There is an entire pillar in the Aspen Institute’s National Water Strategy, an effort I had the opportunity to help develop, focused on Innovation. This strategy’s vision is that, “The water sector creates, deploys and scales next-generation technology, policy, and financing that ensures safe, affordable and reliable water resources.”

Innovation is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days–so I am wary of ideas that claim to be “innovative.” But when it comes to making water clean and safe to drink, managing wastewater and other needs, I believe there are technologies and concepts that deserve the adjective. We can then move on to the big question: How do we accelerate adoption of innovative strategies?

It helps to look at what is standing in the way: Fragmentation. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. has approximately 50,000 community water systems, and 92 percent of these systems are small, local operations serving fewer than 10,000 customers. These systems involve overlapping layers of governance, including federal, state, regional and local.

With so many agencies and jurisdictions, each with its own unique mandates and priorities, change is slow. Even when an agreement to adopt something new is made, the funding assembled, the contracts awarded and the equipment installed, the technology has likely been iterated in the meantime.

Beyond fragmentation, we have a regulatory environment that often impedes innovation. Regulations conflict with each other; state law may support innovative technology, while local regulations may block those same technologies.

Another barrier is lack of investment.

• First, the business model for water utilities is inadequate, with rates that often don’t reflect the real costs of service.

• Public investment also falls short.

Let’s compare investments in energy to water: From 2000 to 2013, public investment in the U.S. energy sector was $8 billion (source). During the same time period, we invested only $28 million into the water sector.

Encouraging innovation adoption and scaling means rethinking how we finance and deliver water services. We also need governance that encourages innovation rather than making new approaches difficult to adopt. Building new systems that enhance water security will take new financial investment models.

How do we make progress to adopt and scale innovation in the water sector despite these barriers? Do you know of examples of successes–or failures–that present learning opportunities? Get in touch.

Our rural communities feed and power the country, but our water infrastructure tells a different story.

Olga Morales Pate, head of the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) and a national leader in rural community development, joins me to discuss the challenges rural communities face when it comes to water infrastructure, why they are being left behind, and what it will take to change it. Drawing on more than 25 years of work in rural and colonia communities, Olga makes the case that rural water is not a niche issue. Instead, it is a foundation of national economic resilience, even though the country has not been building it that way.

“I don’t care what size community it is -- the biggest resources are the people. Those are the biggest assets, and we’re not investing enough in rural communities to retain those assets.”

- Olga Morales Pate, Episode 9 of Season 5, Audacious Water

What You’ll Hear Discussed in This Episode:

• The Rural-Urban Disconnect

• Water as an Economic Foundation

• The Funding Crisis Since the Pandemic

• Annexation vs. Regionalization

• Colonias and Water Insecurity in the U.S.

• A Reactive System with No Data

Listen to my conversation with Olga to hear what it will take to build water infrastructure that works for the communities the country depends on.

According to the U.S. Census, approximately 20% of the U.S. population, or about 66 million people, live in rural areas. Those areas make up 97% of our land, and the water contained in that land is essential to the entire country. Yet rural regions and communities are often overlooked, despite their critical role in our environment and water future.

That’s why rural water is one of the six pillars in the National Water Strategy, the recently released Aspen Institute effort I had the opportunity to help develop.

This pillar of the strategy focuses on the need to, “invest in rural water resources and services to strengthen rural communities and regional water security.”

Investing in rural water isn’t just about rural areas—everyone benefits, including the four out of five Americans who live in urban areas. In addition to water, rural areas provide food, timber, minerals, and other natural resources. Recognizing the rural communities and the value they provide leads directly to the need for greater investment in those communities.

The vision of the Strategy’s rural water pillar is that, “Productive rural communities with access to sustainable and affordable water infrastructure and services support regional water security through conservation, innovation, and shared planning.”

I’m talking with rural water expert Olga Morales Pate for my podcast, Audacious Water; she also helped develop the National Water Strategy. She says that water infrastructure is the first building block of community development. Without working water infrastructure, no other economic development can be achieved. Yet often smaller rural communities lack the credit to qualify for the capital to build this critical infrastructure. Rural populations are dispersed over large areas, meaning they often lack economies of scale. This leads to insufficient revenue to support needed infrastructure investments. There are just not enough paying customers to pay back the capital investment in water infrastructure.

Agriculture is another challenge that many rural communities and their water sources face. According to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, agriculture accounts for 80-90% of our country’s consumptive water use. This water usage is directly impacting underground aquifers, causing water tables to drop, increasing costs for residents who depend on private wells, and threatening future irrigation capabilities in places like the High Plains. Agriculture also generates runoff that affects water quality in rural communities, down our nation’s waterways, and all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico.

How do we meet the financial, infrastructure, agriculture and water quality challenges that rural communities face? State and federal governments play a significant role in finding solutions. Ensuring that rural residents have a voice in basin planning is also an important step. Another possibility is regionalization—bringing together several small community systems to potentially help improve efficiency, affordability, and improved water quality.

How can we make progress? I’m working on my questions for my interview with Olga–tell me what you would ask.

How can we use nature-based solutions alongside traditional infrastructure to meet our needs?

Melissa D. Ho joins me to explore how conservation is shifting from protecting nature in isolation to designing systems where people and ecosystems work together. Drawing on her experience in conservation and development, Melissa explains how nature-based solutions are being integrated with built infrastructure to improve water management and restore ecosystems. The conversation also explores groundwater, agriculture, corporate engagement, and why better stewardship and management of water may matter more than creating new supply.

“Nature-based solutions … it’s not just conservation with better branding, it’s actually re-engineering our mindset to think about engineering better with biological systems.”

— Melissa D. Ho, Season 5 of Audacious Water

What We Discuss in This Episode

• The Shift Away from “Fortress Conservation”

• How Nature-Based Solutions Work With Infrastructure

• Groundwater, Data, and Better Water Management

• Agriculture, Runoff, and Watershed Health

• Corporate Incentives, Disclosure, and Water Risk

• Scaling Nature-Based Solutions Beyond Pilot Projects

Listen to my conversation with Melissa Ho to hear how conservation is changing, and why working with nature may be critical to future water security.

In my recent posts about the National Water Strategy, an Aspen Institute effort I had the opportunity to help develop, I’ve talked about the strategy’s first two pillars: Economy and Governance. As we continue to experience the consequences of climate change, investing in improved water governance and understanding the central role that water plays in the economy has become even more important.

The Strategy’s fourth pillar, Natural Disasters and Water Risk, is intended to “equip communities to adapt to rising and acute water-related risk.” With climate change comes more frequent and severe natural disasters. One simply has to take a look at the news or skyrocketing insurance prices to see that this state of natural disaster severity is the new normal. (On that note, check out my conversation about insurance with Raghuveer Vinukollu on my podcast, Audacious Water.)

The Strategy’s six pillars are interdependent—in other words, governance and the economy are critical aspects of any discussion about disasters and risk. Natural disasters can be a hard hit on the economy, as we’ve experienced during major floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other events. These events, in turn, require effective governance to help communities recover from disaster and prepare for the future.

The National Water Strategy’s vision for addressing disasters is that “communities withstand and respond to acute and chronic water disasters, adapting to current and future water-related risks while maintaining social, environmental, and fiscal health.” How do we achieve this vision?

Recognizing water’s critical role in our lives and communities is the first priority. Acknowledging water’s value motivates communities to make necessary investments to ensure water is available when and where it’s needed. These investments pay off: A dollar spent on the front end in infrastructure investment saves 13 dollars on the backend in disaster response.

The question becomes, how do we finance proactive disaster prevention to face increasing climate extremes? One example of a successful financing program is the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Established in 1987, this fund is a federal-state partnership that provides low-interest loans for water infrastructure projects. Could we model something after this fund to help finance disaster preparedness? I’d like to hear your thoughts– get in touch!

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If water is critical for economic growth, then why don’t we prioritize it in our planning?

Albert Cho, Vice President and Chief Strategy and External Affairs Officer at Xylem, joins me to explore why water security is foundational to economic growth, and how our planning doesn’t reflect it. From AI and infrastructure to basin-scale governance and disaster resilience, Albert explains how rising demand and system constraints are reshaping water challenges across the U.S. He also discusses why the biggest barrier isn’t innovation, but adoption, and how better planning and coordination could unlock significant amounts of water already within existing systems.

" Trying to approach the problem the same way and planning for infrastructure in the same way is literally the definition of insanity. It is going to condemn us to a future of water insecurity."
- Albert Cho on Audacious Water

What We Discuss in This Episode:

• Water Security and Human Security

• What’s Missing in AI Infrastructure Planning

• “Potential Water” in Existing Systems

• Fragmentation and Basin-Level Coordination

• Rural Systems and Regionalization

• Innovation vs. Adoption
  

Listen to the conversation with Albert Cho to hear how new demands are reshaping water systems, and what it will take to create more water security.

This season on Audacious Water, we’re discussing the national water strategy and how a new strategy can help us face today’s challenges. Next up is a conversation with Albert Cho.

Why Albert?

Albert is the Vice President and Chief Strategy and External Affairs Officer at Xylem, a sustainable water resources company. He also serves on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Financial Advisory Board. He has spent his career focused on how technology can drive sustainable development.

Technology innovation will be essential as we work to secure a future of water abundance. That shared view is where I plan to start the conversation.

To prepare for my conversation with Albert, I read a report Xylem put out last year called Rethinking Resilience, In the intro, Albert wrote:

Resilience is not a cost center or a revenue line. It’s a strategic investment in the continuity of services essential to healthy and prosperous communities. The challenges are significant, but the human and economic case for action is even stronger. The choice is clear: invest strategically today or pay exponentially more tomorrow.

If that intrigues you as much as it does me, let me know: what would you ask Albert? Comment below. And subscribe to Audacious Water so you don’t miss this episode.

If you missed the first six episodes of this season of Audacious Water - check them out.

I’m in Washington D.C. to moderate a panel on water security and the economy, based on the newly released National Water Strategy—an Aspen Institute effort I had the opportunity to help develop. So I am digging into that topic in this second installment of a series of posts explaining my thoughts on the six pillars of the Strategy (governance, economy, natural disasters and water risk, adoption of innovation, modernize infrastructure and rural water).

Water is one of the most important—and most overlooked—drivers of economic activity in the United States. It underpins everything from manufacturing and energy production to agriculture and port commerce.

Because it is close to home for me, let’s take the Port of New Orleans as an example. According to a report from the Port: In 2024, marine cargo activity within the New Orleans Port District supported $101.5 billion of total economic value to the U.S. economy. Additionally, cargo activity moving through Port NOLA marine terminals supported 342,150 jobs, including 122,386 in Louisiana alone.

Yet the value of water often goes unrecognized–until systems fail–and dollars go down the drain.

Take the 2022 drought in the Mississippi River Basin. When water levels dropped to historic lows, the movement of barges carrying agricultural products, fossil fuels and other commodities was significantly impeded. Shipping costs surged and supply chains were disrupted.

On Oct. 7, 2022, over 2,000 barges were backed up at various points along the Mississippi because of river closures. (The Conversation)

There are solutions and safeguards to avoid those kinds of disruptions. That’s why the National Water Strategy aims to “elevate water security as a cornerstone of the nation’s economy.” To me, that breaks down into two reinforcing priorities.

The first is recognition. Businesses, governments and individuals must begin to see water not as a given, but as a critical asset that requires active management and investment. I’ve talked about this on my podcast, Audacious Water, with leaders including Will Sarni and John Take, and it’s a key reason why I’m heading to D.C. to speak with policymakers about the Strategy. Without sustained advocacy, water will continue to be taken for granted—and the economy will continue to absorb the consequences.

The second is ensuring water is available when businesses, farmers and communities need it. Recognizing water’s value is only meaningful if reliable, resilient systems exist to support it. That is achieved through building infrastructure. This doesn’t have to be only old school (concrete). It can also be “soft path” as my colleague Peter Gleick calls it, which means including natural, social and cyber infrastructure in the climate adaptation playbook. Policy makers, corporations and states need to invest in infrastructure portfolios that solve local and system scale challenges.

The upshot is that these two points are mutually reinforced. When water is treated as a core economic issue, it attracts the investment and innovation it deserves. This has a trickle down effect (no pun intended), positively affecting ecosystems, communities and the economy.

Water security isn’t just an environmental concern—it’s an economic strategy. And the sooner we treat it as such, the better. From increased demand for water for microchip manufacturing and data centers to the consequences of aridification, the problems are only becoming more complex and the solutions more expensive.

Have you had success at showing people the role of water in the economy? Get in touch and tell me about it.

How do you insure a future where extreme weather is the new normal?

Raghuveer Vinukollu, a hydrologist and reinsurance professional, joins me to explore how the insurance industry is responding to the growing risks of extreme weather. Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies, and it helps make it possible to cover catastrophic events like hurricanes and flooding. Raghuveer explains how data is used to understand and price risk, why the industry balances accuracy with adequacy, and how natural infrastructure and system-scale thinking could help reduce risk and lower insurance costs.

“There is always going to be a certain amount of uncertainty which can be priced for, but if we can get the right amount of adequacy, then only we can move forward.”
- Raghuveer Vinukollu, Audacious Water

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

• Accuracy, Adequacy, and Uncertainty in Reinsurance

• How Reinsurance Works: A Probabilistic Approach to Risk

• Extreme Weather and the Changing Risk Landscape

• From Risk Assessment to Risk Reduction

• Nature-Based Infrastructure and System-Scale Solutions

• Financing Resilience and the Future of Adaptation

This season on Audacious Water, we’re discussing national water strategy and how a new strategy can help us face today’s challenges. Next up is a conversation with Raghuveer Vinukollu.

Why Raghuveer?

Insurance is one of those expenses we all complain about—until we need it. It sits at the nexus of adapting to climate change and the economy.

From flooding and drought to hurricanes and wildfires, natural disasters are happening more often and they are more damaging. That means more insurance claims from individuals and businesses–and higher premiums for everyone in the meantime.

Water–or the lack of it–is at the center of those disasters. Any plan for how we manage water has social and economic implications, including the sustainability of the insurance industry.

I wanted to explore those topics–so I invited Raghuveer Vinukollu to be a guest on Audacious Water.

• He focuses on developing innovative insurance products that cover disasters, understanding ecological risks, and enabling communities and property owners to create long-term resilience for unforeseen events.

• California is one of the places that is already experiencing many effects of climate change–and the state is taking some interesting steps that are being watched around the world.

• He has served in Vice President roles for global reinsurance companies where he specializes in natural catastrophe modeling for flood and storm surge risk and property insurance underwriting.

What would you ask Raghuveer? Comment below. And subscribe to Audacious Water so you don’t miss this episode.

If you missed the first five episodes of this season of Audacious Water - check them out.

In April, I’ll be speaking on Capitol Hill about the newly released National Water Strategy—an Aspen Institute effort I had the opportunity to help develop.

In the lead-up to my trip to D.C., I’ll be sharing a series of reflections on each of the strategy’s six pillars in order to show how they might be applied to real world scenarios.

Starting with governance—here’s what’s been on my mind.

I live in New Orleans, which sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005, two big changes happened.

1: The Louisiana legislature passed a constitutional amendment to consolidate the state’s levee boards into two, one on each side of the river.

From The New York Times:

The state’s many levee boards were quaint institutions dating to the 19th century, intended to allow local control of southern Louisiana’s vital systems of flood protection. But over the decades they became known for growth in other areas: self-administered salary increases, sweetheart contracts, expensive lunches, mini police forces, even an airport.

2: The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority was created.

From the CPRA About webpage:

The CPRA is established as the single state entity with authority to articulate a clear statement of priorities and to focus development and implementation efforts to achieve comprehensive coastal protection for Louisiana. The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s mandate is to develop, implement, and enforce a comprehensive coastal protection and restoration Master Plan.

These changes in water governance effectively integrated flood control and wetland restoration under a single roof, allowing for better coordination of resources, planning and funding.

As climate risks accelerate, this kind of governance coordination is becoming increasingly important.

How do we replicate and scale this kind of approach for critical water systems across the United States?

I’m curious to hear how others are thinking about the future of water governance -get in touch

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I am honored to be among the experts convened by the Aspen Institute over the past two years to write a National Water Strategy.

Led by Martin Doyle of Duke University and Newsha Ajami of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the framework we developed was published last week and shared at an event at Xylem Inc.’s Reservoir Center in Washington D.C.. (Listen to my conversations with Martin and Newsha on my podcast, Audacious Water.)

The participants who created the strategy–people from different parts of the country, from urban and rural areas, and from tribal nations–kept coming back to the undeniable truth that if the United States doesn’t have a water strategy, we don’t actually have an economic strategy—just a collection of assumptions that everything will keep working.

What’s in the Aspen National Water Strategy?

Founded in 1949, the Aspen Institute is a global, nonpartisan nonprofit that brings experts together to solve the world’s biggest problems. In line with that approach, the Institute convened leaders from across the political spectrum, representing government, finance, utilities, agriculture, insurance, environmental NGOs and civil society to work on the water strategy.

The resulting framework sets a new standard for progress toward placing water at the center of U.S. economic prosperity. The strategy organizes water security around six mutually reinforcing messages:

1. Water security is economic security.
   Water underpins GDP, jobs, trade, energy, food and technology—and the economic cost of “not doing water right” is far larger than we typically acknowledge.

2. Governance is the quiet bottleneck.
   Fragmented authority across agencies, states and basins prevents coordinated action, even when solutions are well understood.

3. Rural America is central, not peripheral.
   Rural communities steward the headwaters, aquifers and working lands that sustain cities, industry and food systems nationwide.

4. Disasters are a water problem first.
   Floods, droughts, contamination and system failures dominate climate damages—and reactive response is no longer fiscally viable.

5. Infrastructure must be redefined.
   Water systems can no longer be understood as pipes and pumps alone; they are integrated networks of built, natural, cyber and social infrastructure, and climate adaptation only works when these four systems are designed and managed together rather than in isolation.

6. Innovation exists—but doesn’t scale.
   We’ve mistaken invention for progress. The real bottleneck is adoption: without a national pathway to scale what already works, proven water solutions remain stuck in demonstration mode while risk accelerates.

Together, these six ideas set a national standard—not for federal control of water, but for national alignment on a set of guiding principles.

Why does it matter?

Water is embedded in trade flows, supply chains, labor markets and national competitiveness. It quite literally sustains the U.S. economy. Core commodities—corn, soy and wheat—are grown with water from the Mississippi River basin, which quietly enables tens of billions of dollars in global agricultural trade each year. Manufacturing jobs—from chemicals to steel to paper—depend on consistent water quality and supply.

The same is true at the leading edge of the economy: ultra-pure water is a non-negotiable input for semiconductor manufacturing, and massive volumes of water are required to cool the GPU stacks and data centers that make AI, cloud computing and digital services possible.

Why does it matter now?

That’s an easy one: climate change.

We may have less national direction on water today than we did in the mid-20th century—at a time when our country and the world are facing risks that are larger, faster and more interconnected.

The United States hasn’t had anything resembling a national water strategy in roughly 75 years. The last time we tried was during the Truman administration. (Read my thoughts on the 75th anniversary of that plan.) To accommodate the growing population of the post-World War II baby boom, the American West experienced a massive federal water infrastructure build-out—what well-known water writer Marc Reisner famously described in his seminal work, Cadillac Desert, as the “go-go years” of dam construction.

Since then, water system components like drinking and wastewater management have been planned and managed in silos. That means we are building climate adaptation capacity one backyard, block, and city at a time. While often successful at the local scale, this approach ignores the uncomfortable truth that water-related disasters exist at the watershed level; they don’t respect property lines or political boundaries.

According to the United Nations, roughly 90% of natural disasters are water-related, and 70% of disaster deaths trace back to water. In the U.S., billion-dollar disasters have climbed from about three per year in the 1980s to roughly twenty per year today, with cumulative damages approaching $3 trillion. (But heads up: NOAA is no longer tracking billion dollar disasters - I wrote about this for Forbes a while ago.)

Simply put, if we keep reacting instead of adapting, the math doesn’t just fail to pencil out, it breaks. My Audacious Water podcast guest Melissa Roberts, CEO of the American Flood Coalition says, “Every dollar invested on the front end is 13 dollars saved on the back end”.

How does the Aspen Water Strategy learn from the past and prepare us for the future?

Climate adaptation in the realm of water means building real things. Full stop. After the disastrous 1927 Mississippi River flood, the United States spent what would amount to tens of billions of dollars today and built levees—unfashionable, unglamorous infrastructure that has likely prevented multiple catastrophic floods since, delivering returns of ~10 more avoided Great Flood disasters.

But the lesson isn’t “build more levees.” It is instead that adaptation works when we build at the scale of the problem AND we understand the fundamental teamwork of built, natural, cyber and social infrastructure and how to deploy this at scale to create thriving water futures.

Bottom line: the strategy is forcing us to ask if we can scale what works fast enough to keep water from becoming the dominant failure mode of the American economy.

What do you think?

On this episode of Audacious Water, Melissa Roberts joins me to talk about fragmentation, systemic challenges, and how water really flows. Melissa is the Founder and Executive Director of the American Flood Coalition, where she works with leaders across the country to create local solutions to flood management and pass legislation that helps further flood resilience.

Melissa and I talk about the importance of managing flood risk at scale, what that looks like for communities, and why fragmented water governance makes taking effective action so difficult, even when we know the risks. We also discuss how a new national water strategy could help bring these pieces together and move us toward more coordinated, forward-looking solutions.

“The latest figures after decades of research are that a dollar on the front end saves $13 on the back end. And you look at that and you go, wow, if I had a personal investment where I could invest a dollar and know that I’d get $13, that would be amazing. I would take that in a heartbeat.”

— Melissa Roberts, Season 5 of Audacious Water

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• The challenges local leaders face when trying to act on flood risk

• Why managing water at the watershed level matters more than political boundaries

• How a systems approach helps scale solutions and creates co-benefits

• Why preparedness is far less expensive than disaster response

• What needs to change at the state and federal level to reduce fragmentation

• Why innovation is critical to managing future flood risk

John explains how modern water projects are planned, who needs to be involved, and how the most successful projects now also depend on governance, financing, data, and meaningful community engagement.

“ When we start to put together teams now, there’s still a client, there’s still a contractor, there’s still an operator. Who’s been added into the mix? It’s finance, it’s academia, it’s nonprofits, it’s philanthropy. We’re getting to better solutions because our team is so much more diverse.”

- John Take, Season 5, Episode 4 of Audacious Water

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What water infrastructure really means in an era of climate risk

• Why engineering is necessary but no longer sufficient on its own

• How water projects are designed and delivered today

• The role of community engagement in successful climate adaptation

• Why water security is critical to the economy and public health

We talk about the role of finance in scaling solutions, the difference between incremental and disruptive innovation, and why the future of water management depends not just on more data, but on turning data into actionable information, especially as climate change intensifies water-related risks.

“We need to really think about water as a strategic resource, and how do we manage it accordingly – not just have regulations, but we need a rudder on the ship considering how incredibly important water is.”

— Will Sarni, Season 5, Episode 3 of Audacious Water

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why the U.S. needs a new National Water Strategy

• How water risk affects industries across the economy

• Why innovation in water goes beyond technology

• The role of finance in scaling water solutions

• Turning water data into information people can actually use

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In the first two episodes of Season Five of Audacious Water, I talk with Dr. Newsha Ajami, Chief Development Officer for Research at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Dr. Martin Doyle, Professor of River Systems Science and Policy at Duke University.

We discuss the historical context around a national water strategy that was released in 1951. Then we delve into why the strategy was needed, what it contained, what it contributed, and why it might be time for a new plan that addresses current conditions.

We face many challenges today, from fragmented water resource management to groundwater depletion and climate change. One theme that came through clearly in my conversation with Ajami and Doyle is how different today’s water challenges are from 75 years ago when the strategy was developed.

Listen to Episodes 1 and 2 to confront how a new national water strategy could help us create a sustainable future for water and communities.

Why Dr. Newsha Ajami and Martin Doyle?

Dr. Newsha Ajami is a hydrologist and leading expert in sustainable water resource management and urban water strategy. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the human and policy dimensions of urban water and hydrologic systems. I found Ajami’s take on the fragmentation of water management — which creates overlaps, gaps, and misaligned funding — particularly insightful.

In addition to his role as a professor at Duke University, Dr. Martin Doyle serves as director of the water policy program at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy and the co-organizer for the Aspen-Nicholas Water Forum with the Aspen Institute. Doyle sets a vivid historical backdrop that helps us understand what the 1951 water strategy was trying to solve.

In Their Words

“We have come a long way, obviously, since this document has been written. We are facing totally different challenges as we faced before.”

— Dr. Newsha Ajami

“That was kind of the vision that they laid out, and it was incredibly foresightful for the types of things to be considered, for the types of different branches of natural sciences and engineering that were going to be pulled into it. It’s a pretty extraordinary document.”

— Dr. Martin Doyle

“ The challenges and opportunities these rural communities are facing are very, very different, and if you try to use the same tool to fix the problems or challenges they’re facing, it’s in vain. It’s not going to get anywhere.”

— Dr. Newsha Ajami

“ I think what we want and what we need as a nation is to be aware that in almost every business decision, water is actually an input variable. But we have lived in a world of luxury where they haven’t actually had to consider it as such. ”

— Dr. Martin Doyle

— Martin Doyle: Season 5, Episode 2 of Audacious Water

Key Topics We Discussed

• The 1951 national water strategy: We discussed the political backdrop behind the nation’s first and only water strategy, why it was created, what it accomplished, and why it might be time for a new plan.

• Political and environmental conditions, then and now: Our resource management needs and political climate are different today than they were in the 1950s, necessitating a strategy that meets our current challenges.

• Why we need a modern strategy: How a new plan could address challenges such as fragmented water management and a shift in the federal government that puts more responsibility on the states.

• A need for environmental conservation: The era of dam building is over. We discuss how our current technical scientific expertise can be deployed for water resource management that is compatible with environmental needs.

• Communicating the value of water: Why water must be treated as a core input to industry operations and not an assumed, inexpensive resource.

• Planning first for water: Land use decisions and permitting are often made before considering water, which threatens long-term resilience.

• The role of rural water: Water supply, food production, and much more depend on rural landscapes, yet rural and tribal communities have historically been excluded from water rights, planning, and major investments.

Links to Relevant Studies and Resources

• Learn more about Dr. Newsha Ajami’s work

• Read more about Dr. Martin Doyle’s work

• See the preview of the original National Water Strategy

• Learn more about the Aspen National Water Strategy Initiative, where participants are developing a national water strategy.

• Martin referenced the “308 studies,” which were foundational river-basin assessments that informed mid-century federal water planning. Learn more about the 308 Report Series here.

• Learn more about the Lower Mekong Commission, which John references when discussing binational vs. multinational water governance.

Who do you think wrote the following statement, and when do you think it was published? “Recent shortages of water in some parts of the country, and disastrous floods in others have shown the need for united action in planning, developing, and administering water resources. Water--as essential to the maintenance of life as air--must be captured and stored where it is found in abundance. Yet, any plan for the development of water resources must consider the needs of both urban and rural people, and of industry.”

You might be thinking of water shortages in Mississippi or Michigan, floods in my home state of Louisiana, as well as North Carolina and Texas. But the correct answer goes back to President Harry S. Truman, who released this statement 75 years ago, on December 17, 1950.

Truman went on to urge collective planning and operation of water resources, rather than approaches that focused on individual interests.

Plans for water development can no longer be made successfully by individual interests, whether they are private or public; whether they are local, State, or Federal. To function successfully, all must plan together, irrespective of the construction and operation of facilities. The urgency of wise planning and successful operation is particularly great just now because of the importance of available water to critical defense needs.

In January 1950, Truman appointed a Water Resources Policy Commission and charged them to, “study and make recommendations to me on existing legislation and policies in the water resources field.” The Commission submitted “A Water Policy for the American People (General Report),” followed by two additional volumes, “Ten Rivers in America’s Future” and “Water Resources Law.” (You can read the documents on Google Play.)

As the report summary says, “Water has unique characteristics. Time does not change it. It is the same today as it was 10,000 years ago.” Reading the report surely leaves me with that truth–because so much of the report could have been written today.

Truman was neither the first, nor the last, U.S. president to address water planning and policy, and each of the attempts evolved the concept. In recent decades, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13693, which included directives for federal water efficiency and management, and in 2016, hosted the first modern White House Water Summit. Water is an issue that crosses the aisle: President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13956, one of the last orders of his first term, titled Modernizing America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure. The order established the Interagency Water Subcabinet, which persisted through Joe Biden and into the second Trump administration. It is poised to create efficiency in water governance at the federal level. (I have my fingers crossed, but I’m not holding my breath.)

I could go on–there have surely been many plans, reports, committees, policies and rules, enough to keep countless grad students busy researching for many semesters. Despite all of the work to date, pretty much everyone agrees that how we approach, value and manage water is a mess.

Water as a sector is fragmented, which limits our ability to clearly explain the challenges we face. The economic value of water in other sectors is poorly understood even when quantified. And the boundaries of water bodies–aquifers and watersheds–don’t obey jurisdictional boundaries of governments at multiple scales.

That 1950 report makes plain the problems associated with disconnected, siloed decision-making structures that inconsistently follow natural and political boundaries. It draws attention to the haphazard rule-making and enforcement abilities that fall to agencies at all levels of government. And it makes note of the need to consider corporate interests, cultural significance, rural-urban divides and ideological differences. Not much has changed on those fronts.

One big thing HAS changed: climate. The consequences of climate change are picking up steam. Fires in unexpected places and a multi-year drought in the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin. Aridification in the West. The tragic central Texas floods–and so many others. Severe storms in Nashville and atmospheric rivers in Seattle. We dodged hurricanes this year, but not the previous two. And sea level change–perhaps the slowest driver but the fastest multiplier of other stressors.

There are things we didn’t understand when the 1950 report was written. We did not know that by dashing forward to store as much water in the West as possible we would create an illusion of abundance and a thirst for policy that commandeered more and more water without choosing quality growth by virtue of that water. The report had other limitations, too. It didn’t benefit from modern computation, much less AI. These technologies can streamline data for decision-making, but the data centers that make them possible use astounding amounts of water.

Parts of the report are still relevant and wise today. Many of the issues that we are dealing with have improved, but they are still not perfect. We need to leverage this lost time to create momentum. And we need to take water, which is generally a boring topic, and create a new national water strategy that succeeds in making it relevant.

In the new season of my podcast, Audacious Water, I am talking about the past, present and future of water strategy with researchers, experts and visionaries including Dr. Newsha Ajami and Dr. Martin Doyle. I am honored to be a part of conversations with people who have not given up on finding a better way forward. Collectively, we seek to conceive a modern, comprehensive, collaborative national water strategy. It is possible–and essential.

In the new season of my Audacious Water podcast, I’ll be talking with experts with backgrounds that span science, politics, urban water resources, technology, engineering, and the legal and nonprofit sectors. People like:

• Newsha Ajami, a leading expert in sustainable water resource management;

• Will Sarni, an internationally recognized leader in water strategy and technology innovation; and

• Martin Doyle, director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University

You’ll hear bold ideas that can cross the aisle to meet our needs for water now and into the future. Water doesn’t have a political ideology. When it comes to managing it, our solutions shouldn’t either.

What would it mean to create a broad national strategy for water? One that takes climate change into account and centers water as a key to adaptation? How can we restore natural systems, provide water to communities, increase protection from natural disasters, and modernize infrastructure that hasn’t changed in decades? What should we include in such a strategy that must meet the needs of a diverse nation?

Water is climate adaptation. Join me this season for conversations that surprise you, challenge you and build your optimism for the future.