Final paper

Jose A Payan

Abstract

This report is about the study that we did with 150 people and their perception about the water crisis in the city of Lubbock. We used questionnaires to collect the data. In the questionnaires we included specific questions, to give us a clearer idea of the perceptions of the people, besides separating our population into male and female, Texans, Non-Texans and internationals also students and Non-Students. Most of the questionnaires were done within Texas Tech University, and it was eight surveys per person. The total of the questionnaires was carefully analyzed with the aim of being as objective as possible. The results were interpreted with graphs, in which we find different results to each of our questions. This indicates to us that there are differences in what people think, and how concerned they are about the water crisis in the city of Lubbock, and with these results we respond to our hypotheses and give the reader actual information.

Who is more informed about this issue? Who is more concerned? Besides who really is willing to do something to save water? These are questions we must answer in order to find and propose real and workable solutions. 

Water crisis in the city of Lubbock TX.

Nowadays, all the people are witnessing the great changes that are taking the planet earth, such as global warming, the changing seasons, natural phenomena and so on. All this is because of the actions we have day by day; we are polluting and depleting our resources unconsciously, destroying our planet. Even when we do not realize, we can be polluting the water. There are many habits that can help water conservation. We can easily implement in our daily lives such as bathing no more than 5 minutes, shut off the water when we brush our teeth, also, water our garden with treated water and many other.

       As far as water is concerned, three quarters of planet earth is water and of a total of only 3% is fresh water; of this 3%, only 0.7% fresh water, of this 3% only 0.7% are for human use (Howard, 2013), and their various activities are included; two of these activities are agriculture and fracking into the oil field. These are two of the most profitable activities in our region, and through these we are running out of our water reserves, since there is almost no kind of restriction on water use (Avalanche-Journal, 2013).

While fracking typically consumes less water than farming or residential uses, the exploration method is increasing competition for the precious resource, driving up the price of water and burdening already depleted aquifers and rivers in certain drought-stricken stretches. Some farmers and city leaders worry that the fraking boom is consuming too much of a scarce resource, while others examine the push for production as an opportunity to earn money by selling water (Garance, 2013).

Moreover, oilfield representatives say their activities are not destroying the water supply, and in fact they are using treated water and improving its processes; this in order to not cause environmental harm. Another big factor in this crisis is agriculture; however, as in the oil field they assure us they only use water that rightfully belongs to them as it is on their property (Blake, 2012).

We have been talking about the big companies, but how informed are the people of Lubbock?    

For many years, Lake Meredith was the primary source of water for Lubbock. But, the drought this past year and the lack of rainfall above the lake has dried completely. Water levels have lowered, and increased water consumption. That is why restrictions were imposed on the use of water in the city. Despite this, the acquisition of water from Lake Henry will provide supply for at least the next eight or ten years. Moreover, there remains the possibility that the water will run out in Lubbock, if we don't take care about saving water (Reed, 2012).

Lubbock city currently gets its supply of water mainly across the lake Henry and other sources. According to studies by the city council these other sources of supply are necessary to maintain the demand of the population of the city as not to be so for the next 10 years, the city will not be able to satisfy the generate demand Lubbock city, even if aggressive water conservation measures are implemented (City of Lubbock, 2013). 

Hypothesis

For my hypotheses about the water problem in Lubbock, I thought of the following. It's true that Texas residents are more concerned about this problem or than others? As we all know Lubbock is a city with lots of floating population (students). Since the majority of students may be going to leave the city after they finish their studies, they are likely to be less involved with the problem of the city. In the second place, who cares more about this problem, males or females? With this question we can realize which gender is more concerned about this. I concluded that women would always care about resources, whatever it is. In this case it is the water of Lubbock, for the reason they tend to secure the future for their children and themselves. Another scenario that comes to mind and returns to the floating population against the residents of Lubbock is that residents of this city more easily accept restrictions on the use of water than non-residents as I mentioned earlier. My last hypothesis is that people think that the oil industry uses more water than they need; this is because people only know the information that the media send.

Method

This class is great, because it's a great aid to improve your grammar and redaction; I'm not a native English speaker and see here a big opportunity to get better in my writing, but even if you are an English native speaker, I'm really sure that this class going a help you, because even when my first language is Spanish is hard for me write correctly in Spanish I imagine that is the same for native English speakers too. This class is especially good because we are just 13 students and 4 teachers; we can say is one professor for each 3 students, which I think is excellent; how the professor guides the class is good. In all of the classes we have to stay practiced and at the end that is the intention. The professor and his assists encourage us in each class to improve our writing; with examples, being open to question, and offering extra hours for help us, not just for this class they always are open for help us in any class if we have problems with the writing part.

For our research about the water in Lubbock we surveyed a total of 150 people with the objective to recognize what people knew or thought about this problem. In my case to get the surveys I did my surveys with my classmates and my professors; they were very friendly and took it seriously.

In our survey we wanted to give ourselves an idea of ​​how many people were residents of Texas, how many people were students and their gender.

In addition, we wanted to know their interests and knowledge about what fracking is. Also we asked a couple of questions to determine their water care habits, and see who was concerned about this state of affairs.

I asked to one of my professors to fill the survey and he seemed very serious at the time to respond the questions; the rest I did with my classmates for my "International Management" class, there because it seemed to me interesting asked to international people instead that U.S. citizens, I imagined that the rest of my classmates would ask to U.S. citizens.  

In my view, the one of the limitations that we could have had is the variation in the answers, because I think all my classmates did their surveys in the school; therefore, all the answers were similar, since one student had access to tons of information and on the other hand, one person who had to work at least 40 hours a week just to pay the rent, he or she did not care about this problem, because he or she had other problems in his or her head and that was a big limitation. I think we should have done the surveys outside of school, for better and more variety in the results.

Another limitation was that I could appreciate the fact that we did not had any money support for this research; this last limitation were important because with this resource we could go out from the school and apply the surveys with different people not only college people and ours results would be different.

The other limitation that we could consider was that most of the people who asked our questions were between the age of 20 to 30 and it might affect the result because sometimes people in those ages do not pay attention to the water crisis, and they are so young to think about water crisis, additionally most of this population on twenties came to Lubbock just for college and when they finish is probably that they going to leave the city and for this reason they don’t take this as a big problem and their responses might be erroneous.  

Moreover, most of the people we asked the question were educated people and we did not go to find the people who did not have any education to see if those people had knowledge about the fracking and so on or not. In addition, we did not have time to ask enough people to get the superior result, and it caused our result to might be not trustable (see appendix I).

Result

The total population of our study was 150, distributed as follows: 75 males and 75 females. From Texas was 75 of which 38 men and 37 women. From US but not from Texas were 36 of which 20 were male, and 16 were female. International students were 35. Among 40 non-students, there were 21 persons from Texas, 15 from US, and 4 international. With this facts we can assume that our results will be evenly regarding gender (see appendix II, Chart 2).

Who uses more water, according to the people

When we hear “oil field”, we relate it to money and therefore industry. I suppose that is why the people believe that this industry is using more water as reflected in our results. Indicating that the 75 Texan’s women, 30 of them believed that the oil drillers used more water than they need, while 32 of them said they had no idea. Among Texans men 24 of them claimed that the oil field uses more water than they should and only 13 said they did not know anything about it. On the other hand, there ere non-residents of

Texas, of whom the majority stated that the sphere of oil consumes more water than they should. Response to this question we can say that most of the people blamed the oil drillers to used more water that they needed even when the people did not have a clear idea about what fraking is (see appendix II, Chart 15).

Who has knowledge about what fracking is and if this activity endangers the public water system

It is presumably Texans who have more knowledge about what fracking is, as it is one of the primary activities in the area, but in a school environment, things change, because you have access to lots of information even when we are not expecting it.

Of our total population 96 of them knew that fracking is; of these 57 were residents of Texas, 24 U.S. but not from Texas and 15 were internationals. Furthermore of the 54 who had no knowledge about fracking, were distributed in 18 Texas residents, 12 out of Texas, and 24 were international; according with these facts we can say that Texans had more knowledge about what fracking was, this probably because they have seen this industry work for all of their life (See appendix II, Chart 5).

Texans, in general, seemed to blame oil drillers more than another because the population of Texas residents found that 75 of them believed that drilling and fracking caused significant damage, while 30 disagreed.

Also within our student population we can say the same we found that 45 of them who did not know what the fracking was, most of whom were international. Among the 65 students with knowledge of what was fracking, 40 of them are Texans, 13 were international and the rest from US but not from Texas.

Who is more conscious about water conservation?

With this question we wanted to find who is more conscious because, at first we thought that non-students cared more about preserving water, also that non-students would be against restrictions on water use, plus the difference between men and women who supported the restrictions on this resource and finally what people responded about farmers.

We saw the results of the total of 75 women, which was that 52 were concerned with the future water, while the other part of the 75 respondents only 34 men were concerned about this. Also international students within a total of 35, 22 respondents are concerned about the future supply against 13 who were confident.

Regarding these who usually cared about water, of the population of non-students 22 women said they would conserve and just 2 said they did not care for the water; on the side of the men, 12 said they had habits to conserve water while 3 of them are not concerned. (See appendix II, Chart 35).

Another important point is that 43 Texans knew where the water cames from, against 33 who reported not knowing.

Discussion

With this research, we intended to find both what people in the city of Lubbock know about the water situation and how they feel about it.

In this research we had many variables such as the number of our population, the resources available to us. Besides these were a large number of limitations; as being the majority of the surveys was implemented in school, so even if they were not students they were people with some college degree, and this was much limit in the difference between responses.

In our eagerness to find the perception of people about the water situation in Lubbock, as mentioned, before most of our population, were students of Texas Tech University. We found great surprises, contrary to what we imagined.

First, a notable result was that men and women who were concerned about this situation were not much different, contrary to what we thought, that women would worry more than men about the situation of water in Lubbock. Another interesting thing we discovered was that although men as women were concerned about this situation, they did not do much to conserve water; on the contrary women had more water conservation habits.

As regards, Texans being well informed about what the fracking was, our theory was confirmed, because more than half replied that they knew, except for some international, who were also well informed on the subject.

Continuing with international students, we assumed that they were neither interested nor concerned about water care, since most of them upon graduation are going to return to their country or their state. The result showed that the majority of international students, despite did not know much about the state of affairs, worried and had habits to conserve water; maybe this is because in their country of origin they have the same problem.

Another point was stressed. About restrictions to the excessive use of water, the results indicated that the majority of men surveyed agreed with implementing restrictions for farmers, while women were somewhat indifferent to this situation. This might be due to the fact that farming was a purely male activity and men had more knowledge about this process.

Bibliography

Avalanche-Journal (2013, Mar. 10) In Texas, water use for fracking stirs concerns Retrieved on Oct. 13, 2013 from http://lubbockonline.com/agriculture/2013-03-10/texas-water-use-fracking-stirs-concerns#.UoFHlfmINQQ

Blake, S. (2012, Aug. 07) Tech Professor says concerns over fracking unfounded. Retrieved on Sep. 24, 2013 from http://www.kcbd.com/story/19215063/lubbock-fracking-to-be-addressed-at-city-council-meeting

City Of Lubbock Texas (2013) , Strategic Water Supply Plan for the City of Lubbock, Retrieved on Sep. 20, 2013 from http://www.mylubbock.us/docs/default-source/water-department-file-library/2013- strategic-water-supply-plan.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Garance, B. (2013, Jun. 16) Fracking fuels water fights in nation's dry spots. Retrieved on Oct. 17, 2013 from http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2013-06-16/fracking-fuels-water-fights-nations-dry-spots#.UoFbT_mINQQ

       Howard, P. (2013, Nov. 5). "Water, Water, Everywhere...." Retrieved on Nov. 6, 2013 from http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html

      Reed, A. (2012, Feb. 9). Lubbock water crisis, how did we get here? Retrieved on Nov. 1, 2013 from http://www.kcbd.com/story/16903788/lubbocks-water-crisis-how-did-we-get-here