Lewis Linker is a modeling coordinator with the U.S. EPA at the Chesapeake Bay Program.
The world’s a pretty big
place. So when a group of water resource experts from different parts
of the world come together, and all describe the same problems (though
seen through different lenses of geography, culture, and language),
that’s a notable thing.
That’s what happened at the 2008 World Water Expo in Zaragoza, Spain,
where water resource experts from across the globe — including
Australia, Israel, Jordan, Spain, South Africa, and the United States —
participated in a scientific symposium as a kick-off to the Expo. All
invited speakers there spoke of problems with growth, water supply,
water quality, and climate disruption. The water resource conditions in
the various countries were as varied as the languages spoken, but the
underlying problems were the same. Jordan, for example, is arid with a
developing economy, whereas Australia is arid with a post-industrial
economy — yet both face the same challenges of growth, water supply,
water quality, and climate disruption.
Where does the Bay Program fit into this picture?
As an invited participant, the Bay Program described our approach of
integrating models, monitoring, and research for restoration of the
Chesapeake. Our presentation of the linked airshed, watershed,
estuarine, and living resource models, along with the supporting and
corroborating monitoring observations and research was well-received,
and was seen as a world-class example of the information systems needed
to support water resources under pressure from population growth,
climate change, and past environmental degradation.
All of the invited speakers spoke to problems of
growth and water quality. In the Chesapeake, we’ve been working a long
time to restore water quality despite growth pressures in our
watershed, so these are issues we’re familiar with. But just like in
other parts of the world, the issues of providing an adequate water
supply and climate disruption are also emerging issues for the
Chesapeake. Last year, the city of Fredrick, Maryland, had to curtail
construction permits due to concerns over the sufficiency of water
supply. This may be a harbinger, because our Chesapeake water supply
infrastructure is designed for average annual flows different from the
decreased annual flows we may see with future climate change, as the
Bay Program has described in presentations at the 2007 American Water
Resources Society and the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation.
At the World Water Expo we saw that the challenges
of growth, adequate water supply, water quality, and climate disruption
were ubiquitous. The world’s a big place and a watery place. How ironic
that we’re all in the same boat.