A Study of Peoples’
Attitude and Awareness of Lubbock Water Crisis.
Suranga Gunerathne
ESL 5301
Texas Tech University
Abstract
Water crisis is an important
natural resource issue several parts of the USA, and our focus is the City of
Lubbock in Texas. Inherent in many natural and people related issues is the
causal link between water facts and conservation behaviors that affect water
quality and quantity. This article interprets the results of a survey on
attitudes and perceptions of Lubbock water crisis from random 150 people in
Lubbock’s population. The goal of the survey was to assess attitudes and
perceptions of water crisis and how people are aware of that, and factors
affecting them. We assess the influence of attitudes and perceptions regarding
the gender, Texan, non-Texan and internationals and students and non-students.
We found several statistically significant non-knowledge factors that showed
awareness of Lubbock water crisis: perceived awareness of water between women
and men, and between Texan and non-Texan; interest in certain types of water
issues (for example fracking); general environmental attitudes; and demographics.
These results highlight the importance of a number of non-knowledge factors in
water crisis, and suggest a number of factors that could inform targeted
approaches to influence differing audiences
Introduction
Water
conservation is an important issue in many parts of the United States. Water
supply shortages have become more frequent, and by 2050, more than one-third of
all U.S. counties are expected to face a significantly higher
risk of water shortage (Spencer and Altman, 2010). Water pollution, population
growth, and climate change are expected to increase stresses on water
resources. Water conservation and protection of water quality are of increasing
interest to both water suppliers and water users. Water supply in Texas comes
from both surface water and aquifers. Surface water occurs naturally in rivers
and creeks which run generally from the northwest to the southeast, and in
stock tanks, ponds, and lakes—most of which are man-made. Groundwater occurs in
the Ogallala aquifers, oriented perpendicularly to Texas rivers and parallel to
the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. Lubbock is
located in the northwestern
part of Texas state and ecologically is part of
the southern end of the Western High
Plains (Wikipedia) in a largely cotton-growing and livestock
farming area and is one of the fastest growing cities in west Texas. For many
years, Lake Meredith was Lubbock's primary source of water (Reed, 2012). But
the drought and the lack of precipitation has dried up the lake completely.
City water currently comes from two well fields in Roberts County and Bailey
County and one lake, Lake Allen Henry. The
Lubbock Water Department has applauded that the City is constantly exploring
water sources for Lubbock and they have made plans for the residents for the
next 100 years (Lubbock Water Department, 2013). In previous years
Lubbock has had recurring drought and hotter temperature. Therefore Lubbock has
been scared about the possibility of having no water. The City of Lubbock has
implemented various strategies to conserve water to overcome the water crisis
including public education and awareness, seasonal watering restrictions,
increased water volume rate, reducing unaccounted water losses, etc. Generally,
people’s perception about water is
an important factor which influences the water use policies. I think working on
people’s attitudes and beliefs about water are essential. The purpose of this
study is that, we wanted to find out about peoples’ awareness of where Lubbock
gets its water supply and what striking features caused Lubbock water to be in
danger. And also we wanted to study what people believed about the City of
Lubbock water restrictions and how they actively participate to save water. In
this worthwhile study we focused on the differences in perception of between
male and female, between students and residents and among internationals,
non-Texas Americans, and Texans.
Background
Study
In the news (KCBD, 2012), an article titled on “Lubbock’s
water crisis, how did we get there?”, Mayor Tom Martin admitted he was
concerned about the possibility of having no water, because Lake Meredith was
dried up and that was Lubbock's primary source of water. After it dried
up the City of Lubbock had
to rely on just the well fields. He said that “We're
having to limit water usage during the summer, because the usage has gone way
up and once Lake Alan Henry is online, our situation is much improved for the
next 4, 6, 7 or 8 years”. One article specially mentioned about current water
demand, and future estimation which entitled on, "Current
estimates show that by the year 2014, additional water supplies and or aggressive
water conservation is needed in order to maintain water supply during the peak
demand of summer months. Without these additional water supplies by 2025,
Lubbock will not be capable of supplying the projected water demand even with
aggressive conservation" (City of Lubbock, 2013).
In one article showed that, shale and fracking were not the leading
causes for Texas having water shortages (Blackmon, 2013). An article in ClimateProgressor (2012) entitled
“Portrait of a Drought: Finding Water where It Ain’t” said that West Texas is
on the front lines of a changing climate, and scarce water is the most obvious
symptom, because it is specially highlighted that ground water supplies are
endangered because of tempest of hotter temperatures, more people,
water-sapping cotton farming and a devastating 2011 drought. Conkwright,
general manager of the High Plains Underground Conservation Water District #1,
headquartered in Lubbock said “Farmers are being
required to install water meters to ensure they don’t exceed their limits.
This is an inappropriate effort to conserve Ogallala Aquifer. It seems like
adding salt to the wound”, (Agrilife, 2013, Mar. 12). According to the Wall Street Journal (2013,
Aug. 1), “Severe drought continues to threaten the water supply of large parts
of the Western U.S. According to a group that monitors drought conditions,
Lubbock, Texas has averaged the worst level of drought since the beginning of
2011”. It opened people’s eyes towards the future of Lubbock city and its
limited resources, in particular, water.
Hypothesis
Based on this study I
came up with six following hypotheses that concern this Lubbock water crisis.
First, we believed that women would more care about water than do men. That is
because usually women are more responsible for day-today household activities
within their families such as cooking, taking care of kids, cleaning the house,
gardening work, etc. Second, residents would care more about water than do
non-residents, because residents need water for a long period of time, while
non-residents may stay in Lubbock for a short period of time, hence they only
consider their water needs. Third, residents would be more probable to agree to
water restriction than non-residents because non-residents might live in
Lubbock for a short period of time; hence they don’t practice using less water
to save for the future. Sometimes, they have not experienced any water problem
in their home town; accordingly they don’t have attitude to save water. Fourth,
men would be more like to agree to water restriction than women, because women
might care about the water to fulfill their family needs without any
restrictions to their household activities. Fifth, non-students would have more
concern about saving water than students, because the students have
concentrated on their studies or they may plan to leave Lubbock after
graduating to find a job, but most of non-students are Lubbock residents who
have lived for a long period of time in Lubbock and they think about rest of
their life living in Lubbock and saving water for their children’s future.
Sixth, students would be less knowledgeable about fracking than would be
non-students because students might be aware of the water crisis in Lubbock
they wouldn’t care what about the potential causes. For an example, I myself
didn’t know about fracking before this study.
Methodology
Our approach was to survey a
representative sample of the Lubbock community to learn about their awareness,
attitudes of the water crisis in the City of Lubbock and reveal how
knowledgeable they were in various groups. This survey was conducted by ESL
5301 Advanced Writing class and there were thirteen students and four teachers.
There was not a special requirement for selecting a group to survey. We
selected respondents randomly form wherever was easiest, and the vast majority
was the TTU community, which were usually in our own departments and the
student union building. The survey was concluded with questions related to
Lubbock water and demographic items. Demographic items included questions to
identify gender, student or non-student, where they come from such as Texas or
not-Texas or international. Other questions were specially targeted on what
fracking is and how it has severely impacted the public water supply, how knowledgeable
respondents are about where Lubbock gets its water supply and about the dried
out Lake Meredith. And there are also some questions about how they felt that
whether water restrictions have worked or not, and how reasonable it was to
apply water restriction for farmers. Basically these questions were readily
yes/no questions. Eight sets of questions were obtained by each of us in the
class. According to our agreement, the survey was distributed to four males and
four females and from those eight, five or more respondents were Americans.
Although most of the respondents were students, our survey group tried to get
non-student respondents to fill them out too.
Results
Summary of bar charts which have
mentioned descriptions of variables and related survey questions are reported
in Appendix-A. My first hypothesis was that women cared more about water than
men did; because we anticipated that women used more water than men did during
their daily chore. As we expected, women were more interested about our study
and filled out the forms willingly. Our results showed that 65 out of 75 female
respondents (87%) said that they tried to save water while 60 out of 75 males
(80%) responded the same (see Figure). It seems that the results
are slightly consistent with the first hypothesis. And also women were more
worried about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future than men. Results
provided evidence for the hypothesis as 45 out of 75 women (60%) reported being
worried while only 28 out of 75 men (37%) reported being worried about getting
water for future (see Figure). As the second
hypothesis I compared caring about water among residents which means Texans and
non-residents who are USA non-Texans, and internationals. It was reasonable to
assume that the Texans would be more caring about water as they would think
about their future needs as well. It was proved by the results that the
non-residents were not very knowledgeable and worried about getting water for
current and future use as Texans do. Out of 75 Texans 16 (21%) were very
knowledgeable and worried about this problem, but only 2 out of 75 (3%)
non-residents were very knowledgeable and worried about having a water crisis
in the future(see Figure1,2,3). It is highly consistent with the
second hypothesis. In the third hypothesis I reasoned that residents would agree to water restriction more than non-residents. It is
apparent that Texans are thinking about water needs for rest of their lives
because they are already well established. Our survey showed 30 Texans out of
75 (40%) agreeing to water restriction but only 24 non-residents out of 75
(32%) agreed to the (see Figure). These survey results
corroborated with our hypothesis. It was predicted in the fourth hypothesis
that men
would tend more to agree to water restriction than women. Since students do not
care much about water restrictions, I considered the information provided by
the non-student sample to analyze the hypothesis. 10 out of 16 males (63%) in
the non-student sample said that they believed in water restrictions while only
8 out of 24 women (33%) said “yes” to the question (see Figure). Likewise the hypothesis
was corroborated by the results. As the final hypothesis I inquired about the
students’ and non-students’ knowledge on fracking. According to my personal
experience I assumed that the students are less knowledgeable about fracking.
It turned out to be correct according to the results. 30 out of 40 non-students
(75%) were aware of what fracking was while 65 out of 75 students (60%) were
aware of that fact (see Figure). While analyzing the
survey data, I came across several other important issues related to the
Lubbock water crisis. One of those was the over usage of water in oil drilling.
Texans and non-Texans almost equally agreed with the fact that the oil drillers
use more water than they should. Depending on the overall responses, it is
clear that the people are aware of the threat of oil drillers to water crisis.
People believe that fracking is a major cause for water crisis. It is evident
form results; 96 out of the 150 (total respondents) knew about what fracking
was before the study, and from those respondents 57 out of 96 (59%) who knew
about fracking were Texans and 39 were non-Texans (41%) ,(see Figure).
Discussion
Knowledge about environmental
problems and the ways to address them is thought to lead to action that
improves environmental quality; that is, knowledge is a prerequisite to action.
Yet, given significantly limited resources supporting environmental programs
for the Lubbock water crisis, it may be important to think strategically when
implementing these programs—in terms of targeting specific audiences, creating
programs that are more likely to reach audiences how and when they prefer. Our
results suggest a number of other important factors that, perhaps in
conjunction with increasing knowledge, influence water conservation actions. It
opened people’s eyes towards the future of Lubbock city and its limited
resources, in particular, water. Since it has become a nationwide important
issue, as a part of Lubbock city residents, we, the students who registered for
the course ESL 5301, Fall 2013, thought of carrying out a sample survey to
discuss the water crisis in the city. We collected information from 150
randomly selected people inside the campus. For the ease of the study, we
decided not to limit ourselves in choice people; we chose mostly from inside
the campus. Even though we wanted it to be random, 110 out of 150 of the sample
being college students made it a little biased. According to my knowledge
students might not represent the entire population that we need to be
represented. We wanted to discuss their opinion based on being residents or
non-residents in Texas and/or their gender. Most of the college students are in
their twenties. They are always under the pressure of studying and earning
money in order to pay their tuition so they are less aware of the things
happening outside the campus. The rest of the 40 surveyed, the set of
non-students, since they are from inside the campus, more likely had different
way of living than the entire population of the city that we were focusing on.
Therefore our sample was not a significant representation of the target
population. However it seems our sample was sufficient for a rough estimation.
Next, we discussed about 6 different hypotheses. Based on the sample
information we came to conclude that the women were more caring about
preserving water for future needs while men were more caring about water
restrictions of the city. Regardless of this gender, in comparison to
non-Texans, Texans were more careful about preserving water in favor water
restrictions, and more critical of people who used too much water. Most of the
people were aware of fracking and both Texas and non-Texas residents are
equally aware of unnecessary water usage for oil drilling. Our findings
indicated a number of factors that may affect water conservation decisions and
highlight the complex role of changing water bills and water restriction
policies in City of Lubbock.
If we were to carry out a
better research for the same problem we should collect a significantly large
random sample according to the objective of the study. If we were to compare
water crisis in city of Lubbock, the sample should consist of adults of all age
groups, who reside permanently or temporarily in the city, including farmers,
oil drillers, and other occupants. Unexpectedly, we did not find peoples’
perception that residing inside city limits vs. outside or having higher levels
of education vs. lower levels influenced water conservation behaviors;
accordingly that was effect to water crisis.
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