By the time you’re reading this today, you have more than likely mindlessly used a few gallons of water. You took a shower (at least we hope so), you brushed your teeth, you brewed some coffee, you drank some water, you boiled some food, you then froze it for your iced tea, and probably did a few more things.

At any of those times when you turned the faucet, did you think, “I wonder if there will be water?” No, you didn’t. And if no water came out of the tap, your first thought would probably be, “I paid the bill, right?”

We take water for granted and that’s okay to do. We have many other things to think about. However, because we take it for granted doesn’t make it any less vital.

As people that have an opinion or two on what happens to ourselves and our family, we do need to think about water a bit more than we do.

The Beneficial-Use Water Alliance is working with farmers, ranchers, government, and E&Ps to stop evaporating water or injecting it into the ground. We can actually USE that produced water for crops or herds.

Here's where your faucet comes in: If we’re using cleaned produced water for those things, then the municipalities won’t feel the pressure to make sure your tap has water. But it’s going to take some intentionality on our part.

If the stakeholders that are involved in owning land, drilling for oil, raising cattle, or growing crops can come together and put the already established systems in place, then we can put our water to good use.

And then, we can go back to mindlessly turning on the tap. Because we don’t want to discover one day that we took water for granted for too long.