Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Tap water, less than a penny.
So much less, that I could give all 2,000 of you
a glass just like this one
and it would cost only 90 cents.
If, instead, I gave you all a bottle of water,
it would cost over 1,400 dollars.
The difference? How we value water.
This summer, my three garage sales
gave me a chance to study the value of water.
Along with my household trinkets,
I sold water for a dollar a bottle.
I wanted to see if any of my customers
would bargain with me to lower the price,
or complain about what I was charging.
Although I sold a lot of water,
no one did either of those things,
even though that very same dollar
could have paid for an entire day's household use
at the average water rate.
While the bottled water industry is thriving,
the same cannot be said for our water utilities.
But how could that really be true?
You turn on the tap
and good, clean water always comes out.
But what if it didn't?
In May of 2010,
along with 2 million Bostonians,
I got to find out.
A major water main break
cut off supplies to the entire city.
The emergency source they brought in was untreated
and therefore unsafe to drink.
I showed up for my meeting,
ironically enough about better management of water infrastructure --
(Laughter)
-- to find the city in chaos.
Picture: major metropolitan area,
morning commute,
no Starbucks.
Even though Boston's known for its dry sense of humor,
everyone was pretty grumpy.
It took them four days to repair the main
and restore normal service.
What if this or other problems became the norm?
Water is the foundation upon which everything else is built:
our health, our quality of life,
our jobs, our recreation,
even our entertainment.
If the water infrastructure crumbles,
we lose everything else with it.
Without adequate funding,
our water utilities can't ensure a sustainable supply,
proper treatment or reliable distribution.
We often tell visitors to the Southwest,
"It's a dry heat."
While our climate's great for drying towels
or keeping potato chips crisp,
it isn't the best for water resources.
We're using up our groundwater and surface water supplies
a whole lot faster than they're being replenished.
Consider just one example, New Mexico's largest body of water,
the 40-mile-long Elephant Butte Lake,
which a colleague once said is where we take our water out do dry.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
This lake is currently at only 8% of its capacity,
which is pretty bad news for the residents of El Paso,
who count on it for part of their drinking water supply.
As we use up our current sources,
we may have to drill deeper wells,
or bring water from further away,
or be a little more creative, such as wastewater reuse
or deep water desalination
to meet current demand,
all of which is going to be more expensive than our current practices.
To keep us safe and healthy,
water is treated to remove disease-causing organisms
or other contaminants that may be in the water.
To understand why, we need only look to the developing world,
where 3.4 million people die every year
from waterborne disease.
That would be almost like losing twice the population of New Mexico
in a single year from waterborne illness.
Going forward, we may have to add or modify treatment processes
to remove additional contaminants that may be found to be harmful,
either naturally occurring or those caused by our activities.
Two recent events underscore this need:
the chemical spill in West Virginia
that polluted the drinking water for 300,000 people
and the toxins found in Lake Erie,
that contaminated the drinking water for the city of Toledo, Ohio.
Installing and maintaining these treatment units,
these additional treatment units, can be an expensive proposition.
To ensure that a steady source of drinking water reaches our taps
requires an extensive and complex network of water infrastructure,
including pumps, tanks, wells, hydrants, valves
and many others.
If you took the water piping that serves the Albuquerque area alone
and you laid it end to end,
it would stretch all the way from here in central New Mexico
to the tip of Maine.
Unfortunately, just like us,
the water infrastructure won't last forever.
It wears out with use and it has to be replaced
about every 50 to 100 years or so.
New Mexico recently received a C minus
on its water infrastructure report card,
which is only slightly better than the D given to the nation as whole
and not even good enough to get a lottery scholarship
to one of our universities.
(Laughter)
Unfortunately, replacing the infrastructure the second time around
is a little more difficult, more expensive,
and it would take nearly a billion dollars
to address New Mexico's currently identified infrastructure needs.
While these issues facing drinking water may seem daunting,
I believe they're actually an opportunity,
an opportunity to put water first
and invest in our future.
Water is unlike other utilities.
It's much more of a partnership
between water utility leaders and water system customers.
Our water leaders are often very reluctant
to charge a sustainable rate
if they fear that customers don't want to pay.
But we can change this dynamic.
We can let our utility leaders know
that we are ready to make the necessary investment in water
and secure our future.
Our water utilities have done an amazing job thus far
with the amount of funding they've had,
but imagine what they could do
if, instead of buying a few of these,
we invested in this.
So I invite you the next time you pay your water bill,
raise a glass and toast to a brighter water future,
because, after all,
water is life.
(Applause)