About Us
Imagine a world where water is viewed, managed and valued as one resource. A world where the silo thinking that has kept clean water, drinking water, stormwater and water reuse interests segregated erodes away – and a movement toward meeting future challenges on a watershed basis, with a focus on sustainability and green cities emerges [...]
Become a Member
Your membership supports the U.S. Water Alliance’s work in exploring the complex issue of water sustainability. Recurring gifts – monthly, quarterly, or biannually – allow the U.S. Water Alliance to plan for future developments by improving public awareness that advances holistic, watershed-based approaches to water quality and quantity challenges. Our annual membership year is based [...]
U.S. Water Prize
The United States Water Prize honors individuals, institutions, and organizations that have made an outstanding achievement in the advancement of sustainable solutions to our nation’s water challenges. Created, sponsored and administered by the U.S. Water Alliance, the United States Water Prize is the first of its kind to recognize successful efforts in protecting and improving [...]
Blog: Ben Grumbles' Pipeline
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Openly Materialistic
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Upstream Winning
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“Cut and Dry”
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“One Water” Resolution
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Noel Net Loss
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Weatherizing Water
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Scare City
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Hippie Infrastructure
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Food for Thought
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Sparrows and Canaries
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Openly Materialistic
When it comes to water sustainability, materials matter and so does the process of selecting the best, brightest, and greenest of products and services. Take pipes, for instance. Different shapes, sizes, and materials with different strengths and weaknesses are available in the marketplace. My own view is that a “pipes of all types” approach makes [...]
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Upstream Winning
Improving and sustaining watersheds and communities always needs some upstream thinking and doing. This year’s 3 winners of the U.S. Water Prize are succeeding in different ways and contexts but all share a willingness to think outside the “box”– whether the box is a county line, a factory fence, or a bureau boundary. The Freshwater [...]
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“Cut and Dry”
Federal water budgets have never been as robust as water boosters would like, even during the brief and heady days of 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulation, but things are about to get leaner and meaner. Looming sequestration cuts, fiscal cliffs, and agency “food” fights over scarce federal dollars add up to a bleak, [...]
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“One Water” Resolution
I’m not keen on New Year’s Resolutions (especially the ephemeral ones that come and go faster than desert rain, which I happen to love) but 2013 deserves at least one good and lasting Resolution. Here’s mine: I resolve to partner with individuals and organizations like never before to help advance “One Water” – the concept [...]
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Noel Net Loss
As friends and family gather for the holidays, I’m reminded of certain water policy rituals that once played out, like clockwork in December in the nation’s capital, and I’m asking myself this question: Whatever happened to the “no net loss” of wetlands policy? I have clear memories of policy battles waged in December 2002, 2003, [...]
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Weatherizing Water
Hurricane (turned Superstorm, turned painful lesson) Sandy underscores some of the basic challenges in the ever-swirling world of water, weather, and climate change. Through it all, water managers must find practical ways to cope with evolving conditions and increasing energy costs, while politicians and policy makers mud wrestle over climate causation, carbon taxes, and cap [...]
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Scare City
Water stress can strike fear into the hearts of communities, businesses, and ecosystems but a publicly-supported, scientifically-defended reuse movement can ease the anxiety and pave the way for sustainability even in the face of scarcity. On October 23, 2012, GE released the results of a survey on public attitudes and knowledge levels in the U.S., [...]
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Hippie Infrastructure
The greening of gray and the softening of hard has come a long way in the last 40 years, but this “nature-based,” green infrastructure movement still has a ways to go. It got a boost, though, in September in Washington DC and it’s going to get another big bump in October in Cincinnati Ohio. In [...]
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Food for Thought
There’s no better time than now for the American public to appreciate the “water-energy-food nexus,” or as I like to call it, the “liquid triangle of life”. To farmers across the U.S., particularly the Midwest, it’s painfully obvious: The historic drought, sweeping across the land like a silent tsunami, is wreaking economic, environmental, and emotional [...]
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Sparrows and Canaries
Water managers and innovators are only as good as the data they have and the tools they can use, and when it comes to today’s toughest challenges–such as nutrients–they need all the help they can get to monitor, model, assess and predict. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) helps in many ways but one of the [...]
