Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the United Nations declaring March 22 to be World Water Day – an opportunity for world leaders and all people to rededicate themselves to the careful and sustainable management of the planet’s precious and very finite freshwater resources. While North America enjoys one of the world’s great freshwater treasures – the Great Lakes Basin – there is still much to be done, here as around the world, to insure access to clean fresh water everywhere.
Two Cornell University researchers with expertise in water resource management and public access are available for interviews.
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Susan Riha is the director of the New York State Water Resources Institute and a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She says:
“Even as developing countries are undertaking efforts to provide adequate water supply and sanitation infrastructure for all, the U.S. faces problems of maintaining its existing water infrastructure. Federal funding for water-related infrastructure projects has been on the decline in the U.S. for the past few decades while the number of projects needing support increases every year.
“This situation calls for more cooperative decision-making at local, state and federal levels. Events such as droughts, floods and other climate change impacts will affect the way we interact with water, so careful planning is important to mitigate those impacts.
“As part of World Water Day and the International Year of the Water Cooperation, let’s resolve to set aside institutional differences and work towards the common goal of universal access to water, sanitation and a clean environment.” Fore more information, see: http://wri.eas.cornell.edu.
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Katherine Bunting-Howarth is associate director of the New York Sea Grant program and a fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. She says:
“New York State is fortunate to be within the Great Lakes Basin and have access to the largest concentration of the world’s freshwater. Managing this resource sustainably, for future generations is imperative.
“New York Sea Grant’s role is to promote research needed in order to best enjoy, utilize and manage these resources and to disseminate the results to the residents, business owners, students and teachers, resource managers and others who can best use it.” For more information, see: www.nyseagrant.org.
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