MEMPHIS, Tenn. — With 95% Shelby County's water coming from the Memphis Sand Aquifer. It’s why organizations like ‘Protect Our Aquifer’ has been pushing for more water awareness.
Last week we saw the drought levels in our city go from moderate to severe due to a lack of rain, and meteorologist don’t anticipate the area will get the amount of rain we need anytime soon.
“What it does mean is that plants are dryer, everybody is needing more water and the summer is always the time where more water is pumped from the aquifer,” Protect Our Aquifer Executive director Sarah Houston said.
She said if things continue trending in this direction, we could find ourselves in an extreme type situation. Houston said now might be the best time to start thinking about how to conserve more water.
“There are 420,000 MLGW customers. So if you’re one and 10% of that amount of people think about a watering scheme, that could make a big impact across the board,” Houston said.
Houston said to help conserve more water, users can limit the amount of times they water their lawn to one day a week and water the lawn when the sun is down.
According to University of Memphis' Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CEASAR), the natural water resource provides deep underground water that is naturally filtrated by sand, giving Memphians access to low impurity water that is over 2,000 years old.
But research from CEASAR shows that human activity has caused decades of damage and thinning to underground clay layers that create barriers and protect the aquifer, which if continued over time, can threaten the quality of the water.
Users can also be more water aware. Every Wednesday the group host Water Wednesday on their Instagram account.
Each week they talk about different topics when it comes to how cool, important, and complex water is. You can find more information on their Instagram account @protectouraquifer.