CSUN hosted speakers and presented a documentary on Tuesday in recognition of World Water Day.
World Water Day is an international event to bring awareness about improper water usage. The Institute of Sustainability spent the day teaching students about different strategies to conserve water. The day began with a screening of the documentary “Tapped” and ended with two speakers who work with water management.
Norma Borja, Gender and Women Studies major said that the documentary viewing was helpful in educating the public about bottled water.
“It tells you about the chemicals that water bottles contain.”
She said there were helpful facts shared about water to the audience before the screening of the documentary. The documentary only shared a portion of what students can learn about the water process.
CSUN also hosted speaker Don Kendall, associate adjunct professor at UCLA’s department of civil and environmental engineering, who spoke further about how water is distributed and received, and why it is important to take advantage of local resources.
“Water is such a precious resource and if we can, we should develop that precious resource locally,” Kendall said.
Kendall said too much time and energy is spent taking water from Northern California and bringing it to Southern California for consumption. He said there are local supplies that can be utilized. Alternative local water supplies include recycled water groundwater, groundwater recovery, the Los Angeles Aqueduct and desalination.
The desalination process filters ocean water for human consumption. Kendall said the focus should not be on filtering ocean water, but recovering water from the ground locally. He said desalination plants leave a carbon footprint and use a lot of energy.
“The strategy we have to maintain our fusion demands is through local resources,” Kendall said. “We want to leave this area better for our children.”
The following speaker was Fred Barker, waterworks engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He spoke about his experience building water wells in Africa with the Peace Corps. He helped build water wells in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world.
“We would drive into a village and ask people if they would want a well,” Barker said. He said the people of Chad were happy to have wells that provided clean water to their community.
Barker said water is potable when wells are built deep enough into the earth because soil naturally filters the water.
The Institute of Sustainability’s goal was to provide students with an overall understanding of water, and how to properly use that resource.
Ankur Patel, interdisciplinary graduate student and Institute of Sustainability member, said that there are known solutions to the problems we have with conserving water.
“We got to realize there is a finite amount of resources,” Patel said. He said he hopes the Water Day event made an impact on students.
