Powering a Nation

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2013 Special Report: Powering A Nation Presents: Over Water Under Fire

The upcoming interactive documentary, €œOver Water Under Fire,€ combines a video narrative with motion graphics and text to present the Colorado river as a living timeline of our nation’s innovations and exploitations with water. The river's uncertain future echoes the precarious state of water resources in this country.

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Meet the Team: Spencer Bakalar

For Powering a Nation, Spencer's roles as a student contributor include video editor, videographer, photographer and writer.

Spencer is a rising senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she studies visual communication and history. She is drawn to document the human condition — what drives us, what inspires us, what we live for each day. At UNC, Spencer has worked on award-winning team projects, from Badin, N.C., all the way to Uganda as a photographer, videographer and video editor. In 2011, Spencer was named North Carolina Student Photographer of the Year. She is currently preparing for a semester abroad in London where she will pursue personal projects before returning to finish her senior year.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned about water?

How prevalent it is. When I first walked into the newsroom and saw the whiteboard covered with all of the water shot ideas, I was taken back with how often we use water in everyday situations and how little we realize it.

If you could be any water animal, what would you be and why?

I would be a beaver. Mostly because they know how to dam things up, which of what I've seen this summer, is a pretty amazing feat!

What’s your favorite water memory?

I have lived a water life. As a 5-year-old, sprinting barefoot across blistering hot sand and feeling the sweet relief of the first gushes of the ocean. As a 10-year-old, dancing in the rain before getting scared by the lightning. As a 20-year-old, free-falling above the Nile River, only to bounce back up again before breaking the water's surface.

Who or what inspires you?

I'm inspired by the people I meet when my camera is present. Each person, each story has shown me a different side of life, a different strength, and I learn more from my subjects than they will ever know.

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Our own team covered the dam removal and made a beautiful video of a Native American tribe spiritually connected to the river. Video available when the site launches on July 31.

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Meet the Team: Stephanie Bullins

For Powering a Nation, Stephanie's roles include marketer, social media editor, programmer and quote wall curator.

Stephanie graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in multimedia journalism and English. She was the managing editor and web designer for Uncharted, UNC's first arts magazine, programmer for Carolina Photojournalism Workshop 2012, and web developer for Resound, an online music magazine. Stephanie received honors for her thesis on Ernest Hemingway and recognition as a public service scholar. She is also a recipient of the Phillip's Travel Scholarship, allowing her to backpack Europe to take cooking classes in the fall. Though she never formally studied strategic communication, Powering a Nation has allowed Stephanie to pursue her love of Twitter and delve deeper into the fascinating world of marketing.

What's the most interesting thing you've learned about water?

Because ice is less dense and floats on water, bodies of water freeze on the surface but stay liquid below, allowing fish to keep swimming underneath.

If you could be any water animal, what would you be?

A sea otter. They hold hands while they're sleeping on their backs in the water to keep from drifting apart, and I think that's the sweetest thing ever.

What's your favorite water memory?

All of my family trips to the beach when I was younger — running around with my sister and dad catching crabs at night, waking up early with mom and going to the beach before we woke everyone else up, watching a lunar eclipse on the boardwalk, my whole family swimming out as far as we could and just floating for hours.

Who or what inspires you?

People who are passionate about what they do. I want to feel that way too.

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Meet the Team: Dylan Gilroy

Dylan's roles for Powering a Nation include programmer, graphic designer, researcher and general newsroom entertainer.

Dylan is a graduate of the University of North Carolina with a degree in graphic design and a minor in linguistics. Once a beautiful, vibrant baby, Dylan grew up to enjoy web coding and graphic design. Through the school of Journalism and Mass Communication, he had the opportunity to take courses fostering both, and along the way got to develop websites for Living Galapagos, a UNC web-documentary project started in 2009, Reese News, the school's day-to-day digital newsroom, and Powering a Nation. Dylan’s other interests involve playing piano, drawing, and wishing he were better at Spanish.

What is the most interesting thing you've learned about water?

It is polar which allows it to easily clean other polar molecules. However, for carbon chains and other non-polar molecules, water has little cleaning effect. For this reason, soap is required to gather oils and trap them in a manner that can be whisked-away by water.

If you could be any water animal, what would you be and why?

A marine iguana, because they are the closest thing nature has to reptilian whales, and that makes them cool.

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Meet the Team: Kelly McHugh

Kelly's roles for Powering a Nation include visual editor, graphic designer, motion graphic artist and researcher.

Kelly is a graphic designer and motion graphic artist who recently graduated from UNC with a degree in visual journalism. As an undergraduate, she was the managing editor of The Daily Tar Heel, where she led the first redesign in more than 10 years. Kelly was a graphics intern for National Geographic Magazine in 2011 and the art director of the Journalism School's first iPad magazine, Bean & Leaf. She also researched color use in information graphics for her undergraduate honors thesis. Kelly has been the recipient of many awards, including the Stuart Sechreist Award for the outstanding graduate in visual communication and the first place award for infographics from the MSU student Society for News Design competition. When she isn't designing, Kelly spends her time feeding her addiction to Pinterest.

What is the most interesting thing you've learned about water?

While researching motion graphics, I found the statistic that one billion people live on less than 1.5 gallons a day. I realized that means that 1 billion people live on less water than I use to flush the toilet. To think that there's such a disparity in water consumption is really crazy to me.

If you could be any water animal, what would you be and why?

I would be a mermaid, probably because I was obsessed with The Little Mermaid as a kid. Who wouldn't want to be like Ariel?

What's your favorite water memory?

I went on a cruise to the Caribbean for Spring break this year. Being in the middle of the ocean without any land in site was an awesome experience. It really makes you realize how much water is on our planet.

Who or what inspires you?

A lot of the project was inspired by a video illustrating the danger of water through ink drop that spread in water. The visuals as well as the message are so compelling that I kept watching the video as I was designing the motion graphics.

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Newsroom debriefing after a #fracking research phone call. @joshabla @vpatchet (Taken by @sbullins with Instagram)

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Meet the Team: Jon Kasbe

For Powering a Nation, Jon's roles include videographer, video editor, negotiator and conceptualizer.

Jon likes meeting people and finding stories. Video is a way for him to share the stories he cares about.

At least that's what Jon says about himself when he's asked to write a bio. Jon is a rising senior at the University of North Carolina studying communications. He has worked with Students of the World, Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, Reese Felts Digital Newsroom and Living Galapagos. Jon is the 2012 Hearst National Multimedia champion, and his videos have also won recognition from Pictures of the Year International, National Press Photographer's Association and Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

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Meet the Team: Josh Davis

For Powering a Nation, Josh's roles include videographer, video editor, social media consultant, writer and copy editor.

Josh Davis graduated in May 2012 as a Roy H. Park Fellow in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC. His master’s thesis, the undocumentary, told stories about immigrant youth living without papers in North Carolina. While at UNC, Josh produced award-winning videos for multimedia projects Reframing Mexico and Finding the Uwharries. He also coached photojournalism students in the 2012 Carolina Photojournalism Workshop.

Previously, Josh worked as an editor on news and documentary projects for RollingStone.com, PBS Frontline, Arte and the Travel Channel. He has served as adjunct faculty for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University, and taught courses as an Apple Certified Final Cut Pro editing instructor. In his free time, Josh enjoys traveling and practicing Spanish.

What is the most interesting thing you've learned about water?

Water is everywhere. Half of all freshwater in the U.S. is used for energy production. Most the other half is used for food. It's in the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the computer I'm writing on right now—everywhere.

What's your favorite water memory?

The beach. Every time I have been to the beach. Turning my mind off while listening to the sound of waves. Sitting through a tropical storm while gazing into the ocean. I'd say my connection to water is more about the feelings and experiences I have around water. It's about how I am instinctively attracted to water when I travel, how I always have water at my desk at work, and how clear-headed and peaceful I feel when going for a swim.

What would you like people to take away from 100 Gallons?

My hope is that this project enables people to think more deeply about how critical resource a resource water is in our lives. Because, at present, the threat to available and clean freshwater is real, and it is growing everyday. 

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Check out a guest blog from our editor-in-chief on Scientific American this morning. It's a sneak peek of one of our articles, called "Smelling the Rain".

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12,356 miles, 37 interviews and 7 hours in a sewer later, 100gallons.org will launch July 31. Here's a trailer to hold you over.

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Meet the Team: Kelly Izlar

For Powering a Nation, Kelly’s roles include editor-in-chief, writer, copy-editor and researcher.

Kelly is a science communicator and writer. She received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from Appalachian State University and recently completed her master’s degree in medical and science journalism at the University of North Carolina, where she was a Roy H. Park Fellow. She spent much of the past five years writing about science, grappling with multimedia tools and researching young solar analogue stars and exoplanet host stars at the Dark Sky Observatory on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

What is the most interesting thing you've learned about water?

A molecule of water is slightly more negative on one side, which is good for ripping other molecules apart, and slightly more positive on the other, which is good for building up new molecules.

So water is actually the manifestation of an ancient deity – destroying with one hand and creating with the other.

If you could be any water animal, what would you be and why?

Octopus, because octopi have no bones, eight legs and three hearts. Not sure why I would want that. More heart is good, right?

What's your favorite water memory?

Hot springs. All of them.

Who or what inspires you?

Recently, I’ve been inspired by people who realize the amount of time they have here is uncertain. They start doing radical things like quit jobs that make them unhappy, move to places they want to live, and take risks they wouldn’t usually take.

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Tracking the Water

Where does water come from? Where does it go? How much do we have? These questions might be simple, but many Americans can’t answer them.

We notice water when it’s annoying (it’s raining when we’ve got big plans) or when we need it (it’s not raining and our tomatoes are starting to droop). Few of us know much about water before it comes into our daily lives and after it leaves.

Hydrologists, water quality experts, water researchers and investigative journalists helped us to answer some of these questions.

  1. How much water do we have on this planet?

There are 332.5 million cubic miles of water on our planet, according to the U.S. Geological Society, but hydrologists say that nobody really knows how much water is here. We’ve never had to know because we’ve always had enough.

So while we can estimate how much is in the oceans, when it comes to ground water, rivers, lakes and soil moisture, we just don’t know. Satellite data tells us how water moves from area to area, but many of the global estimates are simply guesses based on assumptions.

2. Are we running out of water?

Water can’t be destroyed. The total amount of water on the Earth isn’t changing, and it hasn’t changed much for more than 4 billion years. But as the population has grown and the climate has changed, many places are reaching the limits of their supply.

Water moves. We’ve always built our homes, cities and civilizations near water sources. It makes sense not to lug water from miles away if we don’t have to. But with the shifts in global climate, water is dwindling in the places where we’ve always been able to find it and moving to places where it will be harder to access.

3. Where does our water come from?

Most of the water Americans use every day comes from rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other surface water. But the vast majority of the planet’s available fresh water is stored in the ground. Want to know where your water comes from? Check out the EPA’s Local Drinking Water Information. 

4. How much water is available for us to use? 

The majority of our water is in the ocean, and we can’t drink salt water – at least not until it’s been stripped of the salt. Having water on the planet and having access to it are two different issues. Water needs to be available in a form we can use.

Only 3 percent is fresh at any given time. Of that fresh water, almost 70 percent is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. Considering a human can’t live longer than a few days without water, the portion available for drinking only does us good if it’s nearby and clean.

5. How does water move?

The water cycle describes how water moves over the surface and through the soil. Water evaporates from the ocean into the atmosphere and returns to the ocean. A portion comes back as rain and snow over the land and is re-evaporated; sinks beneath the soil, recharging the groundwater; or runs off and returns to the ocean via streams and rivers. What the land loses, the ocean or the atmosphere gains, and vice-versa.

We humans have a big footprint on the water cycle. By pumping ground water, piping surface water, desalinating ocean water and melting ice caps, we’re moving water around to places where it would not have been otherwise. 

6. What effect do we have on our drinking water?

Nearly 30 percent of global freshwater lies underground. Millions of people around the globe live in dry areas and depend heavily on finite stores of groundwater. It doesn’t rain much in these regions, and with the demands of a growing population, we’re using groundwater faster than it’s being replaced by rain and snowfall.

A recent study from the University of California, Irvine, found that between 2003 and 2010, agriculture sucked 25 million acre-feet out of California’s Central Valley aquifers— almost enough to fill Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.

When we pump water out of the ground, most of it will not return there. Water filled up these underground aquifers during the last ice age when the climate was cool and wet. Now the areas are much drier, and the water won’t come back.

When we pump groundwater, some of it’s incorporated into the crops we grow, some of it’s piped off to neighborhoods, and some evaporates and falls as rain elsewhere. So while we’re not destroying it, we’re reducing the amount of our available drinking water.

7. Why should people who live in water-rich areas care?

When water evaporates from dry areas like the southwestern United States and Australia, it won’t return there because it doesn’t rain much in the desert. Instead that water will dump into areas that don’t need more rain like the Tropics and the Pacific Northwest.

Punishing storms and floods cause sewage to overflow into the water supply. This was the case after Hurricane Katrina, which was why people in New Orleans were told to boil their water before drinking it.

8. Is there a global water crisis?

Serious water problems exist all around the world. Floods in the Amazon surged to a 40-year high, ground water in India has decreased at a rate of one foot per year, and in 18 months, more than 7,000 Haitians died from a water-borne disease. Some observers like to bundle these problems up and call it a global water crisis, but these events and tragedies generally are not connected.

Most water problems need local solutions. If Atlanta runs out of water, Californians can’t help. The only people who can tackle the water problems in Atlanta are the people who live in Atlanta.

9. What’s the future of water?

Most Americans under the age of 50 will be confronted with water policy issues in their lifetime. Abundant water today doesn’t mean abundant water in 10 years. Millions of people live in arid and semi-arid regions where there is not enough water. We’re going to have to figure out how to move, trade and share water across political boundaries.

We need to work together to make sure that drinkable water is accessible and available in our communities. If we haven’t done anything significant by 2050, many places will have reached the limits of their water supply.

10. How can I help?

Water is cheap in this country, so people rarely notice it. The first thing you should do is look at your water bill. Try to understand how much water you use each day.

There are simple, small ways you can cut back on water use: For many Americans, watering the yard accounts for half of their total water use. Toilets are next in line, so don’t flush every time you pee — that’s why you have a toilet lid.

The amount of electricity an average American uses requires 250 gallons of water daily, so another way to save is to turn off your lights. As soon as you start paying attention to water consumption, you can use less.

  Jay Famiglietti is a hydrologist and a professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is the founding director of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling. Famiglietti’s research group uses satellites and develops computer models to track changing freshwater availability around the globe. He recently appeared in the water documentary “Last Call at the Oasis.”

Byron Tapley is the mission principal investigator for the Gravity Research and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the first NASA Earth System Pathfinder Mission to achieve orbit. He served as a member of numerous NASA committees and as a principal investigator for seven NASA missions. He holds the Clare Cockrell Williams Centennial Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas and has served as Director of the Center for Space Research since it was established in 1981.

Charles Fishman is an award-winning investigative and magazine journalist. He is a senior writer at Fast Company and the author of The Big Thirst and The Wal-Mart Effect. He is a former metro and national reporter for The Washington Post, and was a reporter and editor at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

Pete Kolsky is a professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the associate director of Teaching and Learning for the Water Institute. He is a former Senior Water and Sanitation Specialist in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank with more than 35 years’ experience in the issues of water, sanitation and health in developing countries.

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Water in Our World

This article is a Viewpoint. Viewpoints are guest editorials written by scientists, journalists, activists, industry workers, politicians, religious leaders and more. This summer, our Viewpoints will focus on various aspects of water. If you are interested in contributing a Viewpoint, please e-mail us.

Water, water everywhere, wrote the poet, nor any drop to drink.  Water, a molecule comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, defines our world.  It makes up more than 50 percent of our bodies and covers 71 percent of our planet’s surface. Most of us take the presence of clean water for granted.  When was the last time you turned on the tap and nothing came out? And we generally think of water as a good thing. But what about the destructive power of too little – drought – or too much – floods?

At Carolina we aspire to help solve the world’s biggest problems – and problems associated with water are some of the biggest. For example, the growing demand for clean, accessible water that helps ensure national security and supports developing economies around the world. We urgently need to better understand climate change so that we can develop solutions to rising sea levels, drought and other extreme weather events.

That’s why for the first time ever, Carolina faculty have adopted a theme for a campus-wide academic focus.  For the next two years, we are going to be thinking and talking about water, water everywhere in our world.  Our aim is to energize and guide activity across diverse schools, programs, centers and institutes. We’ll be addressing the scientific and health questions as well as economic, legal and political perspectives. We’ll also be engaging the arts and humanities to help explore the historical and cultural aspects of water-related issues and to celebrate water through artistic performance.  Our goal is to not only understand but to promote practical problem-solving using real-world challenges. 

We are also involved in the U.S. Water Partnership, a public-private initiative announced recently by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The UNC Water Institute has joined with the Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF), Global Water Challenge, Environmental Law Institute, World Resources Institute, the U.S. State Department, and other public sector, corporate and civil society organizations to share U.S. water management expertise with the rest of the world. 

The University is already a partner in local water-related sustainability initiatives. Even as the campus has expanded, we’ve reduced our potable water consumption by 40 percent through a combination of conservation, reclamation and stormwater management.  Working in conjunction with the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, these projects benefit the local community by freeing up capacity in the area’s water resources. When the next drought comes, Carolina and our neighbors will be more resilient as a result.

Co-chairs for the Water in Our World initiative are Jamie Bartram, who directs the UNC Water Institute, and Terry Rhodes, senior associate dean of fine arts and humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.  We want everyone – students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends – to join the conversation. To submit ideas for events and activities that you would like to see during the duration of the two-year theme, or, if you are interested in getting involved on either an individual or group level, go here: watertheme.unc.edu

Exploring humanity’s relationship to the substance that nurtures and sustains life is critical on multiple levels. Secretary Clinton noted its global strategic importance when she said, “We believe this Water Partnership will help map out our route to a more water secure world: a world where no one dies from water-related diseases, where water does not impede social or economic development, and where no war is ever fought over water.”

Within our own State of North Carolina, there are plenty of water-related issues that will receive attention over the two years. Coastal communities are studying rising sea levels and the best ways to protect against hurricanes. Natural gas extraction is of great interest to Piedmont communities, which will have to consider how this industry uses water and how it protects underground water resources on which health and development depend.  And communities throughout the state must grapple with how to supply a growing population, support new agricultural and industrial initiatives, and prepare for another drought like that of 2008.

There are no lack of questions, problems and challenges when it comes to water.  We’ve made a good start of posing some of the potential solutions and ways to sustain our community, our nation and our world.  But we need to look at a range of ideas and innovative applications, at both adaptive and transformational changes.  That is just the kind of thing that a research university with a liberal arts focus can do better than any other institution in the world. Carolina’s expertise at interdisciplinary problem solving makes this a great place to “kick-start the blue revolution,” as National Geographic recently described it.  Together our efforts can make UNC the center of water expertise and innovation and, more importantly, make the world a better place for all of us.

— Chancellor Holden Thorp, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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On the heels of a major fracking demonstration in Ohio, scientists fear groundwater contamination in neighboring Pennsylvania. 

For more information on groundwater contamination and fracking, check out what the EPA found in Wyoming.

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Something a little different for Waterfall Wednesday: This is a picture of a waterfall coming out of what’s left of Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River in the Olympic Peninsula. The dams went up in the beginning of the 20th century and provided power to most of the peninsula for many years. But they also blocked the salmon runs up the Elwha and covered the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s creation site in over 100 feet of water for more than a century. Over time, the Olympic Peninsula grew too big for the dams and began to draw their power from other sources. In mid 1990s, the dams provided only half the power needed to run one paper mill, and the salmon population had been decimated. So Congress voted to remove the dams. Experts say it could take 30 years before the river re-establishes something akin to its historic flow. The lower dam was completely removed last year, and the Glines Canyon Dam is being lowered blast by blast. This picture was taken on June 15, 2012. It probably looks different now, and it will not exist at all by next summer.

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Programmer's shirt today. #waterpowerslife (Taken with Instagram)