Drought-stricken California might be the current-day poster child of water rationing, but it’s only one of more than two dozen emerging water-stress pressure points around the world, according to the latest satellite measurement studies conducted by NASA.
“We have a global groundwater crisis,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine and the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. Famiglietti was the keynote speaker Tuesday at the eighth annual Milwaukee Water Summit, an event sponsored by the Water Council, a Milwaukee trade group that encourages investment, jobs and university research in water engineering industries. The summit runs through Wednesday at the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.