 I'd like to welcome you on behalf of the National Academy to our event this afternoon. My name is Elizabeth Ada and I'm the Director of the Water Science and Technology Board here at the Academy. It's a real pleasure for us to have the chance to host you all here working together with the AGU and specifically the hydrology section. It's been enjoyable for us to envision what this event would look like and it's been a real treat to work with the folks that through the AGU and our staff team here. We have a wonderful panel this afternoon going to look at this important issue of water science and how it informs and supports policy and decision making and hopefully we'll have an opportunity at the end too for a lot of discussion with all of you from the audience so do line up your questions and get those ready. I have a couple of housekeeping announcements before I turn the floor over to other folks here. The first one is that after the event closes today at 5 we will have a reception here and that will be off to my right just in the corner in this room and you're all welcome to join us for that reception and that will last for an hour so from 5 to 6 p.m. and hopefully you'll be able to carry the conversations further along with that. Again from housekeeping point of view there are restrooms off to my left diagonally in that direction between the two exit signs will be over there so please avail yourselves of those yourselves if those are needed. And finally in regards to any fire alarms that you've found you're our guests here. We want to make sure you all are safe while you're in our house and so if an alarm should sound don't pay attention to the exit signs that are above you right here. Those particular doors are actually locked for security purposes however the door through which you came in off to my right immediately outside of that door literally about five feet to the right through that door is a fire exit that you may use so please if an alarm should sound just gather your small things with you exit through that door. Our muster point is the National Building Museum it's on the corner of 5th and F Street it's a gigantic red brick building you can't miss it so we would gather there on the lawn and so the security folks would allow us back into the building. And with that said what I'd like to do is turn the floor over to Scott Piver to welcome you on behalf of the HGU to Scott please. Well thank you very much for coming on behalf of the American Geophysical Union and the hydrology section of the American Geophysical Union I do want to welcome all of you to this event. There are a few topics in the world I think in our world of earth sciences that lend themselves better to the dealing of the interaction between science engineering and policy as water does so it's a real pleasure to have the opportunity here to talk about how we can how the HGU and our American Geophysical Union can inject our our science and get it out take the message out. Just as an anecdote I just came over literally rushed over from our invited lecture for our session for our section at the meeting over in the convention center and at the end of this lecture one of our researchers at one of our young researchers put the slide up that says well here's what's proposed for the changes in the Clean Water Act and monitoring and maintaining water quality and uppercatchments and here's what the cost will be here's what the cost is or the value in dollars of what those uppercatchments and wetlands are as far as the cost of water treatment so directly transferring science into dollars which I think usually means policy from what I understand so it is my pleasure to be here and and I really appreciate the National Academy and the American Geophysical Union working together on this for the future. This is an inaugural event we propose to take the information from this panel use it through the year our technical committee in water and policy and the section will be working on this over the year and then we hope to run something again similar to this at the San Francisco meeting in 2019. So to that end we are recording the event today so that we can capture all the all the input that we get. These things don't happen without the hard work of a few people and those few people happen to be in our case are early career scientists at the American Geophysical Union's hydrology section and that's a group again a technical committee called the water and policy group and it's been amazing to work with these in this case three individuals Sarah Freeman who's a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Ethan Yang who's a assistant professor at Lehigh University and Julie Bono who is at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. These folks with tireless amounts of time and energy into this this is their show and it is a real pleasure and honor to be a little bit part of it. You're going to hear from Ethan at the end of the presentation but for now I'm going to introduce Sarah Freeman from the University of Massachusetts to introduce our panel and get things started. Thank you and welcome. Thank you Scott and thanks everyone for coming out and we're very excited for this. Planning started about a year ago in New Orleans but before getting to the panel I actually wanted to start with a bit of a personal story about sort of my my journey I guess to this question of science in in policy and decision-making which started 12 years ago when I was finishing up undergrad and found myself in a community called El Cristal in Ecuador and I spent about a month there taking surveys of different households asking them about their concerns of other health and then basically mucking around with a man named Jose who had no teeth and a machete trying to take water quality samples of their water supply system and you know we came out of that experience first of all finding out that about 80% of the community had diarrhea which no one actually wanted to talk about with each other and we also were able to identify areas within their water supply system where the contamination is coming from and as also a young eager engineer I said this is great means I have a design problem and I can build something in the meantime we also communicated into results we broke them down we distributed them to three different leaders within that community and within about three months time we were in contact with them and they said yes wonderful we've actually taken this to our local government within three months after that they said yeah we demanded so much that the government actually came in and provided us with you know treatment system and I think at the time it was interesting because we said oh we don't get to design this thing but then we also you know we're reflecting on the fact that with this credible information in the right hands right individuals you know it's just amazing sort of transformational change can happen and that was a very powerful moment in terms of understanding what the power of the right information can do and it was also a lesson in how to connect the real demand for that information with the supply and that is kind of their care for the session you know we're at a to use and wanting to see how can we connect the supply of information and research with the man from a really amazing group of panelists that span a very diverse types of decision making across different scales and I want to before I turn it over to our moderator also introduce Ingrid Timbo who's in the audience who is also with the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation she is our repertoire for the session so she'll be taking notes and trying to consolidate lessons learned and then of course John Matthews who is also the co-founder or the founder and coordinator for the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation who has for very many years been instrumental in bridging science and policy communities I could tell you I've known him for a very long time so I could tell you a lot more stories about him but that those would have to wait for the reception afterwards but I really I believe you guys in the very wonderful and April hands so thank you very much and I'm really honored to be here with the panel I some of you I've known for quite a long time and a few of you are also nice to see the people that are here how many of you would describe yourself as early as the audience here how many of you are working already with how many of you are actually working on issues right now probably about half of the people who raise their hands for how many of you are engaging directly with all the smaller group but not not much that's really interesting and what about hydrology biology what about my own personal story actually I came from publishing I worked in publishing about 12 years at the book editor and I love publishing I made a transition where I I got jealous of my office and I thought they were doing more work and more relevant work and I wanted to be more like this and I ended up I decided to get a PhD in biology at this point a lot of our work in August I relate to both decision-making at an institutional level but it was really interesting to see at that level how decisions around science and policy are sometimes talking with each other and and it can be really dramatic there was a panel that I was moderating about a week ago it's a very famous biologist who said in a UN session she was talking about what I would loosely describe it as an order of course and rigorously persisted in the topic and she's well known to publish and if she was talking to a large group heads of UN agencies were in the room active negotiators were in the room she was talking about how the system is looking in real time for the carbon sink to carbon store and as a mixture of land to change and climate impact and it says it's a really powerful force really disturbing story and she is not it's not even in the UN a triple C session not one that's really well and some of the people in the audience were very agitated by it and there was one woman that she was specially negotiated she raised her hand and she said what should we do that was a really important moment it was a signal she should have had an answer for it she her answer was to me at least was very satisfied that we need we need more money from one of her we do but it's not like a clear answer that makes sense and I would argue that we should probably all be ready for that question what should we do and I think that's the question that we're going to be with that the structure that we're going to go we're going to have each other speakers I guess something like a seven or eight minute interventional personal story sense of where they see this issue in their own lives that their own reflection there's no slides if we need to be I go with literally this more time for questions otherwise questions will be I'd like to start off with Aaron Seltzer I as you don't know Marin is the you work at the U.S. State Department who manages the development and implementation U.S. foreign policy and boosting water sanitation what resources management and transboundary water and ocean environment and science and published in my work it's against the much greater readership and science and keeping count so that he left that off of this fire but I knew hopefully that's not my only lack microphone and do I need it we have people who are doing it for more okay well John thank you very much and usually I don't laugh and so by that point if we have tires so I try to keep my own much short I'm only going to make a couple of points so hopefully it'll be a little bit different than what you hear from some of the gatherings but first you know as John mentioned so I manage U.S. foreign policy on the entire range of water I think you want a solution rather than just management and transboundary water and so this includes anything that you can imagine everything from tax and toilets all the way through to water energy, water and food, dams, pollution, navigation, climate, you get it all that kind of stuff and there are really three parts to the job the first is it's trying to strengthen the United States government's own capacity to respond to international water challenges and so and you can imagine the difficult thing there's more than 20 different agencies that work on international waters, water issues across the United States there's some people in the room come from some of the other countries I'm actually very lucky to manage and enter agency water work and food that includes representatives from all these different agencies and they're really the brains they're the ones who in fact over 20 years have really mentored me on the issues of water and talking about water I am not like you I don't have a background in water I have never taken a class of course or anything ever on water and so my mentors are actually in the room but people I couldn't have learned about water from but it's really this agency water working group that's helped us better understand what the United States government's position should be on issues like dams, on human rights to water, privatization, a hike of food to not raise that and on international issues like water and sanitation and things like that and in fact the key outcome of this process has been the lack of water and the lack of water and sanitation and all that water and sanitation and things like that and in fact the key outcome of this process has been the global water strategy I don't know if you've seen this, I've got a copy with me if you haven't the U.S. global water strategy which was put out last November and you know I don't say it's a perfect product but it's not a bad product in terms of framing of the United States government's going to try to tackle these challenges I think what I am most proud about is that there are governments from 15, 70 on different agencies and how the U.S. government agencies are going to contribute to implementing this strategy that really is a major step forward in how many U.S. governments are going to progress on these issues you know Rah, I hear from the SBA which has been two parts of building elements of the strategy process for that so that's kind of an example of one part of what the U.S. government does tell the policies and complicated issues and another part of what the U.S. government has been trying to do to strengthen the United States government and trying to coordinate among the different agencies on the implementation of that strategy is part of what we do to strengthen the U.S. government. The second thing that we do is we try to strengthen the international report and you can imagine it is a very complicated space, excuse me, complicated space. We have the UN system and there is as well over 20 different UN agencies like UN, international financial institutions, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Axon Development Bank, international organizations like Union, ASEAN, APEC, OECD, OSP, huge long list of acronyms, and then there is international partnerships that are now coming together to work on these issues. So if you had, if you had an understanding, how do you structure that? Now what is the role of these different institutions being, how should they approach and what should their goals and objectives be? What kind of support do you give them? How does it all work together to coordinate to solve the world's water challenges? That's the second thing that we try to do. And then the third thing that we do is we do have some projects and programs. We are not a development agency, we are not the one that starts, excuse me, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, but so our funds are very, very much what we try to focus on is un-capitalizing issues and attention to issues that are being looked at internationally. What are important to the United States? We might not be getting the kind of attention that we think that needs or supporting cooperation on trans-boundary water issues. We spend a lot of our time working to prevent conflict between trans-boundary water issues. Those are issues that really give attention to the Secretary of State. They usually walk down and say, oh country, that's just their country, why don't they fix that? And that's when we'll spend a lot of our time in the water, just a matter of effort. Hopefully you don't hear much about interventions because usually we promise the country can sell some of this off. If you talk more about that, you have something that you want to do, but that's the third area that we work on in some of these projects and programs. So where does the science and policy connect? And these guys are going to talk a lot about that, but I wanted to try to throw out two points that might not come up in their discussions, but I did a big angle at it. The first is, and actually it was alluded to it at the very beginning, is good science, pretty economic analysis and create the political will to act. And that's critically important to us. How do I convince people, how do I convince the government to act and take action? Can you design the problem? Can you assess the impacts of the problem? How much will that impact our strategic interests, whether our national interests of the United States government or the interests of other partners in the region? Can the problem be fixed? How much will that fix cost, and who should do that to? These are all questions that, if you've got good answers to, as John was saying, what do you do? If you've got good answers to, you can change the way people behave, you can change, you really can. You really can change the way the world works. And if you've got science to drive that. And so having good science is a really pretty political will to act, and the science is a political motive, at least for my question. You can also be very critical, by the way, in distilling myths. There's mythologies that spell us around water when we're trying to solve problems out in the field. And there's all sorts of beliefs that develop around, oh, this country's doing this, these people are doing that. Oh, while they're hearing magically because of this myth, science can help dispel that mythologies. It can help level the fine field and create a common understanding of these issues. Pretty pretty important to solving the problem that I care about on the policy and the kinetics here. And so that's very, very, very critical. Unfortunately, it's easier said than done. You know, we've done a good job, I think, in science theory, at signaling potential problems. But we haven't done such a very good job at hiding the evidence for intervention in this exhibition. And it isn't for a lack of trying. I think this is just really a sincere reflection of time in the dissect water's role from us often a very multi-factorial problem. And it's a very complicated space to work in. So I'm trying to say that, oh, a specific water intervention leads to these kinds of outcomes that are incredibly complicated to do. But that's the kind of message that often policy makers want to see when they invest their money in these kinds of things like that. So we're still wrestling with some of that as a matter of thinking. The second point, science really gets you so far in the water world, right? I think you guys know that. Water isn't really, you know, it's not a technical thing. And it's a social, it's a cultural thing. There's emotional connections to water that we very much struggle with in science. And so almost anything that we do in water, even if it's hydrological predictions, it's looking at the future. Yeah, uncertainties around water are always large. And in theory, dynamism in water systems, that means whatever answer we have today is not going to be right tomorrow. I love the quote that the only thing that's constant in water is change. And as a policy maker, it's actually like that. It means that the solution state is large enough to kind of capture disparate interest. That there isn't necessarily a right answer, but there's a solution that's right. And as a policy maker, that makes it a lot easier. We didn't try to solve, but maybe a very complicated political or social problem that exists in communities. Now I've lost every page. Any better looking. And that's actually the, and that's actually the response which is how do you begin to work in this complicated situation when you've got these water types of uncertainties? And actually, you know, if you're honest, if you do honestly, you appreciate just what we're doing, the messy, indeterminate results that we've got. What it does is that this makes a big behavioral change. It makes the sense that it communicates very clearly that the solution is the answer is less important than the process of getting to the solution. And the process of getting to the solution can be used to build trust, to build cooperation, to see if the science is needed today. It can reinforce the need and it's really important for adaptive water resources. At the end of the day, we want management teams for institutional arrangements that can readily adapt to the changing needs that you think have. That can respond to the range of challenges across sectors, across stakeholders and across different sets of values. And so the lack of determinism in water science might be a little frustrating. It's an incredible policy strength and it's a message we should actually embrace. It allows us to engage and develop collaborative relationships and the concept of that involves the process of these collaborations. So I would argue that the science is not just a motivator of the will but a facilitator of change. And that's important for me. So, you know, science I think has the benefit of telling us where, when, why and how we need to work to address these challenges. But at the same time, with the process of science research, joint data collection, modeling analysis, all things that we have to work on really forces to think in a new creative way which I think will build a greater appreciation for the complexity of the water and to the needs of the more holistic and adaptive solution. And to me that's the most important method that policy makers can deliver on water better now. And that's the need for flexible, robust, efficient, immediate range of institutions. That's the interest for evolving needs and rapidly changing hydrologists. Thank you. I think you're very eloquently described water and not just the molecule which is how many of the scientists they really have been through which we convey issues, cultural concepts, even values. And we try to negotiate through this scientifically. I think the IWRM is a verb, not a noun. We'll come back hopefully with questions later. I'm going to turn now to John Scretard. Another long time colleague and friend. John is a senior economist at the hydrological engineering center in Davis, California. And he leads a large project that's associated with the IWRM, probably as a verb. Integrating climate adaptation into a U.S. Army Corps engineering services. He serves as an advisor on a variety of large projects. It's hard to follow the digital map. So I want to say it's an honor for me to be here. I want to thank Sarah for inviting me. As I was thinking about this question, how can scientists form their policy? I was reflecting on a couple of experiences that I had several years ago. Both one where I felt like science is relatively well integrated into the decision-making process. And one where I felt like science was really a voice from the decision-making process. And so the first one was a project in Vietnam that was being led by a set of local universities and NGOs, sort of provincial level technocratic institutions there. That was really built around trying to understand how a particular basin could better sort of balance the needs for hydropower production flood risk management and urban development. And the teams that were there sort of led by these sort of researchers and scientists I think did a really good job of developing what I thought was a very sort of well-thought-out proposal for this. And they presented that proposal to sort of a provincial level political official with a lot of great sort of supporting tactics and estimation. And it was a very positive meeting and a couple months later we found out another change and sort of the status quo persisted. And so in some ways at the time that really felt like a rejection of science to me because we had laid out a lot of really great reasons why other considerations should have been sort of part of that process. Later on sort of reflecting back on that and thinking about it when the decision-making power rests in sort of a single individual's hands it's challenging because any deviation from the status quo is something that they have to accept responsibility for. And so the safest most self-preservation sort of instinctual option is really sometimes just to do nothing. On the other hand in the core of engineers where I work I feel like 4% of our sort of decisions are very well supported by science. I was again working on a sort of project that several years before the Vietnam project, an ecosystem restoration project in California that involved spending a couple million dollars on analysis actually in sort of many years of data collection and integrating that into decision-making. And along that process dozens and maybe hundreds of decisions were just made internally by the team with nothing more sort of the information that we collected and the policy guides that we had on how we should use that information. It wasn't until sort of very late in the process that we wanted a relatively minor deviation from the policy that we had to present our work in front of a decision-making panel. And after again sort of an acrimonious and somewhat political process we received that deviation but thinking back sort of on that and the amount of money that was being spent on that project and how little like I sort of knew quote-unquote who the decision-maker was in that case made me realize that actually in that particular case the decision-maker were all those documents, all that policy, all that guidance that said when you collect time for good information this is the way that you use it. Which gives decision makers the freedom to turn their decision over to the people who understand those decisions. The scientists who understand the places that they're working and the types of decisions that need to be made. So yeah I guess those two experiences are sort of formative to me and sort of thinking about how is science to be better integrated into the decision-making process. I think it's very important that it's integrated into the process and not into some sort of individual. I think there's a couple of things that really sort of have to take place in order to integrate science into decision-making particular on water policy. The first thing is some sort of directive. There needs to be some sort of directive within the institution that says we're going to change and that's why we're going to do it. There needs to be some sort of guidance that puts that directive within the context of the organization and the context of sort of the general decision-making process. There need to be a sub-school method and policies for sort of what I call non-believers. The people who didn't want to already sort of institutionalize that change and then there needs to be some sort of cultural shift that allows that change to become routine and that's really the pathway for integrating science into sort of water policy. It has to be through formalization of sciences in its very nature of very sort of objective sort of science and so getting in front of people and making subjective arguments is often not particularly productive. I wanted to sort of just close with like one example that I think I have a colleague here, Roman Mimley from the Department of Water Resources who are working together in California DPR and I was thinking about how much a leader of the state of California is in integrating climate adaptation planning into their decision-making process. So they sort of already have undertaken that directive sort of approach through effective order and I had to get this from Roman but through executive order B-3015 and simply bills 1482 and 2800 which told all state agencies in California to consider climate change planning or to climate change and all planning and investment decisions. So California DPR has spent a hard work sort of trying to implement that directive internally as an agency. I've already put some work that some of my colleagues here in the front row have been involved in. They've written up in California this climate change assessment and the Central Valley Protection Plan and several other pieces of documents. They've also been very proactive in sort of engaging the plan for the community to fill in the gaps where they know that they don't quite understand how to institutionalize that change. So Roman and his team for instance have convened this group that they call the Plenmar Research Advisory Committee which is a network of sort of dozens of researchers in active areas of interest to the Department of Water Resources places where they're not sure that they quite have sort of the data, the tools, the methods to sort of institutionalize the directive that they've been given and they're engaging researchers sort of actively trying to turn scientific research into the sort of guidance and tools and methods that are necessary to make this part of a routine process. So those are my thoughts. That often the decision maker, it's not a person it's actually a whole process to need to engage with, need to understand that it's a process that may be more positive individuals that are there, but you also need to abstract it and then think about and trust in that process. That's especially important I would think with the new inversion area and the climate adaptation where there's no international standards, there's no kind of clear, defined criteria that you're supposed to do a standard organization so you have to always yield your way forward with that process. So thank you. Now I'm going to turn to a very different set of Ayana Vanidu. She's a Philly faculty in Department of Science and Technology Society of Virginia Tech and I think a very unique founder of a non-profit children's environmental health organization Aaron from Non-Toxic Alternatives. For work focuses on environmental health policy, justice, or the intersection with scientists and communities so I'm going to leave it to you to talk about the rest of your work. Thank you so much Sarah and thank you for inviting me here. It's really an honor to be in this room. I have been working on the problem of lead and drinking water for over 10 years now. This problem came to me, I did not approve to it. It just happened to be one of thousands of Washington DC residents and the mother of an infant at the time who was subjected to our city's historic lead and water crisis. DC's crisis began in 2001 and was covered up for two and a half years and was finally made public in 2004. The contamination was unprecedented letting water levels flowing out of people's paths were far, far higher than swim. Subsequent science studies showed that the crisis resulted in hundreds and possibly up to 42,000 cases of elevated blood lead levels in these children as well as a 100% increase in fetal deaths. Today I'm speaking to you as a mother, researcher and activist. My message is this. First, that if science-based water policy means policies that are built purely on rigorously produced and carefully verified scientific facts when it comes to letting water, I have not yet seen science-based water policies. And second, given the complex realities of real-world water problems, the idea of science-based water policy may actually not be ideal at all. In fact, it may be dangerously reductionistic and may need to be reimagined. I'll explain with four vignettes. Vignette one. The EPA's lead and cover rule, or LPR, was enacted in 1991 to protect consumers from letting drinking water. Unlike other drinking water regulations, the LCR is a shared responsibility rule. It renders water utilities responsible only for presenting large-scale and severe contamination, and it makes users responsible for protecting themselves at individual tasks. Despite this unique arrangement, the LCR invents no mechanism whatsoever for letting the public know that even when water utilities fulfill their parts of the deal, meet regulatory requirements and declare the water safe, users can experience both chronic and acute exposures to let. These exposures can be frequent enough and high enough to cause miscarriage, silver, and irreversible brain and neurological damage, especially in fetuses, infants, and young children who are the most vulnerable to harm. Vignette two. Washington D.C.'s letting water contamination and the health harm it reached on individual children was discovered by distraught, unnamed, and unrecognized residents only months after the crisis began. Independent residents also discovered technical aspects of the contamination like the fact that lead levels often increased while tasks were running, which contradicted the prevailing scientific understanding of the time and turned out to have significant implications for public health. Alarm and desperate for help between 60 and 80 affected residents in D.C. pleaded with our Department of Health to have their lead service lines replaced. These residents, please, were dismissed by scientists with the water utility and policymakers at ETA, just like what happened 13 years later to the residents of Flint. Vignette three. In 2014, ETA chair picked a work group of advisors for recommendations on how the LCR should be revised. Ten of the 15 work group members represented government agencies as well as water utilities and their professional associations. At least six were signed as engineers, none of whom had any history calling for a stronger LCR. To the contrary, when my colleagues and I objected to the composition of the group and argued for the inclusion of people who had been affected by letting water and who were leading the fight for a more just regulation, we were told that residents only bring opinions. Work group members, on the other hand, were selected carefully to bring staff. Our protest continued and eventually, I think ETA self-policed by us into inviting me to the work group. I took advantage of the invitation. The day when I insisted that a revised LCR needed to finally shout from the rooftop that letting water can cause miscarriage and fatal death, I was pulled into a private room by a male engineer with no children of his own who shouted at me, led with anger, that I needed to drop my request or I was going to lose my credibility. In the end, convinced that the group's recommendations besides the signs, did little to protect and empower people with the information that they need to protect themselves, and if adopted with results in a weekend regulation, I filed the group's sole dissenting opinion. In 2016 Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder invited me to serve as the advisor to the committee he created for solving Flint's water crisis. My main task was to help with the development of a Michigan specific LCR that would be the most stringent in the United States. Indeed, a new and improved, though not perfect, LCR was made into law six months ago. Yet two days ago, this week, the past Tuesday, a coalition of Michigan water utilities filed a law to secure parts of the regulation. One of the coalition's objections is the requirement of citizen advisory counsel, which would finally give affected Michigan residents a seat at the table where decisions were made. So what's the takeaway message? That the science-based water policy framework, when putting to practice, may be limited and problematic. By implying that all we need for the creation of robust water policy is scientists who have the facts and policymakers who are thirsty for the facts, those ideal can not only contradict reality, but can inflict two forms of injustice as well. Procedural injustice, this is the normalization of the systemic exclusion from the decision-making process of the very people who are living with the problem that the policy aims to address. And testimonial injustice, this is the inherent assumption that the knowledge and values of affected individuals are irrelevant. Cessimonial injustice is based on nothing more than identity prejudice. So, a level as the ideal of science-based water policy might be, I pause the setting practice, it risks perpetuating a specific social order that won't conflate with robust policy-making when in actuality it replicates the very injustice at the root of many of the water challenges that we face today. Behind the veil of science-based water policy, there are often beliefs and values that should give us pause because they undermine our capacity to address water challenges effectively. And beliefs and values often include that water challenges are separable from social inequality, separable from histories of discrimination and neglect, separable from the collective trauma of living without access to safe water or living with physical ailments, fears and grief, while simultaneously being silenced. These beliefs and values also include that water challenges can be addressed through policies that leave inequalities intact, that leave these histories unchallenged, and that leave these traumas unhealed. The beliefs and values behind the ideal of science-based water policy also tend to matter that water science and policy almost invariably embed value judgments and scientific uncertainties and unknowns. But they're shown by individuals with power and with personal, professional and institutional mindsets and interests. And students can be created, strengthened and even corrected by non-experts who live day in and day out with the problem at hand. In closing, I'd like to propose that the big water infrastructure system of the 19th and 20th centuries are not only crumbling, but they also bring with them a concept about people and water that is not serving as well. Aligning scientists and policymakers with effective communities for collaborative problem solving is a moral imperative because multi-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary thinking is a precondition to water policies that are technically robust, morally sound and socially just. Thank you. I think that there is a passion and persistent interesting thing to hear. We're hearing a lot about process. There actually is some time when the process for the clear the recommendation should be abundantly evident in the water policy. But the process is actually designed to not be a problem. Scientists should not just think about the policy maker, but also the broader constituency through bottom-up governance processes how we need to deal with water. She is the Climate Science Policy and Adaptation Program Manager of the Planning Division at Denver Water. The primary responsibility is to coordinate climate investigations and the planning process for this work incorporates many areas of water resources, planning, climate control, planning and operational water right now. Great. Thank you so much for having me today you guys. It's great to be here. This has been an excellent panel so far. You guys have pretty much nailed all my points. Thank you. We've heard about process, we've heard about partnerships, we've heard about co-production, we've heard about institutional change, and we've also heard that science only is not enough. So I'm going to kind of bring all these projects together in my story. As I work at Denver Water I run our Climate Adaptation Program. I was one of the first people in the United States to be hired to work on climate adaptation in the water facilities. This is a pretty cool place to have. It's also a pretty big statement for water utilities. Denver Water is the largest water utility in the state of Colorado. We provide water to the quarter of the state's cost resistance. And I work in long-range planning. How do we prepare for the future? What is that? I'm also chair of the Water Utility Climate Alliance. Water Utility Climate Alliance is a group of 12 utilities working together collaboratively advance climate change adaptation. And we have a vision of climate resilience and sustainable water utilities and thriving communities. And I think our vision is fun. Everyone has a vision of us here. So we're working together on climate adaptation explicitly. Together we serve 50 million customers water. So that's about one in seven Americans get water from the Water Utility Climate Alliance member. And we are actively working on climate adaptation. So I think that in itself is a great thing to do. I'm a reformed academic. So I was a physics professor for a few years since over a decade ago. So I have sent my clients a professional life really at the next level. So I noted that I worked more on the long-range issues, long-range planning. So I wanted to talk about that. And then I have a few thoughts on this and scientific needs to bring a different angle to the conversation. So I noted that my job is to plan for the long-term. It's about long-range planning. So the question we often ask is what are we preparing for and how do we go about doing that? There's lots of things we know about that we're preparing for now. There's lots of things we know about that we're not sure how to prepare for. We don't know how they're going to come to fruition. And we're not really experienced. And then there's all the things that we don't know that are going to happen, that are going to happen to us. So we want to be prepared for. They can't be prepared for them. We don't know if they are. We're still responsible for being prepared. So that's our long-range planning. So it's really a game of uncertainty. How do you prepare for things that are going to change? How do we grapple with these changes? How do we set ourselves up for success? So on one hand, we want to be making sure we're prepared for the long-term. And on the other hand, we're decision makers or organizations who are responsible for making smart and responsible decisions. Right? So we can't have over-invested in our system. We can't have stranded assets because that's the political consequences associated with those are really significant. So how do you find this line? So it's really about my work is focused on embracing uncertainty, planning for multiple futures, and thinking about how does the world come together or comes from within a different way than we are experiencing it today. So one thing that I've been thinking about a lot is snow. And snow is in the west. And snow is our primary source of water. So 80% of our water supply comes from snow, and that snow comes in the winter. So thinking about the future, are we still interested in getting some sophistication in the winter? But what if it doesn't come from the form of snow? Or what if we get more rain on our side? I mean, just some of us are tears. You guys, this is serious. Snowpack is one of our cheapest reservoirs, right? But it's something that we also depend on. So if that goes away, how do our business practices and processes change? And if they make a quick tangent, we think that we have a philosophical conversation of what we want our community to look like. We really want to maintain the environment that we have now. And if we do, what do we need to have a place to do that? Climate change is here and now. Climate change is water change. And that is everybody's system. But if we want to fish, if we want to sea, if we want to recreate, if we want to have grass, that means we need to recreate what the main natural environment has to do in the past. So it's not going to continue to be that in the future. So that is a big conversation. We talk about no more storage, right? Well, in the west, the only reason we're dividing is because of storage. And if we start to think about our ecosystem and the natural environment, this high-elevation storage with no tax, which is going away, if we want to maintain that, we have to be able to recreate that. So coming back to uncertainty, speaking ways to think about flexibility, and we've already talked about this, but we want to build adapters to that. What does that mean in practice? And it means making investments that are scalable. So we can scale them up, we can scale them down. It means making investments that have pro-benefit. And it also means thinking about investments that eventually could become screened at us, and having a backup plan for what they can do. It also means diversifying our portfolio, just like you would do in your own financial investment. But you don't want to throw your agey one back at it. You want to have geographic diversities. So we, if it's in the water, we want to have supply in the water, seven part of our system, on just one location. And we also want to have invested in multiple types of assets. I use one water solution that says it's important, thinking about new supplies, but also investing in efficiency. So a couple of scientific questions that I've been grappling with and thinking about that I wanted to report to the audience. We know we get to come back and talk about this next year, and I'm really looking forward. Number one, this idea of a buffer. So can you figure out what type of buffer we need and why? Why work in supply, water resources? And I work in the West, in my area of region. So I'm thinking about drought. But we're also experiencing extreme floods, right? And extreme events. So if I build a reservoir, how much, how large do I want to make that reservoir? Where do I want to put that reservoir? But how much of a buffer do I need at the top of that reservoir? What does that look like and why? And how do we look at these multiple objectives? But thinking about buffers and other ways as well. So how do we build buffers into our decision and into our offering? But the next point is, how do we pull the trigger on a decision? How do you, especially if you're making a decision that can only be invested in one? What size do you build to? Where do you locate it? If you can levelize and whatnot? And when do you put that product in place? So we've been going through a permitting process since 2003. That is not shoveling dirt. That is moving paper, right? That is a long time. We haven't even started building or design. We've even got through a permitting process. So if it takes 25 or 30 years to put a product in place, you know, what do you need to have a place to build a trigger that doesn't happen? And then how do you decide what that decision sounds like? Finally, I'm going to need to wrap up. I think it's really important for us to monitor social values. We did some focused years a few years ago and they were just fascinating. We learned that our customers don't want to harm others. When we put them in the context, how do you want to prepare for the future? Do we want to look at supply? Do we want to look at free? Do we want to buy water from other sectors? Do we want to develop supply process? And in that whole conversation we learned that people don't want to harm others. And others is everyone. It's the environment. It's their neighbors. It's other communities. It's other sectors. So our focus groups talks themselves into direct, explodable reuse. In a matter of 35 minutes from you guys, that is unreal. So understanding social values is critically important. We need to, we need to recognize that and then recognize that. Finally, responsibility. It's my responsibility to understand the capabilities and limitations of science to be a smart user and consumer of science. And it's your responsibility to help be a smart user and consumer of science as well as thinking about the implications of using your science in practice. If your science are used to make a decision, you are also responsible for that. That often science needs to be aware of what is the large provision? What are the higher goals that we're really aiming for? And when we're engaging with a decision maker, we need to remind them that they're making a decision. It's the concept of flexibility. It's often thinking if a lot of people can push that decision. You're ruling out a whole range of options. You might be doing X when you could be doing Y that opens up a whole other pathway. That's really powerful. I absolutely really like how much my point was on the story. And a lot of story, personally, is that it's a big revelation. They talk so much about the idea twice. So when my 18-month-old kid went ahead, they were very calm. But it's actually really empowering language. If you work for your 18-month-old, you're also going to work for a dollar. That helps them be aware. You may not steal a good quiz, but you do have a quiz. Ideally, you should be actively engaged. Whether you're talking about a voter or you're actually talking about someone who decides you're not going to win. I know. I feel like I need to thank you. We turn to David Wagner. David, I understand from before that he's now in his second or third retirement. He had a senior staff position in water, energy, and transportation. He's in the US Health. In that position, he worked in the administration. He directly affected the administration's policy and federal actions, especially to the Department of the Corps. The Department of Interior, the USDA, the Lungo Tower, the NT Valley, and the OE. We work for over three years for the new Department of the Interior, managing water and climate programs and coilovers. During the 10-year DOI, we've been formulating the adaptive management approach for other river systems during an incredibly influential period. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you, John. And it's hard being sweet after all these eloquent speakers are before you, and they feel all your life. So I'm going to deviate a little bit from what I was going to say to try to re-emphasize. First off, I want to emphasize I'm here also because I work for Elizabeth on the water science technology for national water issues. I'm a member of the American Geophysical Society, so I have a long history with the organization and I too. I see so many young people in the audience because you really are the future in my mind of where and how we're going to take science and continually improve better public policy. I said an interesting intersection right now in that I deal with policy, I deal with politics, I deal with science, I also deal with business, how to use science to make money in the sense of modeling, predictive, etc. But I also deal with the structure of government. And as John alluded to, I spent some years on the Hill working for various health representative committees as a scientist and engineer trying to help interpret science for members of Congress so that they can better understand how to utilize that information in that decision framework. I'm also a student of water history. Right across the street, I don't know where the direction is here, the National Portrait Gallery, there's a beautiful portrait, unfortunately not on display today but a major John Wesley model. For those of you who are any knowledge of the West in the United States, John Wesley Powell is a scientist who actually really had an impact on water policies in the Western United States in particular. Went on the director of the US Geological Survey at a national president also. He was the man who basically took the information from a person during the Indian War throughout the Colorado Basin and said we need to figure out a way to manage the situation. It's not like water is in the east where you've got a cluster of supplies and we have to figure out how it works. Ever since we started to bring science into that process, I think that's really important because today we have a long history. We want to look back at people trying to bring information into the decision framework. We live in Durango, Colorado and part of the year in Tucson, so we treasure our water in Colorado. I appreciate all you're doing. Just keep your hands off the western side. I want to follow up. Today, as we're sitting here, there's a group of folks sitting out in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada debating over what's coming in the very near term. A shortage call probably not going to happen this year, but over a 60% chance it's going to happen in 2021. What that does is it's going to set in motion a whole variety of actions that some were kind of prepared for and mostly haven't. Not only do we have Southern Colorado, the states that Aaron and I were chatting beforehand, we have a treaty with the Republic of Mexico delivering water to our southern neighbor, which is all brought now in a variety of political maneuvers mostly driven by Jews, but that are equally important to this issue of how we manage a diminishing water supply. 2002, we entered a really interesting phase in Colorado this year. But in 2002, we crossed the line of not having enough water for all of our days. And so now the states have tried to squeeze more and more out of less land. And the states, to be honest, have done a tremendous job. All of them have stepped up and started to look at how can we do better conservation, how can we be more efficient? How can we squeeze the sponge of the available water? The problem is that, as we just heard, over 80% of our water comes from snowpack. The snowpack isn't around that much anymore. How are we going to maintain what we have? We have a whole plumbing system. You know, it's better probably than anybody of dams in the western United States than in Colorado based. That we're built under the premise that our biggest reservoir is the water supply. And so most of these dams are not like core of engineered dams or flood control dams. They're storage dams. They're not designed to be able to respond to a hugely different hydrology from our states. How do we re-operate these dams? Based on the laws that were written in the 1920s in the Colorado Compact, it's been updated a couple of times, but not to address how quickly, how fast it's changed in Colorado. I'd say that because as a student of the history of water policy in the United States, we have not had a national systematic review of national water policies since 1973. I just think about that. I've been since 1973 that we took a look as a nation at what our national water policies are. There's a couple of reasons we split the weight from that one. When Reagan came into office, he said, let's shift our dialogue from federal governments giving oversight in the direction of the states. That was a political decision they made, and it's helped more. Most of those decisions related to water is now vested in the states rather than in the federal government. The federal government still does do some ad hoc planning if you want to call that a word build, a water resource development. That builds it forward through some of the other large-scale water bills in the past couple of years. But it's not a systematic look at where we've had it at. That's really important that I think at some point, and I continue to advocate this with my colleagues on the Hill, that we need to resurrect this issue again to at least have a dialogue to find out if we as a nation are moving in the direction that we would like to. In my role up on the Hill, one of the things that I realized very quickly is the majority of time you've just been talking about issues. You spend a lot of time in meetings and ad knowledge going around and around. But then there come these unique opportunities, windows of opportunities that open up where you can affect change. I would say Katrina was one of those. We affected change in how the court of engineers does planning around levees. It happened again with Hurricane Sandy. We were able to then get, in one of that particular instance, get a coastal perspective of the core potential to be able to look at coastal management. From Maine to Norfolk, and then the next floor of the bill, we put it from Norfolk to Virginia down to Florida. So we began to look at regional applications. We had talked about that here, but we didn't have a vehicle to move it forward. Sandy, we were able to move it forward. Making sure in that bill we included that particular issue. The last example I will give is in the 6th River. In 2010 or 2011, one year we were in severe drought and the soybean farmers and the bar donors were coming into our office and you've got to get money to the court to go blow off the rocks down around St. Louis so they can get the bar just downstream. The very next year it's flooding. And I think you've got to go in there and build more facilities along the river so we can tie up our barges and protect them from the flooding. And I point to that because it shows the extreme variability that we're now starting to see in our hydrologic systems. And with that opportunity with Mississippi River, it can allow us to go work with some with the core and look at the kind of pushes we need to do. One thing to remember is most of our federal agencies have a long, long history and you're not going to change it overnight. What you can do is work with these windows of opportunity. So in just summary, some of the challenges that I see facing us in our integration of science and policy of several four years one is that we need to continue to innovate and we need to continually innovate not only our process but the way we think about things. And that requires the ability to connect with others. So all of you scientists and training out there and soon to be professionals in the real world we've got to think outside the box how we use our science to be more effective for policy. The second is that I think we need to continue to look at what's the value of added science. It can be added to what you're doing maybe as individuals but how it ties to other science. I'm going to use the example this couple weeks ago. We were in another National Academy of Science building. We had a shared meeting with one of the climate board and we were talking about how to take water data and use it for climate. And to me, we started to make some really good connections. In that meeting there was business people or academics or folks who really used this information and those connections I think are going to be so much more important in the future as we move forward. Water, energy, and access to water for several people are critical. Especially if you're looking to desalve or you're looking at any of these high energy intensive ways to create more water we can do it but we've got to do it. We have to be smart about it as we want. And then lastly I think is the climate extreme weather impacts that we're facing today. We have not ever faced the challenges of this variability that was good friend of mine, Dr. Mollard from NOAA and I were chatting about this at the Wilson Center a couple weeks and he was saying we're now seeing our soil drying out so much faster than we've ever seen before and that in itself we just thought about it and drove it towards the flood. Now we're thinking about it in terms of what is the impact of that soil moisture. And what does that do across? And how does that impact how farmers and agricultural folks in a common business position related to that? I just came back from China where we were meeting a bunch of folks over there looking at some of the very same conditions and how to manage large river systems that are in their case maintained by glaciers. Glaciers are going away. So now what's going to happen to the society that it's built around them? The last one I want to make is that we've made a huge investment in this country and in every country in the nation and in our water infrastructure. This infrastructure now is aging and we are at a point where we're going to have another one of those windows where I think we can look at how the plumbing system that maintains water supply is changing. And whether we have the right infrastructure in place, this is the engineering department, whether we have the right infrastructure in place and manage the water system, the plumbing system in a new world. Or whether this is that opportunity where we either refine and revise and build our infrastructure before efficient, or in some cases we may take it away. Karen and I were talking earlier, in Japan, they're looking at now at removing some of their high tributary dance avidance. In order to remove sediment in this system, to remove it off of the coastline, we need to be thinking outside the box. So again, I just want to say, I think I love Karen's kind of plans to help develop the mythology. Today, in this particular chapter of life, is interpret science for people who don't build and have on health. We all love to be scientists. We all love to be able to use a lot of acronyms to such. We have to learn how to recover, how it is relevant to make that jump from the science paper and the acronyms in good public policy. And we're willing, as students of science and as people who work with science, to help make that change. We're also managing the governance infrastructure, which could be more or less hard in itself and it could be some quite old pieces of social dysfunctional, as you call it, in fact, that may be more rigid. It helps define the needs and choices that we are able to make now. We also work very actively on the devil and the director still on the devil. We knew a type of governance infrastructure that helped us ideally make better choices. You often have a very strong undertone of problem solving. It's very powerful. We need to make sure that we are, as kind as possible we are informing the resolution of social and environmental issues. Thank you. So how much time do we have? Let's open it up. We have two microphones. We need to make sure that we are talking in the microphones for the group who are here who can borrow some. When you speak, if you could say your name, your institution as well. Hi, I'm Robin Lewis. I am an environment justice activist and consultant in Maryland. So Dr. Yana, I appreciate what you said, because I struggle so hard to bring the science to the community so the community can be engaged. In particular, working on issues such as lead as well as the input of fluoride into our system and science that has just recently been published about it and its impact on low income communities and communities of color. So I totally agree that science needs to be the foundation of our decision, but I also believe that communities are not to be forced, these things are not to be forced upon the community. The community should be engaged in all decisions that impact their health because the other ones who are drinking it. And a paternalistic view that they don't know because they're just giving their opinion is totally wrong and it's against the environment justice principles. So I was going to ask the panel and others how they feel about including the community and the decision and passing on scientific information to the community to let them know what they are supposed to. That's one question. I think often we know that and actually we are not the decided and that's where we're probably constituent. Well, I agree. No, I really do agree. You know, in my experience with policy making is that we on the water side we really haven't had a whole lot of success in putting out the facts in front of policy makers and seeing action. And the time when we have seen policy action has been when policy makers have seen that there are mobilized publics out there pushing for action. And that there are scientists supporting these mobilized publics and that there are reporters watching very closely of these mobilized publics. These are the times when we have seen movements in the policy world. And I would just add to this that I can't speak directly to your question about these Coast folks, but I support a lot with Native American tribes in the West and with communities that are along the Mexican border. And we have a tremendous number of what I would call disenfranchised communities who are not engaged or not encouraged to be engaged in the dialogue. And I think one of the most poignant ways that I've learned this unfortunately was the hard way, but it was a really important lesson is that we were making policy changes on the way the Colorado River was going to be operated and managed. And I had to figure out how to translate that to a group of Hopi elders in the Kiva and try to get them to support it. Because we had 10 different tribes that had social entities in the Grand Canyon and to get them engaged, I felt it was really important to brought them into debate. But having to interpret science to a level that somebody who, if they graduated from high school, is a stretch. But I think it's critically important because they live there. They are the community. Because their pogons and their Kivas that are out there that are being impacted in the field, whether it's health, whether it's water supply, whether it's grazing issues, we just have to do, I think that's our job as scientists to help get them out of town. Hello everyone, thanks for the wonderful talk. It's a really great presentation. And the mention of John Wesley Powell, I think he's such a wonderful and interesting fellow. Among other things, he was a member of the first Record of the Sense of Long Beach, which he did with only one functional arm, together with injured in the Civil War. Shot off. Shot off. Even more, I think on that time he brought his life. And so Emma Powell was also part of the person. And he was a national leader and she had national leadership in terms of water. David, you mentioned maybe the end of a unified national leadership on water with zero budgeting of the Water Research Council in 1981 of the Reagan administration, which in my understanding still remains a line item in the U.S. budget, just with no allocation. And I wonder, the question is do we need more national leadership? Is there appetite for national leadership? And the specific part of that question is that Lorna mentioned that the Wookiee Utilities serve one out of seven Americans. And the Wookiee Utilities are embracing climate change and preparing for climate change. But every other utility I've spoken to really doesn't have the time to do that. And there's climate problems. So, sure, they're more worried about heights bursting next week than running out of water 30 or 40 years into the future. So six out of seven Americans are served by a water unit that is not preparing for climate change or thinking about climate change. We've heard about the issues they face in terms of crumbling infrastructure or whatever they need to be. My sense is they need support. In the national climate assessment, waters have to be weren't allowed as they should. But it seems to me that there are challenges for our water utilities. They are struggling with day-to-day issues. And who's going to support them in the methodologies and resources in the future. Any thoughts on the items as well on that? First off, you're right on. In my opinion, we need national and regional and state leadership. It has to all come together. Unfortunately it takes leadership to do that for somebody or some entities that are willing to go outside the box to stimulate that sort of discussion. It's critical. We're trying to work with this new Congress coming in to see where we can identify the water leaders. I've got several ideas that have been suggested to them on how we might manifest that. But I think what's equally critical is the role that these scientific organizations like PGU play, the role that National Academy of Science can play, and all the other ones that are out there to start the dialogue between themselves on how you can leverage the knowledge that you have and the information to help target and work with folks on the Hill so that they get a consistent message. I'm working a lot with their 54 water resource centers funded essentially partly by the USGS that exist in our universities and territories around the United States. They haven't been reoffended. Now where do you think about that? Where is the next generation of our water leaders going to come from? Obviously they're not being used to a bunch of them. But the water resource centers have always been that kind of system that bring in young people. And I like the fact that I had the Congressional Research Service do a study on this. For every federal dollar, every one dollar we invest is WRRC. We get this week and leverage it 17 times. So think about it. What a great payback for the American home, if they knew that. Unfortunately, several folks on the Hill said that science that's done on water sometimes is what they define as a special character of science. We've got to get all of that. We've got to make sure that we get the message up. And I think that's the role that a lot of our science organizations can play is to help every time you're in town, go to the Hill, go to your member, talk to them, make sure they're educated on the important stuff. I don't want to thank you for you guys all. In case they get you on it, I spoke before for giving a voice to somebody that's been troubling to me. Somebody who works in the Corps of Engineers for a number of years, which is that everything that we do now is cautious by local communities. And this may have a positive benefit of getting buy-in from the community, but it also has a very real negative benefit, which is that the people who come to us asking for solutions to problems for people who can afford to pay. And I don't know what the solution to that is. I'm glad to know that people like you are working on it. But I think that that's a very real concern for the health of our national water resources. Hi, my name is Wendy Wilson with the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. So it's a group that represents the state primacy agencies. And I just wanted to thank all of you for great presentations. But David, I love the point that you made about using the current opportunity to maybe course correct a little bit. And the fact that EPA estimates we have a half a billion dollar need in the industry, A-W-W-A, a trillion dollar need in terms of infrastructure replacement and renewal over the next, what, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And so through that we're going to see an enormous replacement of assets and how do we use that opportunity to address future needs. I guess my question is kind of who do you see as the responsible party for that? I mean, is it truly just the utilities? What role do states and feds play in that? And then if it is the utilities, how do we make that happen when we're looking at 150,000 water utilities? Most of them don't have the data they need right now to operate. How are they going to plan for the future and use that opportunity of replacement to actually bring some good to the community in terms of thinking ahead and strategically? Please solve all my problems right now. Yeah, so I mean, I think I really do like this as an opportunity to course correct is, you know, how do we change, how do we do, how do we make a difference and how do we support 150,000 organizations across the industry to also do that. You know, I mean, fundamentally, where does the money come from? You know, how are we going to fund them? I mean, I really struggle with how to answer this question, you know, because we want to provide leadership so that utilities like Denver Water and others can make a difference and make changes. We also want to set up the practice, so it's just expected that others are going to follow them and put stuff, right? So using this idea of peer-to-peer network, but peer pressure to institutionalize by the change is something that we've been grappling with. But I think fundamentally a lot of our support is going to come and a lot of the change is going to come from the local level. I don't think we should necessarily be waiting for our national and sometimes even state support to have that make change happen and to make movement on it. I think we need to set ourselves up for being able to do the changes we need to do ourselves. And that's not super optimistic, but I also feel like because we need to do this, we're going to step up and make it happen. I mean, we provide this fundamental resource that's expected across our communities, so water is not going to go away. It's not like a cell phone where you can say, okay, well, this week I'm just not going to be cell phone. It's not going anywhere. You know, so it's expected in some of those resources. But I think we're going to get there, but it's going to be slow. I'll have one more comment today. We talked about aging infrastructure and we think it's stable and concrete, et cetera. There's another aging infrastructure that's out there. Peter, you were just on the panel and we just had somebody from the GS talk to us two weeks ago. The average age of the US GS employee now is like, think about that. We don't have people out there. We are going to be losing our capacity, our natural knowledge capacity. You are going to be in a tremendous, you want to work for the federal government, the US GS. We need expertise if we're going to do this better in the future. And to me, so it's not only the steel and concrete that we're losing. We're losing institutional knowledge that has to be brought along with the next generation. Thank you. So Peter Goodwin with my role in the Center for Environmental Science. And I'd also congratulate Pamela. I think you did a pretty good job coordinating and highlighting the long challenge. My question is, you've highlighted the problem of aging infrastructure. And much of that infrastructure has developed for the time when it was simply affected. And now we've got social development. Things are much more complicated. You can't do a single project in isolation of everything else that's going on. So I think we're in the science community. We're faced with this challenge, though. Science cannot respond on the same time frame of these decisions that we've decided to take. So my question is, is when is good science good enough on which to make decisions? Maybe to make decisions. Right? I mean, if you have to make decisions, once you've got them, maybe you can make a decision on which lines you got. I mean, ideally, again, this is why the question is the process. If you want a process that's rooted in science, stakeholders, as Ruby mentioned, that is to look at a process that's going to fall back on to ensure the ability, resiliency, adaptability as you move forward and you evolve your solution over time. I think one of the things we never talk about when we talk about solutions is the opportunity we're talking about, the significant opportunity cost. What decisions are you making? Are you going to lock your feature in? Second, create social, dynamic, environmental costs in the future that it's going to lock you in a certain pathway that you don't want to use. Maintaining flexibility is primary. And so if that's going to be true, if you don't have good science, then the solution that takes you to flexibility that you adapt and evolve has to be more than just good science. That's true. I'm worried about good science too. And what is it? Quick slide. Thank you for your question. I'm thinking that sometimes we can talk about science as a monolithic system of knowledge and I think that in the drinking water world, at least that there seem to be different expertise and different counts of thinkers. Some who very much still promote the single visioned Victorian era water system from the late 1800s and early 1900s and then I think there's also the whole universe of scientists and engineers who are thinking big and creatively about centralized and distributed and decentralized systems and thinking very creatively about water management, water use and in integrated ways. So I do think that there is room here and especially in a room with young generation, scientists and engineers the room to push forward and at the very front there's new thinking and I think this is a window of opportunity for a paradigm shift. I think it's very desperate. Thanks, I'll be very brief. I'm going to put my academic hat on because first off thanks to the panel for incredibly enlightening discussions. One thing was said, I'll put my academic hat back on. What we see in academia now is a geometric explosion in the publication. Every year we publish twice as much as we published the year before and in reality most of us are not reading that literature. So to the young people in the audience, something that Lorna said which is own your work, be responsible and I just put this out to all the young academics and faculty here in the room if you're going to go in academia and write papers, own that work make it socially relevant and socially responsible. Try to get it out there to people because there's so much of it that it won't be read so you have to take ownership to make it read and make it important to people. So I'm going to wrap up. Last statement will come from Ethan. I'm going to ask to summarize possibly one of the things that I've been through on five that's my old publishing days. I could always talk when I was talking to an author they had a really clear idea about their audience and you don't just develop an instance of who your audience is. You actually have to earn your audience. You have to really know and empathize because you just have a little person in your head that you're actually writing for. And I would argue that that is a lot of what we're trying to do when we are being useful with the science and the policy to have essentially develop a relationship through empathy, through identification to have a clear sense of that audience. And it's not the publication it actually is the conversation I was speaking in Maryland at an NSS center in Minneapolis in June. It was a really smart college. I read a lot of newspapers that it's in front of me and I was presenting some of the collaborators that are sitting here. We tried to reconcile differences between colleges and engineers in the context of management. And he said, how did you know what the decision maker wanted? How did you get an idea about that? And I said, you're not that hard to find, I'm sure. You know, you can email them, you can call them, you can go see them. And they actually, for the most part, they want to speak. They actually often, they have questions themselves that they need to have answered and they want that relationship at that conversation. So that's a problem I think actually. So I think being able to reach out is a much lower obstacle than you think it is. And that's how we go from information to insight. All right, so for that I'll hand it off to you. Okay, so thanks, and I want to say, Hayley, so would you have a time for me to give, but before I make two quick announcements, let's have our moderator and our panelists again. So two quick announcements. The first one you're going to like. We can continue the conversation in a formal way. There's a resumption over there, however, it's like in a shop there like 6 p.m. we need to clean out the room. So I will make a quick announcement around like 5.55 so we can grab your food and maybe sit outside the building and continue the conversation. And then I'll call today actually. The second one is I think Scarlet also mentioned is we are as a chair of the Water and Society Committee under AGU hydrology section. We do plan this as a two-year event. So next year we want to coordinate with AGU centennial celebrations. We want to, actually we are planting the idea of what's the follow up event that we can do in San Francisco. So if you are having any idea or you want to know any follow up of these water and society dialogue, please come to me or Sarah over there or give us your business card or your contact information. We will keep the update, we will let you know and we will include you in our discussion for next year's event. Thanks everyone for coming. Let's continue the conversation. Thank you.