New Year's resolutions are an age-old tradition. They play an integral role in helping to bring in the New Year and propel many people through the rest of winter. Even if each resolution isn’t always seen through to the end, they boost morale and help us refocus on our goals and aspirations as we look to the future with unrelenting optimism. This year, I resolve to make a more concentrated effort towards educating myself and others about our long-term access to water resources here in Georgia, specifically Atlanta.

For the past few decades, Georgia has been in a water war with its neighbors, Alabama and Florida. All three states depend on the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers, along with a host of tributaries, to sustain their populations and economies. Drought induced wildfires, industrial accidents such as oil spills, and unconcerned citizens using much needed resources to maintain country club lawns all exacerbate our current, understated water crisis. With the population of metro Atlanta expected to reach 8 million people by 2040, the decisions we make today will have a direct and lasting impact not only on the city itself, but the state and tri-state regions as well.

Many should still remember that a couple of months ago, many Southern states faced historic droughts and battled massive blazes that torched homes, scorched farmland, and destroyed precious woodlands in our National Forests and Parks. Now, being a resident of the state of Georgia, the annual drought is nothing new, but the fires were. Several times this past Fall, while walking from my apartment to the Kennesaw State Campus, I was hit with blinding smog, a nasty combination of smoke and diesel exhaust. I was used to hearing reports coming from California and the Pacific Northwest about environmental conditions that paralleled what I was then experiencing, but living it really put it into perspective. Our world is changing, the climate is changing, and we have to change with them or face the consequences.

You would think that water, that life-sustaining, awe inspiring, colorless liquid, would have a more permanent place in the forefront of our minds. Theoretically it should, but combined with the everyday stresses of living in modern America, it's easy to understand why water isn't a concern until the next drought and your weekend plans are disrupted by triple-digit temperatures. In order to ensure that we have adequate access to clean water in the coming decades, we must take action on multiple fronts. Attending your city council meetings, proposing new initiatives, or learning about current ones from your representatives and senators, and doing the little things like turning off the tap when you're not actively using it, all are great ways to begin tackling this problem. We're only as strong as our weakest link, or in this case our driest tap.