our lifestyles are very thirsty and it’s
not just the water that comes out of the
tap at home you know if we think about
our daily lifestyle everything we use
and where and buy and eat takes water to
make and sometimes really a surprising
amount it can be 30 gallons of water
just to make a glass of wine energy is
another really water intensive thing you
know it takes about 13 gallons of water
to make one gallon of fuel to the extent
we can walk carpool bike those are
saving energy but also saving water do
we have to have brand new clothes can we
share can we recycle every time we get
something from a thrift store we’ve got
something new but it’s not taking
additional water to make it new so
there’s a lot of opportunity to actually
be part of the solution most of our
water use and water management has been
around controlling water with dams and
diversions to supply water when and
where we need it and that’s allowed
places like the western United States to
really grow and flourish and expand and
become major food producing areas for
the whole nation and parts of the world
what we haven’t done is really bring
nature to the table we haven’t really
decided that ecosystems themselves
deliver a lot of benefits to us which
they do in the form of purifying water
you know fish and biodiversity habitats
clean drinking water and so I think
governments and industries that are
figuring out how water is allocated and
used can begin to bring that important
piece of nature into the picture and
policies can help do that markets can
help do that in some ways I think the
new frontier of water management is
going to be bringing together efficiency
technologies like drip irrigation which
is used in agriculture with information
technologies that allows us to know how
much water is really in the soil right
now how much water do those crops really
need so that we can target delivering
just the right amount of water when
crops need it to make sure that they get
what they need but not necessarily more
than they need right now agriculture
consumes about 80 percent of all the
water that’s used in the West and so if
we can get more efficient and more
targeted about delivering that water we
can free up water for the natural
environment
not just the water that comes out of the
tap at home you know if we think about
our daily lifestyle everything we use
and where and buy and eat takes water to
make and sometimes really a surprising
amount it can be 30 gallons of water
just to make a glass of wine energy is
another really water intensive thing you
know it takes about 13 gallons of water
to make one gallon of fuel to the extent
we can walk carpool bike those are
saving energy but also saving water do
we have to have brand new clothes can we
share can we recycle every time we get
something from a thrift store we’ve got
something new but it’s not taking
additional water to make it new so
there’s a lot of opportunity to actually
be part of the solution most of our
water use and water management has been
around controlling water with dams and
diversions to supply water when and
where we need it and that’s allowed
places like the western United States to
really grow and flourish and expand and
become major food producing areas for
the whole nation and parts of the world
what we haven’t done is really bring
nature to the table we haven’t really
decided that ecosystems themselves
deliver a lot of benefits to us which
they do in the form of purifying water
you know fish and biodiversity habitats
clean drinking water and so I think
governments and industries that are
figuring out how water is allocated and
used can begin to bring that important
piece of nature into the picture and
policies can help do that markets can
help do that in some ways I think the
new frontier of water management is
going to be bringing together efficiency
technologies like drip irrigation which
is used in agriculture with information
technologies that allows us to know how
much water is really in the soil right
now how much water do those crops really
need so that we can target delivering
just the right amount of water when
crops need it to make sure that they get
what they need but not necessarily more
than they need right now agriculture
consumes about 80 percent of all the
water that’s used in the West and so if
we can get more efficient and more
targeted about delivering that water we
can free up water for the natural
environment
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