Water Crisis

Transcript EP. 2: Our Future, Transformed: Is Water the new oil?

Dr. Gregory Washington: 

I’m Mason President Gregory Washington welcoming you to the second episode of “Our Future, Transformed,” a series of conversations with Mason’s leading experts about the grand challenges of today — and tomorrow. My guest today is Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, dean of Mason’s College of Science, to talk about the water crisis and how we solve it. When we think about water as a grand challenge, the first question that actually comes to my mind is, is water the next oil?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

I think it is and it probably has been for a long time. And if you look at human history, people have been battling for water since the ages. If you think about your first history lesson, water was in it, you know, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. It’s been happening for a long time and it’s happening now and it will continue happening in the future.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

So in the D.C. region where we are here today, there have been some notable examples of urban flooding. What is the driver? What’s going on?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Well, I think, you know, the, you know, one thing about water that’s very easy to understand but very difficult to predict is that water moves. You know, you have water in the atmosphere, you have water in the oceans, you have water in rivers. It’s moving all the time. It’s moving at different rates. So what ends up happening in places that we’ve seen, and certainly in the National Capital region where urban flooding is becoming a bigger, bigger issue. We had huge floods in Southwest Virginia just a, you know, a few months ago, around the major Washington, D.C. area, there’s urban flooding all the time is, is the fact that water has become concentrated in places where we have just built too much infrastructure. When we build cities, when we build roads, what we’re doing is that we’re replacing natural systems that can regulate water flow, they can absorb it, they can prevent flooding from happening to, to pavements and buildings that tend to concentrate water. And that’s where we’re having the problem.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Around the globe there have been examples of devastating wildfires, and then we see these massive examples of flooding in Pakistan not too long ago globally, and then also in many of, a number of our western states as well. What are the challenges to addressing these issues and how might we overcome them?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Well, you know, the wildfires typically originate when the soil gets too dry, and then vegetation becomes natural fuel for fires to propagate. That is what was happening in the Amazon, that’s what was happening In Australia just a few years back, and certainly in California that continues to be the case, right? A drought will very likely result in wildfires spreading, spreading quicker. The solution to that is to really build systems that can store water and regulate, essentially, the, the moisture content of the soils. Soil is the biggest regulator of water around the world. You know, you think about big rivers, big lakes containing vast amounts of water. But the largest amount of water worldwide is contained in soils. And soils are the big regulator, and natural systems are the big regulators of water. So trying to allow natural systems to store water in a way that they prevent these things from happening is going to be a big part of how we solve these issues.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Given that a sizeable amount of the globe’s population lives in, in either climates that have very little water, or no water at all, do we have any great examples of water management, any great examples that we can point to and ask the question, how are some of these other countries responding to either flooding or lack of water? How are they responding to it in ways that actually can help us here in the U.S.?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Yes, I always point to the example of the, of countries in the Middle East as the most water scarce but also as countries that have learned to live with little water in a moderately successful way. And so, water conservation, building infrastructure that stores water, using natural systems, the term these days is nature-based solutions, is using nature to store water. Those are the ways you can actually mitigate the big peaks towards floods or mitigate the big valleys towards, towards floods, towards droughts.

Dr .Gregory Washington:

Is it fair to compare those entities to, to the U.S. and what we can do in the U.S.? Is it, in some sense, we’re very, very different, right? So talk a little about that.

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Yeah, so that’s a great question, and let me tell you where it is that we’re most different. The biggest difference between the U.S. and other countries is, is how we manage water. So, and let’s take the example of the western states cause, you know, in, in the U.S. we speak a lot about water rights. There’s a, there’s a big, there’s big water legislation that apportions water in a way that does not take into consideration the physical variables. So there are commitments for water to be delivered in places where you just don’t have enough water. It’s like I’ve committed to pay you a salary of water where I’m running out funds, and no matter what you’re going to expect that salary even thought I have no money.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

You have no water to give them.

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Exactly, exactly, yes.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

And so what happens then?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

So I think we have to, in the U.S. I think we have to tune our legislation and our water legislation, in particularly in the western states, towards the fact that, you know, the climate is changing, population has changed in the distribution, the economies have changed. And, um, and, you know, speaking of California again, we cannot be subsidizing farmers to grow almonds that are exported to other parts of the world and think that the natural aquifers and water systems in California are going to pick up the bill. And that has to change. And that is happening in many parts of the country, but it is particularly severe in the western states.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

So I would like to now open it up to our student audience for questions on this topic.

Student:

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. My question really talks about or is pertaining to coastal flooding and how much of that has to do with climate change and deforestation. I know there’s a little bit of talk about certain cities such as Norfolk, Va., going underwater in a couple of years or a few years in time. But I was just wondering, how much of that is due to climate change or other factors such as deforestation?

Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm:

Globally, around, you know, and that’s certainly the same thing in the United States, about 60 percent of the population, globally and in the United States, live within 60 miles of a coastline. That’s where we have built a majority of our infrastructure, that is where everybody lives. And what we’ve seen historically over, for the past over 100 years, is that sea level rise have been rising and rising and rising. I grew up in Miami, and Miami they have something that’s called sunny day flooding. That means, it floods when there is no rain. It’s just the water coming up and flooding, and flooding significant property. This is starting to happen all over the world. We know it is a combination of temperature increase because of global warming. So, you know, you know, a little bit of physics – you know, the temperature increases, water expands, so seawater expands, and because seawater is a lot of water, it’ll really, really start rising up and flooding. The other piece that contributes to this is that, you mentioned is deforestation. So when we take out trees and we clear out land, the water moves through the land much, much quicker. So rivers that naturally drain into coastal areas do so much faster. So you have more freshwater coming in, sea level going up. The result is that you, you know, we have a significant increase in, in coastal flooding around the world, certainly here in this country.

Dr. Gregory Washington:

Thank you, Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm for your participation today. And I want to thank all of you for your participation in this episode of “Our Future, Transformed.”