By: Cynthia Adams | Photos By: Nancy Evelyn

American scientists and conservationists are conducting vital research concerning water policies. The ongoing struggle is to find common ground, and understanding, between the general public and policy makers that have a stake in their findings.

Three years ago, something unusual occurred in Boston. The workshop was neither large, nor prestigious as workshops go. But it signaled a seachange of its own. The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, CUAHSI, who conduct a great deal of National Science Foundation-sponsored research, designed the unusual meeting. CUAHSI summoned together an assortment of filmmakers, environmentalists, and freelance journalists to serve as panelists.

They wrote online:
“We need to communicate the results of our water research to the public now more than ever. Society needs the results of our research; the public must understand the importance of water management; and we need to justify the investment NSF and other funding agencies are making in our research.”

How to communicate science and policy underscored the meeting.

The idea of water wars—a cringe-worthy term for those who mediate better water management—once seemed incredible. But only a few years after public awareness has risen, especially for those living in water-strapped areas of the country, this is a term of growing familiarity.

It is plain-speak and attention-getting. A water war is a term the public can easily understand, even if policy makers loathe it. By now, having cycled through drought and water scarcity throughout the United States and the world, we understand it slightly better.

Water is a precious, little-understood asset. Whereas water scarcities were once unknown, they are now sharply familiar in this century. Many cities have imposed restrictions upon water usage given periodic or chronic drought cycles. Many cities have been forced to buy water from less-drought prone municipalities; the access must be brokered. Out West, the situation is understood to be of utmost importance. Terms like sustainability are also widely familiar—no science degree required. According to Stanford University’s Hamilton Project, there is highest population growth within the nation’s driest states—and highest domestic use occurs within those same states.

By some estimation, water scarcities and warring over water rights may become a defining issue of this century. Closer to home, they have been waged for some time. According to the Southern Environmental Law Center, intra-state disputes over water usage have been ongoing since the early 1990s. In the late 1990s, agreements were developed to help regulate agreements among states sharing water basins. But some of those agreements, such as those negotiated between Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, a tri-state area with a large stake in water negotiations, have been hotly contested since. Some of those agreements are being contested and appealed to the Supreme Court.

Droughts, population shifts, and water-dependent industries take their toll. Water usage by those up river challenge those impacted down river. Stakeholders must negotiate through hotly contested rights to water, pitting essentials such as drinking and agriculture versus green lawns and recreation.

Two years ago, the Graduate School Magazine reported on the tri-state water issues in the winter 2014 edition. At that time, we reported on doctoral student Shannon Boney, who worked with the ACF Stakeholders Group—a consortium representing the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee- Flint basin. The ACF impacts the three states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Also, a separate negotiation was in play between Alabama and Georgia over the ACT, or the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa basin.

Negotiations among the stakeholders in this, of course, entail communication. Stakeholders—a catch all term— include the general public, governmental, educational and policy making figures, as well as environmental stewards and volunteers.

How policy matters are communicated becomes particularly critical whenever public agreements must be struck. And when the stakeholders represent a slew of varying interests, with assorted biases, what happens to negotiations? And what happens when they fail to understand or even accept the science underpinning the agreements at stake? Those stakes are particularly high when agreements for water rights are brokered.

Enter anthropology doctoral student Danielle Jensen-Ryan.

Jensen-Ryan understands communicating science to a variety of audiences; she understands how good science and good policy making suffer. As a graduate student in Wyoming, she did field work concerning the environmental impact of mining and uranium—another loaded subject.

Her current fieldwork in Georgia is part of a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. The grant supports her travels doing ethnographic interviews with key actors involved with water policy. She hopes to uncover best practices that bridge science and policy. When she graduates next year, Jensen-Ryan hopes to continue working with publicly engaged research.

EXAMINING WATER POLICY

Jensen-Ryan’s project, under principal investigator and UGA anthropologist Laura German, examines three water policy case studies in the state of Georgia: (1) the 2008 Georgia Comprehensive Statewide Water Policy, (2) the 2012 Georgia Moratorium on Groundwater Withdrawals, and (3) policy debates related to stream buffers or riparian zones.

In each case, the creation and implementation of water policies included variously affected organizations and scientists.

The National Science Foundation funded project sponsored ethnographic interviews undertaken by Jensen-Ryan to determine “whether and how science was integrated into each water policy and what boundary spanning processes affected the outcome. An analysis of media accounts and secondary documents will more fully explain the factors which may have influenced whether and how science was integrated in each case study,” she explains.