How Do We Cope With Demands For Water As We Enter An Era Of Scarcity?

Urban water systems in California and elsewhere face a time of reckoning, warns Richard Luthy, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Groundwater aquifers are being depleted and rivers are drying up, even as demand for water keeps climbing. Yet cities can no longer meet society’s thirst by importing more water from far away. Luthy, however, is optimistic. As director of the National Science Foundation’s ReNUWIt effort—short for Re-Inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure—he helps to develop alternative sources through wastewater recycling, stormwater capture and desalination.