes, and that all the massive changes we see are a commie plot or something and don't really exist.

So with these fundamentalists in charge of most gov't policy, even if we were to collect more data on how fast the water is running out, they wouldn't allow anything to be done about it. America will keep intentionally blinding itself to the onrushing disaster right up until it hits, and CA ceases to produce most agricultural products, AZ becomes uninhabitable due to lack of water, and so forth.

It'll be OK though, that disaster should be the death knell of the fundamentalist party, if it doesn't happen sooner, and we'll all be better off without them. Some few millions of Americans will probably die in the upheaval, but that's not going to be so bad comparatively; in places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen, almost everyone will die from the onrushing dehydration. And the world does need a lot less people.

So this would be a good point for rational, forward-thinking nations, and I'm sure several, like Iceland, Belgium, Japan, etc., will invest in preventative or ameliorating measures. But America isn't capable of using scientific data to prevent calamities, thanks to the abundance of fundamentalist Christians and total Trump-supporting fools, so this point is moot.

We need more water-related information generated on a broad and frequent basis. So much is happening to water because of climate change and of increased usage by 7+ billion people that most predictive models fall short in their predictions.

We need this data to help us to retard the degradations that will surely happen to future generations. Eliminating the US EPA will only keep this looming problem under the radar to most of us.

Plenty of organizations are collecting real-time water data in developing countries. There are so many entrepreneurs with systems and technologies that can capture these data and feed them into shared, open source databanks. Would be great to have a cross-bureau/cross-agency knowledge sharing moment to share best practices and opportunities to bring innovations to scale across the international and domestic sectors. Let's get these people talking!

Second point -- in the international WASH community, water is glamorous to talk about but sanitation gets left behind. I'm curious to see how the US sanitation infrastructure will look in 25 - 50 years? In a nation notorious for letting infrastructure disintegrate, let's get ahead of the game!

I think the author is confusing water data collection and publication with comprehensive water use reporting. The USGS continuously outputs real-time water data for the country.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis

That being said, water is one resource that should be getting more attention than it does. Thanks for starting to shine a light on one of our most valuable resources.

Also, water data should always be easily accessible to the public. I would argue that measurements should be sent in emails to citizens quarterly--not just posted online.

The only problem with your comparison to energy is that energy is a commodity that is bought and sold, and thus the data is easily to collect and track.

Much if not most water used in the U.S. is not sold, it's pumped from groundwater wells. In order to get the data you want, you would have to pass a law requiring every well in the U.S. to be metered and the data reported to a government agency. That is not going to be easy to accomplish.

Many people do not consider water a good, but rather a right. Have fun fighting that perception.

Our government is currently dominated by an anti-science, anti-intellectual political party. Why would anyone expect them to support a new scientific program?
Even more importantly, why would States with anti-science, anti-intellectual governments support a program that could potentially show the damage their ignorance has caused?
When the major contributor to your election campaign is a major polluter in your State, why would you allow anyone to shine a light on that relationship?

The States are responsible for partnerships with the federal government to support water data collection and analysis. The State governments, largely through Republican-led efforts to slash all spending, have refused to fully support these critical efforts. If the nation ends up under complete control of Republicans, expect this situation to get much worse. I also find it ironic that the Republicans, in water supply contamination cases like Flint Michigan are accusing EPA of dropping the ball, after the Republicans have spent decades trying to destroy the EPA and cutting their funding.

Great Article. How can technology/innovation help ?

"What could the federal government do that wouldn’t cost much but that would change how we think about water?" How about we follow that little country in the middle of a desert who today have absolutely has no problem with water, Israel. Instead of just trying to understand where the water is going at the same time why is there not more desalinization plants under construction?Why is not all of large cities waste water not returned clean and used for agriculture?How about giving one time subsidies to farmers in arid conditions a chance to buy drip irrigation to cut water usage to a quarter of what is used today and reduce herbicide use?Where is Silicone Valley Techsperts why are they not working on computers and programs for farmers to maximize water use and liquid fertilizer, and if so why have we not heard of it?

I work as the Water Quality Scientist for a community whose core belief is that "water is life." I think these people have always known something modern society forgot, the importance of water in daily life. This data is available now, it is just not gathered properly and given the appropriate respect that water deserves. With the increases we are seeing in the number of people on the planet and the obviously changing climate, water will soon be recognized as essential for life, but will that be too late?

Great, something else for us to obsess over. At what point does one to many obsessions put us into that other category . . . you, know, the one we call crazy? Finally, an admission of what we all know is true already, but won't admit.

"We’d see whether tomato farmers in California or Florida do a better job."
Ha! Wherever he pops up, book writer Fishman is a local story of consciousness and it so happens that sewage is one environment in which he will stand for such an event. As to both points he apparently experienced a lapse while writing that piece...CalAg is king.

"Water’s biggest problem, in this country and around the world, is its invisibility."

My response to that - SPOTLIGHT through data. In order to CONNECT the dots you need to COLLECT the dots first.

What is the point of all the data if we chose to neglect it anyway?

For example, we know that large parts of the Ogallala aquifer will be dry within 60 years since a long time and the next dust bowl is upon us. But we continue to pump the water. How is telling the fact every year change that?

Our political institutions appear not to care about facts anymore.

Coal Ash Wastewater is being dumped into the James River by Dominion Power. The river is a watershed for 18 counties in VA. A lawsuit has strengthened the testing (some) which was appalling as first presented. The EPA's budget has been reduced so that now states make the call on what is acceptable. States decide what is an allowable level of lead, arsenic, cadmium in water. VA has a "Dept. of Water Quality" which barely looked at the proposal when it was it was introduced. Maybe because the Chief of the Dept. was still so relaxed from his nice vacation paid for by Dominion Power. MD is not so eager to settle with the same issue in the NoVa power plant.
http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/chief-of-virginia-deq-attended-maste...

I know nothing about water testing, so my line of questioning might be naive, but is it not possible to have little test kits that test essentials put on the market for people who might be going by bodies of water (streams, rivers, lakes) anyway, people like hikers or farmers or fishermen, and then they can put all the data online (a central site) and help a picture emerge of national water situation?

Or what about combining biology/chemistry/field trips in school with water testing projects? Have kids engaged in actual science as it is occurring, doing original science while they are in school? From my experience hiking, the quality of water is quite bad pretty much everywhere. It all looks polluted to me and littered with plastic bottles and the like. I wonder how fish and other animals manage to live not to mention how they might be affected in less dramatic ways.

It seems strange to me any dunce can gain some idea of water quality or quantity just by looking at it, but this does not inspire widespread and more subtle testing not to mention much change in our expectation of water. I am trying to grasp in my mind the fact that any mother or father--it matters not a whit the politics of person--would advise their child, if the child tries to drink from the average stream, not to drink from the stream because "the water is bad". But no one seems to make much effort to change quality of water. You really do question your own sanity in such a situation.

For being authored by someone who wrote a book about water, this column shows a high level of ignorance. Water use is tracked by those who manage each water body (e.g., utilities) and by states. Water has long been viewed as primarily a state responsibility. The Federal role in end uses of water is almost zero. Additional data about water use could lead to some innovations but a more important data issue now is measuring water in the environment - i.e., river and stream flows, groundwater levels, and the quality of water. The USGS already tracks these data on a continuous basis (reported and archived in 15-minute intervals in most places where they collect the data). The problem with this stream gage program is that Congress routinely cuts funding, leading USGS to cut gages, leaving major holes in our data and understanding of how water moves thru the environment. Current science tells us that climate change will greatly impact the weather patterns that determine how much water is out there, so now is the time to increase our data collection.

Better understanding how much water is used would probably do little in understanding or preventing the problems in Flint, Toledo or Charleston, and California does a decent job of tracking water use for its drought management purposes.

And there is absolutely no evidence that water leads to conflict. None. In fact, it often leads to cooperation in places where you would least expect it.

Better tracking of water usage is surely a good thing however even more enlightening would be tracking of water QUALITY. It would be pretty eye opening if we tested the water in every school in the country for things like lead. The nation would be shocked with the results and congress' lack of concern or action on this known issue.

There is no shortage of water as a quick look at any map or picture of the earth shows. There is a shortage in the type and distribution of that water. One of those "common good" things the federal government is there to do is water infrastructure, storage and flood control.

The "let our rivers run free" crowd has been given more attention than is merited for more than a generation. We are now living with that result. In the midst of a drought in the West and record floods most everywhere else they still want to decommission much of the existing federal water storage system and allow "nature" to have its way with the water supply.

I totally agree with Charles here, as missing data is the biggest barrier to good water management. A few years ago, I started the water data hub but IT GOT NOWHERE b/c water industry folks are not required to publish data they already have. http://www.aguanomics.com/2012/03/water-data-hub-is-live.html

That needs to change.

DOUBLE DROUGHT Is what we've got going in CA and other states. A single drought, though is worldwide; a data drought about water use. Worldwide water shortages have the potential of producing the most aggressive forms of war, in quest of water. If you think the quest to find petroleum is powerful, just wait till worldwide population explosion and drought due to global climate change. The upheaval will be swift and lethal. You can live without petroleum or a shortage of it indefinitely. But with water, you can survive for between 3 days and a week. So water data worldwide is a top priority for national security in all nations. The UN needs to convene a worldwide action to get data and conserve water everywhere on the planet. The urgency couldn't be greater nor the threat to worldwide security more endangered.

The obscuring of water flows is no accident, it serves the interests of various economic sectors where the bright light of data would reveal enormous waste.

About 80% of water use in CA is for agriculture and of that, the largest use is for cattle, the least efficient nutritional use of water on the planet. According to a Bloomberg article, cattle related agriculture in CA consumed over 10 million acre feet of water over 2 years, compared to 8.6 million for all of the 40 million people in the state. All of the famous truck vegetables we associate with CA use tiny amounts of water because of drip irrigation and other conservation measures.

In WA State, our Legislature, influenced by developers and others, mandates that the Dept of Ecology issue a minimum number of water permits annually, without regard to resource availability. The result is serious over-allocation and shortages in years with low snow pack, which no one connects back to flawed lawmaking.

Some day we will look back at this clownish collusion with disgust, but not until we can actually understand it.