Lubbock Water: Final SYH

Abstract

This paper was about Lubbock water. We were a group in the class, ESL5301 Advanced Writing, and this paper was our final assignment. In the introduction, background knowledge, literature review and how people thought in general were provided. Furthermore, we had done 150 surveys, and translated the outcomes into charts to make the datum digest easier. According to those charts, we found some interesting points that we could discuss. They were the most challengeable and interesting part in the paper. The paper would give deeper aspects in Lubbock water after you read them.

Introduction

In the middle of America, the climate is known as dry and hot most of the time. Of course, Texas is also the same. If some regions have little rain, areas must have water shortage unless they contain underground water. Due to this kind of climate, the water resource is more precious, and people should truly care about water. Hence, I was going to talk about the water in Lubbock. We would not only generally speak of the situation of water in Lubbock but also make hypotheses and study about how the public thinks in the end.

According to the news and resources that we had, the water situation in Lubbock did not look optimistic. We had three sources of water in 2011, but there had become only one in 2012. Therefore, the ex-mayor of Lubbock came out and announced to the public about limiting and saving water (Reed, 2012). However, the government had found a new water resource, Lake Alan Henry, which we could use in the future, and it could supply us for 8 years (Reed, 2012). Although the government said that, we had run Lake Meredith dry. That was very scary, because if we did not try to reduce the usage of water, we would face the same problem again and again. Nonetheless, the Mayor of Lubbock said that he would try to find another water source in order to make the civilians less anxious. On the other hand, the water problem might result from the fracking and farming, because these kinds of industries needed plenty of water, and we knew another fact, which was that land owners could drill water or oil as long as they were doing it on their own land. Those situations were how the water problem happened and how it had been caused, and I was going to talk about how people feel and their perspective.

I found an article talking about shale and fracking, and it said they were not the main reason why Texas had water shortages (Blackmon, 2013). Moreover, the water crisis might be caused by agriculture, and I thought that it could represent some part of the population. Sometimes, people were not correct, but according to the article, we could understand some people’s thinking. If you said that agriculture was the main culprit of the water shortage, I believed most people would agree with that kind of statement.

After we knew some people’s perspective, we could make a guess. Because we were not fortune tellers, we had to make hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that I thought most people would not know what fracking was, because even Microsoft office Word did not know the word. Therefore, how could we expect people to know the word that the most powerful documental software did not know? The second one regarded Lubbock water supply. I supposed the residents living here would not know where the water supply came from. We could try to imagine a condition which was you were a resident here. What do you did every day? You would not associate the water supply issue if there was no water shortage or problem that happened here, because people would take water for granted. When people turned on the tap, water would automatically come out. It did not matter how long people had been living here. The third one deals with which of the people took more water than they should. I think it might be the oil drillers because their career type was more like business men. They were an enterprise or a company, and the stereotype of them was greedy and only caring about the profits, so it would affect what people thought about oil drillers in the survey. That was just my hypothesis which did not mean all oil drillers were greedy or profits focusing.

Methods

We were a group in the class, ESL5301 Advanced Writing. There were four teachers and 13 of students in our class. The class was 9:30 to 11:00 on Tuesday and Thursday. In addition, we had an assignment which was a survey about how people thought about Lubbock water.

The survey included 12 questions. Some of them were multiple selections, and some of them were yes/no questions. At the beginning of the survey, we recorded their personal information, such as where they were from, student or non-student, and male or female. After that, we asked what climate issues were important for them, whether they knew what fracking was, whether they believed fracking endangered the public water supply, how knowledgeable they were about where Lubbock got its water supply, whether they knew where Lubbock was getting its water for public use now, etc. Most questions were asking about the information around Lubbock water, and it was kind of testing how knowledgeable they were about Lubbock water supply.

Despite these questions, the teacher required us that we had to get eight surveys and find at least five Americans, four male, and four female. It was fine to find eight residents or eight students. We didn’t limit this population. Where the Americans were from was not a big issue. Where you found the people was also not a big issue. People might think that our survey was not scientific, but the results only provided us in a class discussion. According to the survey, we could have a general idea of people’s perception of Lubbock water.

In my survey, I asked three females; one of them was an American. She was very knowledgeable about the topic; the rest of them seemed like it was the first time they thought about or contacted these questions. Moreover, I asked five males; one of them was an international student. He knew a little bit about Lubbock water, but the rest of the male Americans were more knowledgeable than him. In addition, all of my surveys were done by TTU students, so there was no data about residents. Actually, TTU was a huge community, and it included 32,611 students in 2012 (Cook, 2012). Therefore, the whole university was like a small size Lubbock. To sum up, among my respondents, Americans were more familiar with Lubbock water than internationals.

Results

According to the results of the surveys, we had found that people who were surveyed were not ignorant. Actually, they were more knowledgeable than I had expected. In the first question the items which they were worried about the most were air and water pollution (the results were close, so I mentioned both into the most). Most people knew what fracking was, but they didn’t know if fracking endangered the public water supply. In the fourth question, people were humble because only a few people checked “very knowledgeable.” More than half the people knew where Lubbock got public water; however, almost half the people knew what Lake Meredith was. More than half the people believed in water restrictions for the city of Lubbock. Half the people had confidence that Lubbock water restrictions were effective. Only some people believed in water restrictions for farmers in the area. Most the people were trying to save water generally. Farmers and oil drillers were the major answer that the people had chosen in question eleven. Less than half the people were confident about Lubbock water. They were generally more knowledgeable than me. I think that was because the Americans have been living in America for several years, and Americans are supposed to be more knowledgeable than the international population.

Therefore we may assume that Americans are more knowledgeable than the international population based on the first paragraph. Here are some facts that showed Texans were more knowledgeable than the other population. We had 96 (64%) people who knew about fracking, and in the knowing group 59% were from Texas, 25% from other states and 16% from international population (chart #5). The other fact that appeared was that only 44% people knew Lake Meredith. In the group of that people who knew Lake Meredith, 59% were from Texas, 26% from other states and 15% from the international population.

Moreover, I had made three hypotheses about the survey. The first hypothesis was that I thought most people would not know what fracking was, but surprisingly I was wrong. The second one, I supposed the people who are from Texas would not know where the water supply came from, and less than half people knew where the water came from. According to the data, there were 75 people who were from Texas and only 21 (28%) people who were checking knowledgeable. Almost half of Texans (37 people, 49%) were checking somewhat. Hence, we could see that Texans were not familiar with the water supply. The third one dealt with which of the people took more water than they should. I was right in the last hypothesis which is “which of the people took more water that they should,” and I said it might be the oil drillers. We could look up the outcome that 23 (31%) people chose farmer, 30 (40%) people chose oil drillers, and 30 (40%) people choose people who water their lawns (Texans). This result only accounted on Texans, so it appeared that Texans had the same idea with me that oil drillers took too much water.

Discussion

According to those charts, I found some interesting points that we could discuss. In the first question, check the issues that you feel are the most important, I started to distribute these nine issues into two parts, global and local issues. Air and water pollution were the highest (chart #7), and the following items were Fresh water supply, Drought and Global warming. The top five were all over 80 notes; however, the remaining four items were all below 50 notes. In those top five, which meant people were concerned the most, three items were global issues, and two items were local issues. Nonetheless, if you looked at the top two items, you could have seen they were both global issues. In my opinion, this situation was as if New Yorkers saw the news of Katrina hurricane, they might not give compassion. However, if the hurricane was Sandy, it would have been a totally different reaction.

Another interesting thing was that there was a fun fact when I compared chart #5 and #9. In chart #5 the people who knew what fracking was had 59% people from Texas, 25% people from other states and 16% people from international group. In chart #9 the people who believed fracking endangered the public water supply had the similar percentage with the people who knew what fracking was. The people who checked “yes” in question three had 58% from Texas, 23% people from other states and 19% people from the international population. According to this fact, we could not assume anything, but when we looked at another fact, there were 96 (64%) people knowing what fracking was. Only 30 (31%) people said that fracking didn’t endanger the public water supply, so we could truly understand what people thought about fracking.

The other interesting thing would be in chart #17, #18 and #19. Those charts listed how knowledgeable people were about where Lubbock got its water supply and their feeling about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future. I only compared the knowledgeable part because if people were not knowledgeable, they could have guessed about answers. Texans who were knowledgeable had 76% people (chart #17) who worried about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future. In the USA non Texans part (chart #18), USA non Texans who were knowledgeable had 20% people who worried about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future. In the international part (chart #19), internationals who were knowledgeable also had 20% of people who worried about Lubbock’s ability to get water in the future. Actually, I felt a little bit weird that the percentage should be similar, but it didn’t. It was supposed to be similar because that was how the population distributed. Maybe, the people who were from Texas were more concerned Lubbock water because Lubbock was also part of Texas.

If we do further research on this project, my advice will be surveying more people instead of 150. We can probably get 300 surveys and divide more populations. For example, we can include ages, majors and the time they have been in Lubbock. According to the three new categories, we will have the group of American, American from Texas, internationals, students, non-students, males, females, different ages, different majors and the time they have spent in Lubbock. I believe that we will have an exciting and interesting result after we cross match these datum. We had had interesting results even though we only got 150 surveys. However, it will be a problem to collect 300 surveys. For instance, the workload of the assignment will explore as twice as the previous one, but the decision depends on teachers. Actually, I felt very comfortable in the class because we usually had a paragraph per week. If everyone followed the steps of teachers, the assignments should have been a burden. Therefore, if teachers want to do 300 surveys, teachers can set more capacity in the class in order to get more students or give more credits in the class.