A great many people in the United States are blessed with water that emerges from our taps and showerheads on demand, enjoy dishwashing machines that wash, and toilets that flush. Water seems to be abundant, cheap, and endlessly available.
Our everyday lives depend on access to clean water. About two-thirds of the human body is made up of water and the human brain contains 80-85% water. Water is essential to life. It’s time we realize we cannot take access to water for granted anymore.
”Four billion people — almost two thirds of the world’s population — experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year.
- UNICEF
Familiar Territory
The importance of access to clean water is nothing new. It’s been going on for millennia.
Every new town or settlement needed to develop an understanding of local water availability including developing the means to access water. Simple wells, reservoirs and cisterns were invented by ancient societies; the Roman built aqueducts, and the Minoans on Crete developed sophisticated plumbing systems a thousand years before the Common Era.
Every civilization and all human bodies rely on access to clean abundant water for drinking, sanitation and living. Even in the earliest civilizations this great need has led to innovative water management practices, some of which are still much the same.
However, today with the demands of a global population, water remains in short supply in cities, towns, and villages worldwide and is often not even accessible.
Even now in developing regions, women, and sometimes children, are responsible for walking long distances daily to wait in line and collect water from a local well, carrying the bucket of water back to their homes on their heads. An estimated 13 million women and 3 million children perform this task worldwide. In refugee camps and war zones, often in remote or arid locations, access to water is typically scarce. If it is unavailable locally, water is typically delivered out of the back of large trucks.
Thirsty American Aquifers
In Florida, saltwater is now encroaching into the groundwater. As of 2023, South Florida had 40 desalination plants in operation, for treating both brackish water and seawater. Desalination units in homes are becoming common.
How is this possible given that the Florida Everglades was once one of the largest natural freshwater systems in the world? The Everglades once covered 3–4 million acres, but now has been drained and developed to roughly half its original size: the water amount flowing into the northern edge of the Everglades is estimated by UNESCO to have declined by roughly 60 percent versus pre-drainage volumes (UNESCO 2024).
As a result, Florida’s natural underground cisterns have been badly depleted allowing seawater to move inland into the state’s freshwater aquifers (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2024).
California’s Central Valley (often called “The Great Central Valley”) produces over 250 different crops. These include 40% of the country’s fruit and nuts as well as 30% of its vegetables. In order to produce this abundance, the needed irrigation has resulted in over-pumping of groundwater, causing subsidence of the land. If this continues, combined with climate change, water deliveries could be reduced by 87 percent by 2043 (California Department of Water Resources 2025).
Modern Tragedy of the Commons
Our fresh drinking water is provided by both surface water as well as underground sources. Many of these are natural, both above and below ground, and many are man-made. Across the U.S. we have strained both above and below ground water sources, diminishing aquifers by methods including overuse for development, industry, and households; as well as by draining our wetlands, the repositories and filtration systems that naturally refill our underground cisterns.
If these aquifers could speak, they’d be hollering from thirst. This is the Tragedy of the Commons.
Water Innovation: The Opportunity of the Commons
Fortunately, there’s hope and progress. I call this the Opportunity of the Commons. The opportunity will be facilitated and actualized by galvanizing systems thinking and innovation. Ensuring that clean, abundant water is available to all and delivered equitably requires a collective commitment and innovators who care deeply to develop human-centered solutions.
We need to update our methods, technologies, and thinking to create a kind of social contract. Not only do water allocation norms, pricing and access need to improve, innovators in this sector need to be encouraged, supported, and funded. Systems thinking and collaboration across water-related sectors will also be key success factors.
Innovators Making Waves
Myriad solutions have been created and are being deployed to improve water quality, and to restore clean, abundant groundwater. Here are some of the leaders in the field:
InSitu (Colorado)
Makes water flow and water level monitors, pressure sensors, and telemetry systems for remote data communication and real time management.
Trevi (California)
Develops unique renewable energy and low pressure forward-osmosis systems to desalinate water, including recycling of the resulting brine.
MyLand (Arizona)
Provides irrigation systems that enable farms to reduce the excess irrigation needed to desalinate the soil while delivering live algal nutrients via the water system to restore the health of the soil.
Zenovation Group Supports Water Innovators Like These
There are great innovators such as InSitu, Trevi, MyLand and others in this space already, but there is room for many more!
The Zenovation Group seeks to enable water innovators to thoughtfully prepare to go to market smoothly and rapidly. We can help you develop your GTM plan, process, and positioning that will give your company the momentum it needs to help you optimize the country’s water systems and delivery. We are eager to help you get there.
