Learning (At Last) to Value Water
In 1774, Ben Franklin said, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of the well.”
“He was wrong,” author Robert Glennon told an audience of about 100 Tuesday at the Alumni Memorial Union at Marquette University. Even as wells and water supplies move ominously closer to dry in parts of the United States, the public and many policy makers are not responding in ways that could avert major impacts, warned Glennon, whose books include Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It, published last spring.
“We don’t value water in the United States,” Glennon told the session, part of the “On the Issues” series hosted by Mike Gousha, Marquette Law School Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy.
Wisconsin is not standing at the precipice of a water crisis to the same degree as metropolitan Atlanta and much of the western United States, but it would still be wise to undertake public education efforts here and to make more effective water use decisions, Glennon said.