The annual Water Lecture Series and Water Daze poster competition will join forces to create a two-day event centered on the importance of water management.
This year the Bush School, Texas Water Resource Institute, A&M Law School and the Water Management and Hydrological Sciences program have teamed up for the third annual lecture series featuring keynote speaker Michael Campana. The ordinarily one-day event was expanded to two days when the Water Daze poster competition was added to the program series.
Campana will address integrated water resources management within the state of Texas on Tuesday, while Wednesday will consist of a student poster competition in addition to four faculty presentations.
Ronald Kaiser, professor of Water Law and Policy, said the event will shed light on the water resource management industry in the United States and around the world.
“We want to highlight the research of our students across the university, and then highlight some of the work of our faculty, all around building a better appreciation for the complexity of managing water,” Kaiser said. “I like to tell people that water management isn’t rocket science — it’s a whole lot harder.”
Campana is a professor of Hydrogeology and Water Resources at Oregon State University and will speak about integrated water resources management in Texas — an approach to water management that considers economics, the ecosystem and sustainability.
“It’s a process to get to a point where entities, states, counties and districts can manage water in a little better fashion than we perhaps used to do in the past,” Campana said.
Wednesday will begin with the student poster competition, which consists of 27 poster presentations put together by A&M students on various water research topics. Before awards for the poster competition are announced, four faculty members will present lectures on topics like water quality in rivers and streams, and contamination of groundwater.
Gabriel Eckstein, professor of law and director of the International Water Law Project, said he hopes students will realize how important it is to study water management.
“It is so critical that it touches every aspect of society and life,” Eckstein said. “And there are tremendous needs for researchers and professionals. There are tremendous opportunities for people to get into the watersphere and make a whole profession out of it.”
Campana said he encourages students to make the world a better place, and be appreciative of how easy it is to get clean drinking water for the majority of people in this country.
“By and large, we have it easy when it comes to getting clean water to drink but that’s not true in a large part of the world,” Campana said. “I think students, and everybody needs to focus on what we can do to make the world a better place in regard to clean water and sanitation.”
The two-day event will begin at 4 p.m. Tuesday with Campana’s lecture in MSC Bethancourt Ballroom room 2406A. Wednesday’s poster competition will begin at 8 a.m. and be awarded at 3:30 p.m. Faculty presentations will run from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.
