SAN FRANCISCO — THOSE of us who live in the United States are fortunate; generally we don’t have to give a lot of thought to the safety of our tap water. This makes our collective experience with water very different from that of hundreds of millions of people across the globe who lack access to clean water.

But twice this year the water supply for a major American city was interrupted for days by water pollution. In January, a chemical used in the processing of coal leaked from a ruptured storage tank into the Elk River, contaminating the water supply for about 300,000 people in and around Charleston, W.Va., the state’s capital and largest city. Then, last weekend, the water supply for over 400,000 people in Toledo, Ohio, was declared unsafe because of the presence of microcystin, a toxin released by algae blooms in nearby Lake Erie, the source of the city’s water.

While the circumstances in each situation are different, there are notable similarities. In each case, the pollution could not be adequately treated by the local water plants. Sudden “do not drink” (and, in some cases, “do not bathe”) warnings resulted. And in each case, activities in or near the communities caused, or partially caused, the problem. In Charleston, it was an upstream industrial spill; in Toledo, polluted runoff, including from agriculture, along the Great Lakes stoked the slimy, fluorescent algae blooms that sent residents flocking to supermarkets for bottled water.

Those events offer two important reminders about water in the United States.

The first is that while our country has made huge strides in reducing water pollution since the 1970s, when Congress passed federal laws like the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, controlling water pollution is not a “set it and forget it” endeavor. Those statutes set broad goals but depend on states and the Environmental Protection Agency to design and update programs to keep the water clean.

Charleston underscores the imperative of ensuring that clean water policies are fully implemented and strengthened where necessary. Toledo reminds us that threats are not static and neither is the environment. Polluted runoff was not a primary focus in 1970, and the consequences of climate change were not considered then. But now we recognize that runoff from farms, lawns, streets and parking lots is a major problem across the country and more difficult to control because of its ubiquity. And we also now know that climate change doesn’t just warm the air, it can warm water — resulting in more algae blooms.

A second takeaway is that while the current drought gripping parts of the nation can make us think water scarcity is a function of the absolute quantity of water available, practically speaking it is actually a function of quantity and quality. Toledo was without potable water for several days even though it sits beside the Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater system on earth.

So what should we do?

There are specific steps that would make a difference, including providing water utilities with broader authority to address threats found in watershed surveys; beefing up pollution prevention requirements for chemical tanks to include uniform rules for storage of hazardous substances; and updating outmoded state and federal rules on runoff to include clear reduction targets, which are lacking today.

Equally important, because almost all of us live downstream of somewhere, uncertainty created by a set of Supreme Court decisions about whether all of the nation’s waters are protected by the Clean Water Act needs to be resolved so that upstream pollution doesn’t cause downstream havoc.

Actions like these will almost certainly need to be paired with an increase in financing. The Environmental Protection Agency says the capital needs of water utilities over 20 years amount to $384 billion to keep tap water clean and another $298 billion to address waste water and runoff. By comparison, over the last 25 years, the E.P.A.’s primary wastewater grant and loan program distributed over $100 billion, a fraction of the investment the nation needs to make now.

Just as important, this moment also calls for a change in thinking about how we can best achieve our nation’s clean water goals. Traditionally, water policy has dealt with issues of quality and quantity separately. This approach must be replaced by an integrated strategy that addresses both together. Neither plentiful, polluted water nor scarce, clean water will meet our needs.

The “green infrastructure” movement taking hold across the nation includes a water management approach that uses natural systems like wetlands and green buffers to reduce runoff, enhance water supply and improve community aesthetics. We need more of this kind of integration and the thinking that animates it.

When we ignore the weaknesses in our current approaches to safeguarding our drinking water supplies, we take a significant risk. If the sudden absence of drinking water in Charleston and Toledo serves to refocus the country on the importance of protecting water with a seriousness that reflects its indispensability, that will be a very good thing.

The Lake George Water Quality

Yesterday afternoon I was at Gull Bay on Lake George with friend, mentor and colleague, Jeff Lape.

According to the NYS Federation of Lake Associations (http://www.nysfola.org/), Lake George is one of the clearest in New York, with a Secchi disk reading as low was 37 feet below the surface.  Uber clear!  The lake also gets high marks for high drinking water quality.

Out of sight, out of mind? Basin wide groundwater management policy is a must!

Listen to how the Colorado River basin is drying up fast.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Another battle is brewing over water in the West that could put farmers against city and suburb dwellers.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

A new study from NASA and the University of California at Irvine found an astonishing amount of the groundwater supply has simply disappeared from the Colorado River basin in just a decade.

MONTAGNE: The study used satellite data to measure water stored beneath the ground. Scientists say they’re shocked by what they found. Jay Famiglietti is a senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and a professor at UC Irvine. He co-authored the study. Welcome to the program.

JAY FAMIGLIETTI: Thank you so much for having me.

MONTAGNE: I’d like to begin by having you paint us a picture of the Colorado River basin. In other words, exactly what does it encompass?

FAMIGLIETTI: Well, it provides water to 40 million people. It’s the water lifeline of the Western United States.

MONTAGNE: So when you say water, you’re talking rivers, lakes – things we can see – and groundwater, which we don’t see.

FAMIGLIETTI: That’s right. Actually most of the water that we have on Earth is stored underground, but we don’t see and so we don’t think about it that much. And in some cases, we don’t manage it very well.

MONTAGNE: So this groundwater, if we could see it – you know, if we had – you know, x-ray eyes – or what NASA has.

FAMIGLIETTI: Yes, right.

MONTAGNE: NASA kind of a x-ray ability here.

FAMIGLIETTI: Yes.

MONTAGNE: What would it look like?

FAMIGLIETTI: If we could see it, it would really scare the pants off of us, and that is the massive rates of decline of our groundwater storage. I wish there were an analogous bath tempering, like we see with the falling water levels in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. If we had that sort of visual for what’s happening underground, we’d have much greater awareness and much greater willingness to conserve it and better manage this really precious resource.

MONTAGNE: What did you discover with this data that you’ve analyzed over the last nine years?

FAMIGLIETTI: The Colorado River basin has lost two times the volume of Lake Mead – again that’s the nation’s biggest reservoir. So it’s a huge amount of water. And 75 percent of those losses were coming from groundwater.

MONTAGNE: Wow, that’s actually a startling number.

FAMIGLIETTI: Yes. Yes, it is.

MONTAGNE: Why can’t this be replaced? Reservoirs are replaced. You know, lakes fill back up when they go down.

FAMIGLIETTI: First of all, it’s a huge amount of water. You know, we can’t squeeze from a stone if it’s not raining, it’s not raining. But the other thing is that because it’s underground, it takes a very long time, depending on the geology, and the soils and the rock types, for that water to trickle down to the aquifer. So it can take years to decades.

MONTAGNE: What then are we, those of at the West but we as a nation, looking at here? Farmers depend on this; cities depend on this all through the West – what exactly is going to happen here? A water war?

FAMIGLIETTI: Probably not a water war, but we’re talking about a huge hit to agriculture, to food security, to the economy – not just that just of the Western United States but the nation, and it will have ripple effects around the world.

MONTAGNE: That’s because of course, agriculture in the West is a huge part of both the Western economy and the U.S. economy.

FAMIGLIETTI: That’s right, you know, we took a trip to the Middle East last year and one of the biggest items that we saw in the local markets was California rice. This was in Jordan. So we have a global reach.

MONTAGNE: What effect will this have on cities? A lot of people – that’s where they live.

FAMIGLIETTI: Right, and so that’s an important point. The Colorado River basin supplies water to major metropolitan regions like Los Angeles, and San Diego, and Las Vegas and Phoenix. We’re talking about, in the very near future, the Colorado River basin not being able to meet its deliveries to the different states and the different cities. So if that happens, look at Southern California – if we suddenly lose 25 percent of our water supply – I have no idea what’s going to happen but I think that all hell is going to break loose.

MONTAGNE: One would hope there’s something that could be done to mitigate this.

FAMIGLIETTI: Yes.

MONTAGNE: Not – not able really to replace that water but what can be done that makes sense?

FAMIGLIETTI: Let’s admit that we rely on this groundwater very heavily, and when you look at a big basin like the Colorado River basin, we need a basin-wide groundwater management plan. We haven’t had to have these discussions before because the population hasn’t been as great, and the need for food production haven’t been what they are today. But that era of abundance is over.

MONTAGNE: Jay Famiglietti is senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Thank you very much for talking with us.

FAMIGLIETTI: It’s been my pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.