CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: McGee Young is a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Last year, Professor Young taught a class on water policy. His students learned about water shortages and began to think about how to deal with them.
MCGEE YOUNG: “Obviously our resources were limited so we couldn’t solve the problems of India, for example, but we could look in our own backyard.”
Professor McGee says the students considered Waukesha, Wisconsin. The city is about thirty kilometers from Milwaukee and running out of water. He says Waukesha cannot get water from nearby Lake Michigan, so the city faces a severe crisis.
Professor Young says part of the problem has to do with water bills. These are the documents sent out by the water company to tell individuals how much they owe for water use. Professor Young says the bills do not have enough useful information.
MCGEE YOUNG: “The water company tells us how many hundreds of cubic feet we’ve used. To me, a hundred cubic feet has no context. So if I used twenty in a quarter, was that good? Was that bad?”
So Professor Young and his students created a website called H2O Score.com. The website gives people information about how they can reduce the amount of water they use. And it takes complex information from water bills and puts it into simple terms. This information includes the number of gallons, or liters, of water used in a day. He says that permits people to compare their water use to others.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25