Today, people who care about water are called to address new challenges. How will we replace enormous amounts of aging water infrastructure? How are we going to protect people and nature from stresses on our waters in a changing climate? How can we make sure our water is safe from emerging pollutants? We believe that these challenges will only be met by developing new partnerships and strategies. We’ve helped create the Water Innovation Network of the Hudson Valley (WIN-HV) based on four premises:

• Water stewardship needs more public-private partnerships, in order to engage private capital and develop innovative business models to meet new water challenges cost-effectively.
• There’s also a need for more sophisticated, ongoing community partnerships, to help people use water more wisely where they live and work.
• Water has been misunderstood as a cheap, easy to access resource that comes into our lives and goes “away” to be recycled by Mother Nature. But those cycles have been disrupted by huma impacts, and now people need to redesign our systems of using water so that it is valued and managed as a precious resource in the public trust.
• If we can make a positive contribution in these three areas, we will produce an additional benefit: a new innovation economy, in eastern New York, that is inspired by water stewardship and restoration.

“Read the Water Innovation Network of the Hudson Valley summary ”