Water

When we use powerful 21st-century approaches worthy of water’s essential role in our lives and communities, we’ll have clean and plentiful water today and tomorrow.

New ideas, technologies, and ready-to-go solutions can provide us with safe water coming from every tap, farms that grow food without polluting waterways, cities strengthened by cleaner lakes and rivers, and enough water for people and nature. “Smart Water” management, a new integrated approach that values all water, can accelerate and deliver these results by embracing each step needed to protect water for people and nature.

How We Do It

More than ever, all water is valuable and solutions are at hand to protect it. Our strategies include supporting:

Implementing Smart Water Management in Cities

We support local efforts in cities from coast-to-coast to implement Smart Water approaches, like green infrastructureLooking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

— Blueprint for One Water, a report describing how to advance Smart Water management

— Video and other resources about the benefits of Smart Water management

— The Value of Green Infrastructure, A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental, and Social Benefits, a report on green infrastructure's multiple benefits

Want to go further? These organizations offer a wide range of information on water resources:

— EPA: Green Infrastructure

— American Rivers Integrated Water Management
1, that can reduce water pollution, add parks and other amenities, reduce flooding, and augment water supply. We fund leaders who are bringing this new thinking and bold practice to the urgent task of ensuring safe, sufficient, and secure water, creating more resilient communities, healthier waters, and stronger economies.

Boosting Smart Water Management on the Farm

We support efforts to work with farmers and large-scale buyers of agricultural products to encourage sustainable water use, reduce pollution, and increase farm revenue. With a current focus in the Midwest, where most commodity crops are grown, we make grants to projects that boost demand for sustainably-grown products and advance practicesLooking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

— Blueprint for One Water, a report describing how to advance Smart Water management

— Video and other resources about the benefits of Smart Water management

— The Value of Green Infrastructure, A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental, and Social Benefits, a report on green infrastructure's multiple benefits

Want to go further? These organizations offer a wide range of information on water resources:

— EPA: Green Infrastructure

— American Rivers Integrated Water Management
1 that benefit water.

Building 21st-Century Water Policy

We support implementation of policies that stimulate investment in Smart Water approaches or facilitate their implementation. We fund efforts locally and nationally to reduce barriers to new policies that ensure clean, reliable water is available for all.Looking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

— Blueprint for One Water, a report describing how to advance Smart Water management

— Video and other resources about the benefits of Smart Water management

— The Value of Green Infrastructure, A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental, and Social Benefits, a report on green infrastructure's multiple benefits

Want to go further? These organizations offer a wide range of information on water resources:

— EPA: Green Infrastructure

— American Rivers Integrated Water Management
1

Using Technology to Better Protect Water

We fund the use and development of technology, including remote sensing, low-cost water quality monitors, open source applications, and web-based platforms, to increase the protection of water. We invest in technologies that allow the public to document water pollution and advocate for clean-up.

Increasing Peer-to-Peer Sharing

We support information sharing efforts in and between urban watersheds that are already scaling up new water management practices or thinking about doing so. Connecting stakeholders so they can share information is among the most effective means of scaling Smart Water practices from city to city across our nation.

Looking for more information? You can dive deeper with these resources:

— Blueprint for One Water, a report describing how to advance Smart Water management

— Video and other resources about the benefits of Smart Water management

— The Value of Green Infrastructure, A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental, and Social Benefits, a report on green infrastructure's multiple benefits

Want to go further? These organizations offer a wide range of information on water resources:

— EPA: Green Infrastructure

— American Rivers Integrated Water Management

Implementing Smart Water solutions creates impressive results for people and nature, reducing the strains brought on by climate change, population growth, failing infrastructure, and pollution.

Grantee Spotlight

Clean Water Fund

Clean Water Fund (CWF) is a nonprofit organization that develops strong grassroots environmental leadership to campaign successfully for cleaner and safer water. Since 1974, CWF’s national programs – which build on and complement those of Clean Water Action – strive for collaborative solutions to protect drinking water, and reduce and prevent water pollution at the source. CWF advocates for Putting Drinking Water First, which means prioritizing drinking water protection from watershed to tap in all decisions, from how we grow our food to how we build our communities.

Recent highlights of Clean Water Fund’s work include:

Fighting for strong freshwater protections and mobilizing more than 75,000 people to oppose Clean Water Act rollbacks that threaten millions of miles of streams and more than half of the nation’s remaining wetlands.
Getting lead out of drinking water through the Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative and innovative local projects in state offices, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Advocating for better policies to protect drinking water from toxic power plants, harmful algae blooms, and oil and gas operations by exposing problems with state and federal programs in an ongoing series of reports.
Advancing upstream solutions to protect people, especially children and vulnerable communities, from harmful PFAS chemicals.