A study of peoples’ attitudes and awareness
of Lubbock water crisis
by
Chandani Dissanayake
Approved
Dr. Thomas Leverett
Abstract
This paper reports on a study of peoples’ attitudes and awareness of the
Lubbock water crisis. Conclusions are made based on the data from a survey of
one hundred and fifty people within the TTU community. This paper presents the
differences and similarities of attitudes and awareness between students and
non-students, males and females, and the Texans and non-Texans. Furthermore,
possible reasons for such results are discussed in the discussion section.
Finally, the paper concludes that controlling Lubbock’s water crisis will not
be a big problem with peoples’ support considering the results about the
perception of Lubbock’s people.
1. Introduction.
Water is one of the most essential things in our lives. To have a life
in any world, there should be enough water resources in that world. The story
is true for Lubbock too. As we all know, Lubbock is a dry place and its
population is getting increased day by day. But, due to lack of rainfall, water
resources are drying up. Lake Meredith, which was Lubbock’s primary source of
water, is already dried completely (Reed, 2012). When we listen to the
discussions and debates, and when we read articles and reports about Lubbock’s
water crisis, this problem cannot be considered as an insignificant issue.
Therefore it is very important that every person, every farmer, and every
landowner in the city of Lubbock become aware of this problem and try to take
necessary actions to save every single water drop.
Using this project, we intended to find out whether people in Lubbock
are aware of Lubbock’s water crisis, how they contribute in saving water
consumption, which of Lubbock’s people give most contribution to control this
problem, and people’s attitude about laws, traditions, and restrictions on
water consumption.
2. Background
Some writers have pointed out how severe the crisis is. According to the
article titled “Nine cities running out of water” (Sauter and Hess, 2013),
Lubbock is the city that has had the worst level of drought since the beginning
of 2011. Furthermore, this article shows that the cause of the drought is low
rainfall, and the level of water crisis depends on the source of water that the
area has. According to the home page of City of Lubbock Water Department
(2013), Lubbock gets ground water, which is the main source of water for the
city, from two places, well fields in Roberts County and well fields in Bailey
County, and Lake Alan Henry is also used for some water needs. According to
Abby Reed’s “Lubbock’s water crisis, how did we get here?” (Reed, 2012), Lake
Meredith was the one used as surface water resource of the city, and since it
got dried up completely in 2012, Lake Alan Henry has taken Lake Meredith’s
place. In this article, former Mayor Tom Martin, whose words Ms.Reed is
pointing out here, encourages residents to put their effort into water
conservation, though “the city is constantly working on developing future water
supply sources” (par.9).
As stated in the article titled “Lubbock’s water crisis: keys to the
future” (2005), the average of water usage per person in Lubbock is 190 gallons
per day, and if it’s reduced by 20 gallons or more, alternatives can be
postponed for several years and by that we can save our money. Further, in this
article, Deputy City Manager Tom Adams says, "If we didn't do anything,
it's possible by 2015, we would need a new source. But if we can conserve just
a little bit, we can push that to 2020, 2025, even 2030" (par.2).
These facts open the path towards actions on conserving water as much as
possible. Though the water crisis is a serious problem for people in Lubbock,
there is evidence that people have concern about different environmental
problems in general. According to the article “Environmental Attitudes And
Behaviors of American Youth with An Emphasis On Youth From Disadvantaged Areas”
(1994), which gives a cluster analysis on people’s perceptions, it can be seen
that 5 different types of students have different environmental concerns. For
an example, students from disadvantaged areas are concerned about kidnapping,
the large number of people with guns, crime and violence in local neighborhoods
and economy more than about the environment. According to the gender it
exhibits different levels of concern on issues. Today students’ environmental
concerns are not necessarily about their neighborhood, but “problems that
cannot be seen: damage to the ozone layer and destruction of the rainforest”
(Environmental Attitudes And Behaviors of American Youth with An Emphasis On
Youth From Disadvantaged Areas, 1994, Chapter one, p.3).
If we consider people’s awareness about Lubbock water crisis, depending
on the types of Lubbock’s people, there will be different observations about
perception. If we divide people into these groups, students and nonstudents,
Texans and non-Texans, male and female, we can expect them to answer questions
differently to our survey about the Lubbock water crisis.
3. Hypotheses
On the survey, different responses for each question were expected.
Among those responses, we would expect to observe that females’ concern about
this problem was higher than the males’ and their contribution in water
conservation would be greater than males’ contribution. We would expect
awareness and attitudes of students to be very poor, while that of residents
would be at a better level. When we considered the question ‘Do you know what fracking
is?’, we could expect a large majority would give the response ‘No’. Around
half would not have an idea about where Lubbock gets its water supply.
4. Method
This project was conducted as an assignment of the class ESL 5301,
Advanced Writing for International Students. We, thirteen students and four
teachers including myself, had been working on this project for around two
months. First, literature reviews about Lubbock’s water crisis were done. After
preparing the proposal, data were collected through a survey. Each person in
the class was responsible for eight surveys. The survey had twelve questions
focusing on people’s opinion and knowledge about Lubbock’s water crisis (see
appendix). Among those twelve questions, the first three were to get an idea about
people’s concern about environmental problems. The target of the next three
questions was about the awareness of Lubbock’s water supply system. People’s
awareness about water restrictions in the city of Lubbock was focused on
through the next three questions. The last three questions were set up for
their ideas and contribution to save water.At the end of the survey, we wanted to know which of Lubbock’s people, between female and male, and students and non-students, were more concerned about this problem and gave the most contribution to saving water. Therefore, during the survey, one hundred and fifty surveys were distributed equally between females and males and one hundred and ten students and forty non-students were included. And we decided to get at least five out of eight surveys done by Americans, so a total of one hundred and eleven out of one hundred and fifty were US citizens.
Texas Tech University was considered to be
the primary human resource place for the survey due to the ease of access, and
availability of all required categories, stated above. Since Texas Tech
University was a good resource of people who had various backgrounds and
different levels of knowledge about environmental issues, we expected that we
could get a reasonable picture of peoples’ opinion and knowledge about
Lubbock’s water crisis. But since participants are mostly from Texas Tech
University, which is an academic environment with more than 31,000 students’ enrollment, approximately 84% of whom are Texas
residents (Texas Tech University, 2013), the results might reflect the situation of the university community,
which was different from the city itself. Therefore, the conclusion may be
deviated from the Lubbock’s situation.
5. Results
As stated in the hypotheses section, we
believed that females would be more concerned about Lubbock’s water crisis than
males, and their contribution in water conservation would be greater than
males’ contribution. As we believed, more females worried about Lubbock’s ability
to get water in the future than males; 69.33% of females said “worried” while
45.33% of males said “worried” to the last question. Females’ contribution in
water conservation was at a better level than males’; 86.67% of females said
“Yes” while 81.33% of males had same response to the tenth question (see figure. 5).
The second hypothesis was that we would expect awareness and attitudes of
students to be very poor while that of residents would be at a better level. In
fact, many students didn’t know about Lubbock’s water supply or fracking, and
many non-students were aware of these issues; 45.45%, 55.45%, and 62.73% of
students said “No”, while 77.5%, 65%, and 67.5% of non-students said “Yes” to
the second, fifth, and sixth questions respectively (see figure. 6&7). The results also showed that many students
had no clear belief or personal attitude about actions that were taken towards
controlling Lubbock’s water crisis or Lubbock’s water restrictions, while
residents were at a better level on this point; 47.27%, 30%, 44.55%, and 35.45%
of students said “Don’t know” while only 40%, 12.5%, 27.5%, and 15% of non-students
said “Don’t know” to the third, seventh, eighth, and ninth questions
respectively.
Next, we expected the majority would give the response “No” to the
question “Do you know what fracking is”. But more people knew what fracking was
though we had no idea how clearly they knew; only 36% said “No” to this
question.
The last hypothesis was that around half would not have an idea about
where Lubbock gets its water supply. According to the results of the survey,
only 30% said that they were not very knowledgeable about this and 49.33% said
that they were somewhat knowledgeable.
Many people were concerned about air
pollution and water pollution as the most important issues from the list of
environmental problems provided (see appendix); 68% (102 out of 150) chose air
pollution and 68.67% (103 out of 150) chose water pollution. Only a few people
worried about increasing flooding and rising sea level; 24.67% chose increasing
flooding and 26% chose rising sea level. Meanwhile 5.33% considered all of them
as important issues (see figure. 8). Furthermore, there was not much difference between males’ and females’
selection on environmental problems; out of 103 who selected water pollution,
52 were females and 51 were males and out of 102 who selected air pollution, 49
were females and 53 were males (see figure. 9).
Those who knew about what fracking was, were the people who mostly
worried about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future, and half of them
believed that oil drillers were the people on the list who take more water than
they should; out of 150, 96 knew what fracking was and 53 out of them chose
‘worried’ to the last question and 48 chose ‘oil drillers’ to the 11th
question.
Texan people worried more about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the
future than non-Texans; out of 150, 85 said ‘worried’ to the last question and
55.29% of them were Texans and 44.71% were non-Texans (USA, not Texans and
internationals).
A few surveyed people were not consistent enough with their responses;
out of 150, 31 were very knowledgeable about where Lubbock gets its water
supply and 2 people out of them didn’t know where Lubbock is getting its water
for public use, now, and 3 people out of them didn’t know how Lake Meredith is
related to the question of Lubbock’s water supply.
6. Discussion
Results from the survey confirmed our belief that females would be more
concerned about Lubbock’s water crisis than males and their contribution in
water conservation would be greater than males’ contribution. According to my
opinion, the main reasons for this result can be organized as follows.
Generally in a home, wives are involved with more activities with water than
males, such as cooking, washing, watering the garden, etc. Therefore females
know the value of water. I believe that most females are good at predicting the
future and therefore they are trying to act in the present in such a way that
their families will be protected from future disasters. These reasons may lead
to such a difference between females and males. Another result from the survey was that awareness and attitudes of students about Lubbock’s water supply, fracking, and Lubbock’s water restrictions were poor while that of non-students was at a better level. This is not a surprise result, because students are temporary residents of Lubbock and most of them would not be here for more than 5 years. Therefore most of them are not interested or not worried about Lubbock water supply or any other related topic; instead they have many other topics as young people. But residents have selected Lubbock to spend their lives in and therefore they are interested in these topics. Most of them are mature enough to identify risks that they would have to face in the future and reasons for those, and to understand their responsibilities in controlling environmental issues that threaten their future.
As stated in the hypotheses, we believed that the majority would have no idea what fracking was. According to the results, this is no longer valid though there was a question how clearly they knew. That means that we had a wrong assumption about Lubbock peoples’ awareness about fracking. Within Texas, it is a well-known problem and a big threat to pure water supply. Therefore, fracking may not be a new topic for Texans. Since half of surveyed people are Texans, the result that 64% people know what fracking is, is a reasonable outcome from the survey.
Though we expected around half would not have an idea about where Lubbock gets its water supply, results show that only 30% were not very knowledgeable. This result reflects the fact that people are aware about Lubbock water supply and from where they get water for their daily activities. The reason for our suggestion was that according to the peoples’ perception in the background, people were mainly interested in issues like global warming, rising sea level, air pollution, etc. and we assumed that they did not want to know about their water supply as long as they have enough water for their activities. But the results made this assumption wrong. This result may be because people are really eager to know about water resources that they are using. Actually, it is a good sign about Lubbock’s future.
The most important issues from the list of environmental problems that was provided were air pollution and water pollution. Personally, I also believed that people should consider them as the most important environmental issues in general because air and water are the most essential resources in the world. Therefore air pollution and water pollution should be considered as the main problems. According to the results, it can be concluded that both females and males have common ideas about environmental problems in general.
Considering the results, we can observe that knowing what fracking is is related to the responses of the 11th and 12th questions. Most of the people who know what fracking is, know the use of water in the fracking process; therefore, they may assume that there would be a problem about pure water if frackers continue their process as it is. This assumption may lead to such responses for the 11th and 12th questions.
Many Texan people or their family members will be living around Texas
while the others will be living out of Texas. Therefore, Texans may be worrying
more about environmental problems of Texas than others. This may be the reason
for Texans worrying more about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future
than non-Texans.
A few people were not consistent enough with their responses. When we
are doing surveys with the people, we should expect such incidents, because
people are so busy and perhaps, they don’t want to spend some time to
understand surveys and fill it out very accurately. This would not affect to
our results much, if we could extend the survey to a large number of people,
around 300.
There may be a problem with the reliability of the data, collected from
the survey. Anyhow, we don’t have strong evidence to prove unreliability of the
data except one incident. There was a lady who said “I know that “people who
water their lawns” should be checked, but I don’t want to do that because I am
also among that kind of people”. Though it is reasonable to suspect the
reliability of respondents depending on this incident, considering the overall
process, it is not fair to suspect the reliability of respondents. But if we
could extend some questions further, we would have been able to guarantee the
reliability of the data. For an example, eleventh question could be extended to
ask reasons for the choices and fifth question could be extended to list the
water resources if they chose ‘yes’.
Since most surveyed people were from Texas Tech University, the result
may reflect the situation of the university community, which may be different
from the city itself. In order to
understand the perception of Lubbock’s people about the Lubbock water crisis,
it would be a good idea to do the survey with people outside from the
university.
Finally, the results show a positive conclusion on the perception of
Lubbock’s people about Lubbock’s water crisis and controlling Lubbock’s water
crisis will not be a big problem with peoples’ support on this matter.
7. Bibliography
City of Lubbock Water Department
(2013).Retrieved on September 26, 2013 from http://www.mylubbock.us/departmental-websites/departments/water-department/home
Environmental Attitudes And Behaviors of
American Youth with An Emphasis On Youth From Disadvantaged Areas (1994,
December). Retrieved on October 02, 2013 from http://eelink.net/ROPER/One.html
Lubbock’s water crisis: keys to the future
(2005, November, 16). Retrieved on September 26, 2013 from http://www.kcbd.com/story/4129560/lubbocks-water-crisis-keys-to-the-future
Reed, A. (2012, February 9). Lubbock water
crisis, how did we get here? Retrieved on September 26, 2013 from http://www.kcbd.com/story/16903788/lubbocks-water-crisis-how-did-we-get-here
Sauter, M.B. and Hess, A.E.M. (2013, August,
1). Nine cities Running out of Water. Retrieved on September 26, 2013 from
http:/247wallst.com/Special-report/2013/08/01/nine-cities-running-out-of-water
Texas Tech University (2013). Retrieved on
December 02, 2013 from http://www.depts.ttu.edu/scc/APA_Internship/Student.php
Appendix 1
ESL 5301
Survey
Thank you for filling out
our survey!
I am from
____ Texas
____ USA, not Texas
____ international, not USA
I am ____ student
____ non-student
I am ____ Male
____ Female
1. Check the issues that
you feel are most important. Check as many as you like.
____ rising
sea levels
____ global
warming
____
increasing storms, tornados, & hurricanes
____
increasing flooding
____ drought
____ fresh
water supply
____ fracking
& drilling and their effects
____ air
pollution
____ water pollution
2. Do you know what
fracking is?
____ Y ____ N
3. Do you believe fracking
endangers the public water supply?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
4. How knowledgeable are
you about where Lubbock gets its water supply?
_____ Very knowlegeable _____ Somewhat _____
Not very
5. Do you know where
Lubbock is getting its water for public use, now?
_____ Y _____
N
6. Do you know how Lake
Meredith is related to the question of Lubbock's water supply?
_____ Y ______
N
7. Do you believe in water
restrictions for the city of Lubbock?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
8. Do you think Lubbock
enforces its water restrictions effectively?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
9. Do you believe in water
restrictions for farmers in the area?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
10. Do you usually,
generally, try to save water (for example, turn it off while brushing teeth?
____ Y ____ N
11. Which of the people on
this list take MORE water than they should, based on the availability of the
resource? Check as many as you like.
_____ farmers
_____ oil drillers
_____ people who water their lawns
12. Which best describes
your feeling about Lubbock's ability to get water in the future?
_____ confident
_____ worried
Appendix 2
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