How do you put a value on water? It’s a question the state has to try to answer if it wants to conserve and sustainably leverage its water resources for the foreseeable future. But that won’t be easy.
At the half-day “Capital Region Water in 2050: Opportunities and Challenges” conference that kicked off in Baton Rouge this morning, Kai Midboe, director of policy research and general counsel at the Water Institute of the Gulf, said the state has to develop a “water code”—a set of laws that will regulate the use of fresh water and groundwater. But before that can happen, he said, it first must develop a “water budget” to establish how much water is available in the state, where it comes from, and what its potential value is.
“The water budget could be one of the most important natural resource documents Louisiana ever prepares,” said Midboe, a former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, in the conference’s keynote address.
In 2013, the Legislature charged the Louisiana Law Institute with devising a water code. But Midboe said there’s no timeline for when that may happen, in part because developing the water budget will be such a complex and expensive process.
“Developing the water budget is very expensive because you need so much data,” he said. “Some of the data is there but a lot of it is still needed so we are trying to fill in the missing gaps.”
The Water Institute of the Gulf is working with several other agencies to develop the water budget. Institutes at Tulane and LSU, meanwhile, are jointly drafting the parameters of what a water code should comprise so there is a framework for the proposed laws.
Issues related to water resources have begun to attract greater attention in recent years, due to concerns over depletion of freshwater aquifers, the increase in industrial activity in the state and natural climate changes that have led to more frequent droughts. Though Louisiana seemingly has an abundance of water, Midboe said it’s important not to take that for granted.
“We have a lot of water,” he said. “But it’s not unlimited.”
Today’s conference is taking place at the Pennington Conference Center and is sponsored by the Environmental and Health Council of Louisiana, in partnership with the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. The conference continues through 1 p.m. with a number of panel discussions featuring business, industry and community leaders.
—Stephanie Riegel
