Water infrastructure

Climate change is threatening America’s water infrastructure as intensifying storms deluge communities and droughts dry up freshwater supplies in regions that aren’t prepared. Severe storms that swept through the South in April 2024 illustrated some of the risks: In New Orleans, rain fell much faster as the city’s pumps could remove it. A water line broke during the storm near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Other communities faced power outages and advisories to boil water for safety before using it. We study infrastructure resilience and sustainability and see a crisis growing, particularly in the U.S. Southeast, where aging water supply systems and stormwater infrastructure are leaving more communities at risk as weather becomes more extreme. Neighborhoods across the New Orleans area flooded on April 10 as the region’s pumps couldn’t keep up with the rainfall. Credit: Reed Timmer. To find the best solutions and b...

In the U.S., most consumers take clean and available fresh water for granted, and water usually becomes front-page news only when there’s a crisis. And the past year has seen its share of water-related crises, whether it’s the effects of a prolonged drought in the U.S. Southwest or floods that covered more than one third of Pakistan last year. But seeing water problems as only environmental disasters does not capture the deeply interconnected nature of water in our society. To mark the release of the book “The Conversation on Water,” a collection of previously published articles on water, The Conversation hosted a webinar with experts with a range of expertise and different perspectives on water issues and potential solutions. The edited text and video clips below convey one or two of the key points each speaker made. The full webinar is available on YouTube. Indigenous scholar Rosalyn LaPier explains Native Americans’ e...