“We are pleased to be part of this effort to conserve a valuable resource,” said Marco A. Valera, vice president for facilities management at Fordham. “Although this NYC challenge is for the Lincoln Center campus, we will be taking similar steps at our Rose Hill campus.”

According to the DEP, universities can make a big dent in citywide water demand, as New York is home to more university students than any other city in the nation. The goal will be to reduce water consumption by at least 5 percent by 2020. Water use in residence halls, dining halls, and irrigation of green spaces are will all be targeted.

“The NYC Water Challenge is a fantastic opportunity for Fordham to reflect and reorient our urban water responsibility—to reflect on patterns of use and waste, and to reorient toward conscious water consumption on individual and institutional levels,” said Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, whose research examines water as a scarce resource and as a commodity. “The NYDEP’s vision is concrete, constructive, and creative.”

The challenge lasts two years, from August 1, 2018 through July 31, 2020. As a participant, Fordham will be provided with technical assistance from the city to complement an already robust sustainability program.

Listen to Peppard explain what it means to seek water justice means and why this issue impacts women in particular.

Fordham’s resident “water ethics” expert, Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science and ethics, shared the following thoughts on the situation:

**

Until recently, people in the U.S. have tended to think that “water crises” happen to other people in other parts of the world, that “water security” is an issue for global diplomacy more than our own faucets.

But now, the invisible is becoming visible with regard to United States water: across this vast country there are water problems, from California’s drought to the effects of agricultural runoff on Toledo’s drinking water. The public health disaster and environmental racism evident in Flint’s contaminated water supply has extended to Newark Schools. And now a USAToday piece reveals levels of lead far beyond the regulatory standard in more than 2,000 locations.

This is serious.

Lead contamination from old pipes and other forms of chemical leaching is a known issue to water infrastructure experts: Many municipalities take major steps to ensure that drinking water leaving their treatment plants meets federal standards.

Obviously, that failed in Flint. But apart from violations of municipal water supply (as in Flint), lead can enter water supply at points of entry to schools, homes, and other buildings. This is the case for many of the sites profiled by the USAToday team.

Given the deleterious impacts of lead on children’s brain development, and the negative health effects across the lifespan of lead and other undesirable compounds in water, what should you do?

There are six steps: (1) get your water tested, (2) learn about your municipal water quality and treatment, (3) consider an under-sink water filter, (4) regard bottled water as a stop-gap measure for public health emergencies, not a long-term solution, (5) learn about your watershed, and (6) figure out what you can contribute to developing consciousness about water ethics. Water is all of our responsibility, on many levels of scale.

Let me assure you that you don’t have to be a water expert to do any of this. Even if you’re terrified (and frankly, often I am too!), take a deep breath, and jump in—because in fact, simply by being connected to water sources, you are already immersed in these issues. And we can do better.

• Get Your Water Tested at Home

Get your water tested at the faucet(s) in your home. This will tell you about what is in the water that you drink and use for bathing and other domestic purposes. This is the data you will use in deciding what kinds of filtration and purification systems to choose (see #3). If you live in a building built in or before the 1950s, you must do this. But really, everyone should do this.

• Get Water Quality Data from your Municipality and/or Water Provider.

Get data about municipal water quality from your water provider. Compare this to the data about your household water (#1). This is how you will see what undesirables are entering your water through your own home pipes (beyond the municipal infrastructure).

In other words, data from your water provider gives you bigger-picture information that you can use. By comparing the municipal data to your own faucet data, you can see whether and how your home’s water quality differs from that of the local water provider. This will help you select a filtration or purification method (see #3).

And by paying attention to the water quality report from the water provider, you get a sense of the “terroir” of your water. (Yes, just like wine, water has a local and regional “terroir”—it takes the shape, taste, and influences of the land and environments through which it passes!*)

Finally, I recommend you get information about how your water provider treats that water before piping it to your house. There are many effective methods of water treatment at the municipal level (and some accessible books about treatment of water from past to present, like Water 4.0 by David Sedlak.

• Invest in a Water Filter that Connects to your Water Supply.

There are many types of water filters and filtration or purification systems. Many people recommend under-sink or whole-house water filters (the latter works better for people in freestanding residences, obviously, than in does for people living in apartments). The best systems take out heavy metals (mercury, lead) as well as organic compounds, agricultural products like herbicides and pesticides, and some pharmaceuticals.

The most powerful kind of water treatment is reverse osmosis (RO), which basically removes everything from the water (including minerals that make water taste good). Some products now offer RO filters that retain the minerals in tap water or even re-mineralize the water after it’s been filtered. (Reverse osmosis with re-mineralization, among other treatments, is what companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi use to treat the tap water that becomes Dasani and Aquafina. In other words, they take everything out, then add proprietary mineral compounds back in to make the water taste better!)

Most counter-top filters do not filter out lead. If your water has lead problems and you’re not going to do an under-sink filter installation, please make sure you get one that filters lead (and mercury and arsenic and other undesirables).

• Bottled water is a stopgap measure; it is not a long-term solution.

The convenience of bottled water is undeniable. In cases of public health emergencies, it is ethically justifiable to use bottled water. So if you are freaking out about known levels of lead in your water, or you have to wait to get your water tested, then there is an argument for drinking bottled water in the very short-term because you are seeking wellness and avoiding a public health crisis. But bottled water is not a long-term solution. It is convenient; in public health crises it is important; but it is a bandage for an issue that needs a very different kind of treatment.

(I and other water experts have written elsewhere about bottled water as an ethical issue, especially in industrialized nations with the capacity to invest in and maintain reliable water infrastructure.)**

• Learn about your Watershed, and Figure Out Where to Jump in to Local Conversations about Water.

Water is constantly in motion, and while it is a universal human need, the “terroir” and sources of your water are particular to the place where you live. So learn about your watershed! And then, advocate for and get involved in making sure that many civic energies, public monies, and initiatives are oriented towards water infrastructure updates—not just repairs.

Our human bodies of water rely upon broader bodies of water. We can protect, maintain, and provide water in better and worse ways. It requires a bit of foresight, and a lot of persistence, to keep water in our sight lines. But isn’t that important, for something that undergirds all of our wellbeing and makes our lives possible?

• Delve into Water Ethics

How societies interact with water is a major ethical question, not just a political one. For example, what does it mean to distribute water ethically? What does it mean to be virtuous with regard to water? Who is entitled to water? Who should provide it? Is water best viewed as a gift of nature, an economic commodity, a human right? These topics are part of an emerging discourse on “water ethics.”

Trust me: You don’t have to be a water expert to engage in water ethics—you just have to be someone who breathes, cares, lives in a watershed. All of us can begin to think and act well about water. Let’s be those people, for ourselves and for others.

I invite you to join this conversation, by:

• watching “The Importance of a Water Ethic,” a video produced by the Center for Humans and Nature for World Water Day 2016.

• reading one book: Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, by Cynthia Barnett (http://www.beacon.org/Blue-Revolution-P945.aspx)

—

Christiana Z. Peppard, Ph.D. (@profpeppard) is the author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (2014) and an expert on water, ethics, and religion and science. She has written for and appeared in public media venues such as The New Republic, Public Radio International, The Washingon Post, TED-Ed, MSNBC, and CNN.com.

A recipient of a Boren scholarship, she’s living in Amman, Jordan—taking classes, absorbing the culture, and learning Arabic so that after graduation she can help seek solutions to water-related problems that are readily apparent in day-to-day life.

“Water conservation is second nature for everyone” in Jordan, Morton said, noting that most households get water delivered only once a week and have to make it last. “When the water runs out, the water runs out.”

The Boren Scholarship, part of the National Security Education Program, was founded to expand America’s expertise in the needs and perspectives of countries that are underrepresented in study abroad programs. It sends undergraduates to regions that are important for U.S. interests so they can learn the language; in return, the students spend at least a year working for the federal government in the national security arena after graduating.

Morton has set her sights on the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. She hopes to help with policies that balance water security and environmental protection and that ease tensions between Middle East nations that have water-sharing agreements.

The scholarship has brought her a world away from where she was just two years ago, when, in the middle of her junior year, her growing qualms about her pre-med focus prompted her to make a change.

With “a lot” of support from Assistant Dean William Gould, she switched to international studies and started to actively seek learning opportunities in global affairs. A Fordham travel grant sent her to Scandinavia for a backpacking and leadership program that jumpstarted her interest in sustainability, an interest she developed in senior year as a youth representative in the United Nations public information department.

Morton needed a fifth undergraduate year to complete her major, and chose Jordan because it’s the best place to learn Arabic—“a beautiful language,” she said. She takes classes offered by the Council on International Educational Exchange at the Princess Sumaya Institute for Technology in Amman.

In addition to her classes in Arabic, area studies, and other topics, she’s been finishing up a senior thesis focused on the links between water problems and social unrest, with a focus on Syria. In her Boren application she noted the importance of helping Jordan—a key U.S. ally—address its own water issues as a way of avoiding political instability.

Doing something about water problems could promote peace in the region, she said, giving the example of a proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea pipeline project that would require talks between Palestine, Israel, and Jordan.

“I think that’s an important step,” she said. “If you sit down and try to have a political discussion among these three parties, I don’t know how much success you’re going to have. But when you are talking about a specific issue, such as water, I think it is easier to make an agreement. Because everyone needs water.”

Jordanians have been outspokenly curious about why she’s there—“always wanting to know why I study Arabic,” she said. And their hospitality seems to be showing in the actions of their government, which has been “truly incredible” in welcoming Syrian refugees despite Jordan’s water woes and tight resources, she said.

“Jordan doesn’t have oil, Jordan doesn’t have a huge economy, Jordan certainly relies on a lot of foreign aid, and so to put those resources to work for the refugees that are coming from Syria, I think that’s very impressive,” she said.

She and a few friends recently visited some of those refugees outside the Za’atari refugee camp, playing with a group of Syrian girls to help keep their spirits up. Rather than being a service activity, she said, the trip was about “just being there and being physically present and understanding more and seeing it myself.”

The experience reminded her of her Global Outreach projects at Fordham, she said. “The emphasis was always on walking in solidarity with others and in finding common ground.”

Several investigations have been launched and what exactly happened remains to be seen. In the meantime, Fordham’s Christiana Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics, the author of “Just Water: Theology, Ethics an the Global Water Crisis,” weighs in on the ethical implications of this crisis.

For more on Peppard, who also teaches in the environmental studies program at Fordham, watch this TedEd video about “Where We Get Our Fresh Water,” and this CNN piece she wrote on “The resource problem you probably haven’t heard about.”