What does water sustainability mean to you?

This past spring, Truslow Resource Consulting LLC and Opus Advisors LLC were chosen to be involved in the New Hampshire Water Sustainability Initiative and to work with the New Hampshire Lives on Water Steering Committee on planning for the future of water sustainability in many forms throughout New Hampshire. You can learn more about this effort at nhlivesonwater.org

The priorities of the New Hampshire Lives on Water (NH₂O) Initiative are:

1. To have informed and engaged consumers

2. To have strong water infrastructure

3. To integrate management and planning for water resources

As part of this initiative, we sent out a brief survey to help us understand peoples’ views on water sustainability and gauge interest in the  New Hampshire Lives on Water (NH2O) initiative. Over 100 people responded! More than half of the respondents are very involved with water resources in New Hampshire (volunteer or work in the field). Even with this high number involved in water already, we were able to glean some representative and very interesting data regarding perceptions of water sustainability in New Hampshire.

 Below are some of the results of the survey:

The graphic displayed above is called a Wordle – a collage of text, where greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently in the source sample (www.wordle.net). This Wordle was created in response to a question we posed in the survey:

 What does water sustainability mean to you?

Not surprisingly water was the top word, followed by: clean, quality, future, life, generations, use, enough, quantity and so on.

If we attempt to put the prominent words in the Wordle into a  sentence it might look something like:

Water sustainability means maintaining clean and plentiful water that will be available for us and future generations to use and enjoy.

We also asked:

 What water issues are most important to you?

The water issue that was selected the most among survey respondents was Drinking Water with 95% of respondents selecting this issue as one of the most important. Wildlife and Public Recreation were water issues that were selected by 86% and 73% of respondents, respectively. Commercial Use and Irrigation was selected by 32% of survey respondents, perhaps a reflection of the target audience.

Other water issues that were most important to survey respondents included floodwater storage and wastewater infrastructure.

Lastly we asked:

Who should be involved in water sustainability and the NH₂O Initiative?

Essentially, you said EVERYONE! … Farmers, State Agencies, Federal Agencies, Municipalities and Local Water Providers, Lake, River, and Watershed Associations and Alliances, Land Trusts, K-12 Schools and Students, Colleges and Universities, Industry and Commerce, Small Businesses, Tourism and Ski Industry, Citizens, Legislators, and more!

Stay informed through the NH2O website and help build awareness and momentum across the state.