Our societal addiction to the combustion of carbon-based fossil fuels for energy is now unequivocally understood to cause global climate change due to excessive accumulation of “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere. These gases thicken the atmosphere’s capacity to retain solar energy, leading to an increase in the planet’s average surface temperatures. Solid, liquid and gaseous phase changes by water are the thermal mechanisms through which the planet primarily attempts to regulate its human-induced “fever.” Water is manifesting some of the most dramatic expressions of this climate change, with melting polar ice and glaciers, rising sea levels, coastal inundation, ocean acidification, warmer tropical water, slowing of the Gulf Stream, stronger hurricanes, and increased floods and droughts….

At the WATER Institute we call our philosophical and practical responses to the water challenges and opportunities before us “Conservation Hydrology.” Conservation Hydrology utilizes the disciplines of ecology, population biology, biogeography, economics, anthropology, philosophy, planning, and history to guide community-based watershed literacy, planning, and action. Conservation Hydrology advocates that human development decisions must move from a “dehydration model” to a “rehydration model.” To achieve this goal we must retrofit existing development patterns with new ones based on the following principles: Receive, Recharge, Retain, Release.

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Kai Olson-Sawyer is a Senior Research and Policy Analyst in GRACE’s Water and Energy Programs. Kai works on numerous issues including the food-water-energy nexus, water footprinting, surface and groundwater resource protection and management, among others. Prior to joining GRACE, Kai was employed at the World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon and conducted research with NYC Apollo Alliance. Kai received a Masters in sociology with an environmental focus from The New School for Social Research, and a B.A. from Earlham College.

Water is an essential resource that many people fail to think about. Kai Olson-Sawyer explains many ways that water use can be made more efficient and suggests that a first step is increased awareness of how much water is used. He points out that consumers will feel more empowered to use water carefully once they realize how big of an impact their actions have on their water resource.

Douglas Gayeton: At GRACE, how do you draw people into a conversation, making them understand that water is integral for agricultural production?

Kai Olson-Sawyer: There are a lot of systems involved in this, and you can’t really touch on one without touching the others. So we look at what’s called the food, water and energy nexus, examining the intersections between the food, water and energy systems. It’s true that water and food production are pretty much inseparable.If you don’t have water, you don’t have food. This relationship is extremely important and the water system impacts the food production system.

Douglas Gayeton: Are there solutions that you see in agriculture that can lead to greater conversation?

Kai Olson-Sawyer: There is very little monitoring of water use. So I would say there just needs to be better tracking of how much water is being used in the first place.

Then, there could be different schemes set up for better water pricing, water restrictions, or even water transfers in a better way, where if you have one set of farmers that hasn’t used up their allotment of water, they can sell it or transfer it to another set of farmers.

But I would also say that there are a lot of technologies out there, for instance, drip irrigation or sprinkler systems that are more water efficient, that don’t let water evaporate so quickly. There are also sensors that can be buried in the ground to give the water storage reading that shows whether you need more irrigation water or less. That can be something that farmers find very helpful, because if they don’t need to use more water, that benefits them in everything. The final thing that I’d say is just smarter practices, like crop rotation, less monocropping, more biodiversity, which promotes better soil health, and potentially no till.

Douglas Gayeton:Are there other mechanisms besides introducing price structures, that you feel can trigger shift in water usage?

Kai Olson-Sawyer: One thing that has been found in energy circles is that if you send out a utility bill to customers it has comparisons to other customers for the utility. That affects peoples’ use. So if they see that they’re higher than average, then it compels people to bring their energy use down. So there could be some psychological things that could be done to modify peoples’ behavior and incentivize things in a different way rather than strictly by price. Also, just the acceptance of water efficient sinks, faucets, toilets, etcetera into our culture really helps make people think about water use. If there’s an understanding that it’s a good thing to use less water and it costs you less, then that is an underlying cultural value that is starting to be instilled in people. It’s good to be efficient; it’s good to use less.

Douglas Gayeton: Have you noticed that many people don’t know the name of their own watershed and do you think there is such a thing as local water?

Kai Olson-Sawyer: Yes, one often things we like to say is “Know your water.” I think it really does begin with “Where does your water come from?” If you don’t know where your water comes from, it’s hard to have much concern about it. we did a video here at GRACE where we ask people in Long Island, “Where does your water come from?” All of their water comes from groundwater under their feet. But virtually no one we asked in the video knew that. And it just brought home to us the fact that people need to be educated about the fact that they live in a watershed or they get all their water from groundwater resources. It’s really important to figure out how to communicate that to the public and make it interesting, because without that there is not value. Unless it really is something that can understand, there’s not going to be a beginning of that recognition that they have an impact. Their daily lives have an impact on the world around them, in this case watersheds, water resource, management etcetera.

In most instances, people have local water, so that the water that they’re getting from their tap is from their watershed or from aquifers close by. So essentially yes, you do have local water and that’s what people depend on. Even though there’s a global hydrological cycle, essentially people experience water locally.I think if people start thinking about how their water is local and the fact that what they’re using has an impact on their immediate circumstances, their immediate ecosystem, then that can really make them feel like they have some ownership of it and that stewardship should be part of what they do and how they act. That’s something I think that escapes a lot of people at this point.

Location: Boistfort Valley Farm, Curtis, WA

Featuring: Mike, Heidi, and Natalina Peroni, and Ed, their pup.

The Great Flood of 2007 buried Mike and Heidi’s family farm and home under tons of silt. Everything which defined their existence on the material place was gone in a matter of hours. Everything. Gone. With the help of neighbors, the Peronis cleaned their farm of debris and started over. The process of recovery took months. It awakened Mike to the damage caused by generations of poor logging practices which took their toll, ravaging the delicate ecological balance of Boistfort Valley.

The Peronis quickly looked to reinforce their land and return their riverbanks to their natural state. Using a riparian buffer zone, “the Ribbon of Life,” the Peronis were able to control erosion, provide shade and lower stream temperatures, safeguard against flooding, and provide a habitat for indigenous species

Our watershed is worth celebrating! We are very lucky to have some of the best and safest potable water in the world. While our municipalities invest serious manpower and finances into providing fresh water to our homes and businesses, we have largely come to distrust the source of our tap water and have forgotten our connection to our local watershed. Regulatory bodies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California State Water Board, oversee and insure that we are continuing to protect our watersheds in efficient and effective ways. However, it take a conscious effort at an individual level to see the changes we need. It takes changes in habits, in perceptions of relationships with our surroundings, and collaborative action to be an effective group of water stewards. We cannot displace the burden of water pollution on regulatory groups when we are all responsible in one way or another.

We must ask: why has water appreciation decreased in the last few decades? Why has our understanding of what goes into delivering tap water to our homes and communities become of little or no interest to most Americans? Water is the essence to our daily lives. Let’s come together and celebrate our watersheds and how lucky we are to have safe, affordable and quality water. Let’s improve public water access and decrease unnecessary waste.

Build your appreciation for public water by reading up on your local water quality reports and also what it takes to deliver our precious resource to our taps. You can support public water by remembering to bring a reusable bottle wherever you go, downloading the WeTap app to find and map the nearest drinking fountain, and taking efforts to conserve every drop. TapWater Day will be May 7, 2015. Ask your local water agency, park and school to install new filling stations and maintain older existing drinking fountains. The future is now.

Check out more about WeTap's App to find drinking fountains in your area!

Evelyn Wendel founded WeTap in 2008 to improve appreciation, access and use of public drinking fountains as a means to reduce dependence on single use plastic water bottles. She is a mother of two and discovered the lack of consistently working drinking fountains while bringing her kids to parks around the City of LA and elsewhere. Since WeTap was introduced, she developed technology to map and access drinking fountains and filling stations. Prior to devoting her energy to WeTap, Evelyn worked at Paramount Pictures for close to 10 years and produced the historically important documentary “The Spirit in Architecture: John Lautner.”

Across the globe, ecosystems and populations are affected by freshwater scarcity. While half of the global population is concentrated in cities, urban water sources are becoming more and more unsustainable, driving Robert Lalasz to ask: “Will cities ever get smart about water use?” He turns to Brian Richter, senior freshwater scientist at The Nature Conservancy and a leading researcher in the Water Policy’s history of 4 major cities. Brian acknowledges that we are in fact in the midst of an urban water crisis, where half of all cities consume more than 50% of their watershed’s supply of water each year. While this ultimately contributes to the potential for severe drought, Brian also turns attention to agricultural practices. As he says, everyone plays their part in our current water crisis and, therefore, everyone needs to take responsibility. To be an active water steward, one of Brian’s many suggestions is to “save” water and implementing a water market, much like the one organized in Edwards Aquifer of Texas.

Educate yourself on how you can play your part as a water steward

The unpleasant truth of neglected watersheds was just radically illustrated this past August in Toledo, Ohio. A combination of heavy rains in the spring and continual fertilizer runoff from industrial farms facilitated for the “bloom” of a toxic microbe, cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) in Lake Erie. The “dead zone” that was created by the algal bloom devastated the aquatic life and forced the city of Toledo to shut down public water sources to near half a million people . This story is all too familiar to more than 400 coastal communities. And the culprit can be reduced back to agricultural fertilizer and a lack of riparian buffer zones. As Doug Gurian-Sherman suggests, adopting an agricultural practice that fosters ecological principles will mitigate many of the problems within watersheds. Read more about industrial agriculture and the explosion of toxic algae at the link provided.