At the “Future of Water Conference,” held last Friday at Plimoth Plantation, dozens of experts and advocates made it clear that waste water, storm water, recreational water and – the most dependent piece – drinking water should all be addressed together.
PLYMOUTH – You don’t miss your water, the old blues song says, until your well runs dry. But it’s more complicated than that.
At the “Future of Water Conference,” held last Friday at Plimoth Plantation, dozens of experts and advocates made it clear that waste water, storm water, recreational water and – the most dependent piece – drinking water should all be addressed together.
The stated goal of the conference, put on by the Watershed Action Alliance of Southeastern Massachusetts (WAASM) was “to provide education, information and networking for clean, plentiful and free-flowing water.”
But the conference did not shy away from addressing the complex obstacles to ensuring that flow, providing the latest information on water management efforts in local communities, as well as state and national regulations and how technology can help manage water in all its forms.
There were seven major components to the conference: fundraising for non-profit watershed associations; science and data collection; outreach techniques; storm water; drinking water; waste water; and recreational waters.
Alex Mansfield, ecology program director at the Kingston-based Jones River Watershed Association, moderated the conference on the latest methods of gathering data.
“We wanted to show how techniques, like citizen science and new emerging technologies (like tiny sensors which can float in the water and provide data on water movement, temperature, salinity etc.), can help assess the biological and chemical condition of water resources,” Mansfield said.
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