Remembering the Big Picture

As a practicing hydrogeologist, I have assisted many people and communities who have problem wells or water shortages. But when I recently experienced my own water shortage, I realized how much we in developed countries depend on and take for granted that the water will just be there, and will be fit to drink, when we turn on the tap. In late May of this year, thunderstorms and a few tornados rumbled across the midwestern United States, including our home in southern Wisconsin. My wife and I live in a rural area and are accustomed to thunderstorms in the spring. We are also used to occasional electric power outages, which happen three or four times a year and usually last from 15 min to an hour. So, we weren't especially surprised or worried when our lights went out during the storm. Suddenly, our home was silent except for the rain on the windows—no TV, no radio, no internet, no refrigerator, no lights—and no water, because we depend on our domestic well and pump. Our system usually holds enough water and pressure for a couple of toilet flushes and face washes, but that's it. When the blackout lasts 1 to 2 h, no problem. But when it lasts for 24, then 48, then 60 h, as it did this time, we realize how much we take our well, and our water, for granted. We had no water stockpiled. Fortunately, I was able to drive to a convenience store and purchase a few gallons of “pure spring water” to get us through the requisite drinking, face washing, and tooth brushing, but flushing the toilets was a more complicated matter. Our older home has standard toilets, which require about 7 gal per flush (unlike the newer low-flow toilets). I found myself lugging buckets of water up a hill from a nearby stream (and 7 gal weighs around 58 pounds) for flushing toilets and watering our neighbors' horses.

Obviously, my power outage was just a minor inconvenience compared to the problems of billions of people faced with real disasters and perpetual water shortages. Based on research by Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2016), UNICEF reports that “…four billion people—almost two thirds of the world's population—experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year, and over two billion people live in countries where water supply is inadequate (https://www.unicef.org/wash/water-scarcity).” This experience made me contemplate the scope of groundwater science and wonder if we are emphasizing the right things in our work and ignoring the big picture while we focus on the small stuff.

Groundwater's publisher, Wiley, lists the top four issue categories addressed by papers in the journal during the past year as, (1) groundwater flow models; (2) groundwater/aquifer recharge; (3) flow/solute transport simulation; and (4) groundwater solute composition and concentrations. These are all important and interesting topics but may not directly address one of the fundamental issues of our time—global water supply and sustainability, the topic of a recent excellent review paper by Scanlon et al. (2023).

Several years ago, I was fortunate to spend time in Zimbabwe and observed the effort that local villagers (usually women or children) put forth in fetching water by hand or head (Figure 1) to meet daily needs. I visited a village that had a well recently installed by some international goodwill organization. Unfortunately, that well stood unused because the pump had failed, and no repair parts were available. Instead, I saw women and children walking nearly a mile to the local river to obtain water. I doubt that these people were worried about PFAS, nitrates, or other trace chemicals; their goal was just to obtain enough water to get through the day—that's the big picture for them. The pages of Groundwater contain numerous excellent articles covering the landscape of groundwater science, but we need to remember that many people in the world are desperate to just have enough water to go about their lives. The small quantities needed by rural families in impoverished areas will not impact global sustainability. These people don't really need new scientific advances or solutions to global problems; they do need implementation of reliable and robust groundwater practices in their local areas. Groundwater welcomes articles and/or commentaries on how to accomplish this.