On May 6, 2025, the Consulate General of France in Chicago organized a discussion on global water sustainability challenges, water preservation strategies, and policies solutions featuring experts from France and North America. The event was part of the 2025 Chicago Water Week by Current and was hosted by @ChicagoArchitecture.
Panelists included: Eric Servat, Director of the @UNESCO International Center for Water Research in Montpellier, France, and President of France’s UNESCO Hydrological Programme Committee; Claire Albasi, @CNRS research director specializing in de-pollution and the biological treatment of wastewater and Project Manager of the Défi Clé Water Occitanie initiative; Rachel Havelock, founder and director of the @thefreshwaterlab at UIC; Dean Amhaus, president and CEO of @thewatercouncil; and Nina Nudnik, CCO at @CurrentWater and moderator of the discussion.
@FranceintheUS @francediplomatie
Hello everyone. Uh my name is Clemon Khal. I’m the deputy council general of France in Chicago. I am very happy to to see you all today for our conference on water preservation and management in North America and Europe. This is uh a great day for us and uh I hope for for you all. I’d like to thank to begin the international interior design association. We had two wonderful breakout sessions u upstairs just before this conference and we’d like to to thank them very much for welcoming us today. Um so I’m not going to be any longer. I’m going to invite consel general of France Yanikon to the floor for some words of introduction. Thank you very much. [Music] Dear guests, partners and and colleagues, uh it’s a pleasure to welcome you today uh on the occasion of this conference about water preservation and management in North America and Europe. Organized by the consulate general of France in Chicago as part of the Chicago water week. Allow me to start with expressing my sincere thanks to the architecture center for hosting us. Beyond the fact that we love to work with the CAC many projects, there was for us no better place for such a conversation almost on the bank of the Chicago River. Uh I also want to warmly thank Current, our key partner in this initiative whose leadership in organizing Chicago water week has created an invaluable platform for exchange and action. Today’s event is part of France’s broader effort to connect global ambitions for water sustainability with tangible and local action. French diplomacy has long been committed to protecting water resources and advancing universal access to safe water and sanitation following the 2030 agenda set by the United Nations. In this respect, we have developed a multistakeholder approach to strengthen governance in the field of water and sanitation which which we have coined as our international water and sanitation strategy. It focuses on three priorities. Improve governance of the water and sanitation sector on local and global scale. Strengthen the security of water supply for all against the backdrop of increasing pressure on resources and bolster the effectiveness of water management by promoting innovation and supporting effective solutions. France’s strategy aims to ensure coision the sector of water and sanitation with other sustainable development goals recognizing that eradicating poverty and inequality, creating inclusive economic growth, and preserving the planet are indexively linked. These goals directly align with the objective of the Chicago Water, which is a unique opportunity to explore together how to address pressing water challenges for our environment, our economy, and our future. After two interactive sessions dedicated to innovative water technologies and green supply chains between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, tonight’s conversation will explore global water sustainability preservation strategies and policy solutions by bringing together industry experts, academics, innovators. This water sustainability forum aims to open a space for more discussions and collaboration fueled by our collective determination to build a sustainable water future. Our ambition in being part of the Chicago Water Week is to ensure that France through its academic research as well as its knowhow and capacity for innovation is fully involved with all local players. This is why I’m glad to acknowledge the invaluable work of our office for science and technology of the French American chamber of commerce in Chicago of the Midwest chapter of the French foreign trade advisors and of LA French Chicago without their full in commitment to this project. This event would not have had the same impact. Working as team France with all our local partners is crucial to making a meaningful contribution to this fundamental debate on water resource management. So allow me here to take a moment to congratulate the whole team for their hard work over the last few months to make this even possible and to extend very special thanks to the colleagues at the consulate whom you have already met or you will be meeting tonight. You just saw him. Pascal, Valeri, Laura, Emily. Please give them a huge round of applause. We are so proud to work on this project with schools, their teachers, and their students to engage in climate and environmental education. Over the last month, the team has organized workshops in climate and water cycle to raise awareness among the next generations who will lead the next steps towards a more sustainable society and environment. And I’m glad to see some of the participants are here today and particularly happy that Franco and the German international school of Chicago are well represented today. Your presence means a lot to us. Before closing my remarks, I would like to mention that this event is not the end of the story. This fall, the French team will also take part in WTE, the largest water quality conference in North America to build on today’s momentum, continue the conversation and strengthen international cooperation on water related challenges. And I’m confident that in the wake of these two major events in which we’re taking part this year, there will be more to come. So, thank you again for joining us today to think, discuss and shape a more resilient, sustainable water future. Thank you very much. And now we are going to watch a five minutes video that um explains uh what we did this year. on the on the on water issues. Um you will see some of our friends of the the team France uh and also uh a few students uh that participated in the workshop that Yanik just uh mentioned. So I hope you’ll enjoy it and uh just after that you you will have the the panel coming up on the stage. Thank you very much. In 2024, we co-organized with Kazakhstan the one water summit. This year we will host the third one ocean summit in N. And we’re getting prepared for the 2026 UN water conference. The Chicago Water Weeks offer a great opportunity to connect our global ambitions to local concrete actions. So we have decided to partner with Current to offer a French perspective to the program of the 2025 Chicago Water Week with panel discussions and a conference.
Current is a water innovation hub here in Chicago serving the Great Lakes region. We’ve been around since 2016 and our mission is to grow a circular blue economy, accelerate innovation in water technology and solve both local and global water problems. Our goal is to turn waste into wealth and put resources like critical minerals, nutrients, and water itself to more productive use while destroying harmful contaminants like POS. The Great Lakes are a major driver of the region’s economy. Here in Chicago, sitting right on the shores of Lake Michigan, we rely on the Great Lakes not just for our drinking water, but for industry, transportation, recreation, and more. Because we experience such a diversity of water challenges here in our region, the Great Lakes region is a great place to try and test new technologies to solve water problems that we’re experiencing both locally and around the world. By sharing expertise, technologies and best practices, Europe and North America can build a stronger response to all the challenges we face in terms of water preservation and management. The Water Week is a great opportunity to connect, learn, and act is a great opportunity to raise awareness here in Chicago about our common challenges. And there’s no better place than this region to talk about water because it holds one of the freshwater resources of the world. We really want to take the French economy, French deployment of industry uh somewhere else than the French fashion, the French baguette and cheese. We do have great wine, but more importantly, we have great technology. And uh an event like the French Chicago Water Week is the opportunity for us to help showcase this technology, showcase uh new companies that are involved in clean techch and water treatment and also overall it’s for all our kids out there making sure that we are involved in the preservation of water. Each individual as soon as they’re aware of sustainable water preservation can contribute to better solutions in water management. The consulate has partnered here with the local schools to raise awareness among kids about the stakes for them to have more sustainable water management practices. local public schools here in Chicago where the consulate laid workshops in spring are key to raise awareness about water related issues. I think it’s really interesting for the student because we are developing this problematic in our classes in our teaching all year long but to have someone someone exterior coming it give them they might pay more attention to these people and it gives them something different a different approach with some different explanation different experience so it can be very useful for them and really more interactive for them to have someone different to show them this concept I learned how quickly the climate change can escalate from simply agriculture and human activities to people losing their homes. So, I learned lots of things that we do normally without even knowing could pollute our planet. Like, I really didn’t know that eating a lot of steak could actually hurt our So the peruation of the water cycle is that since it’s getting so hot out here because that atmosphere is trapping all the sun rays, we are having our water vapor rise up really quickly and then it keeps raining a lot since so many clouds are getting up in the sky which could cause floods and also all the water raising also caused lots of droughts. One of the way I try to save water is by closing the sink when I’m not like when I’m not using it and also just not taking long showers. I’ve learned a lot of things today like the cl like how climate change works. There’s many ways that the like the planet is warming up. Well, water is not eliminated. We we don’t have as much as we think we have because Also to take the salt out of the ocean is very expensive. So we have to use the clear water from lakes and there’s not that much. So we have to use it carefully and not heat it up too much. Thank you so much for hosting us tonight um and for all of your leadership across what sounds like multiple years um on water globally and locally. My name is Nina Dudnik. I’m the chief commercial officer for Current, which is very proud to host uh Chicago Water Week and convene so many wonderful partners across town to host all these wonderful events. Um Current, as you heard my colleague Kindy say in the video, is a local organization focused on expanding and strengthening the blue economy. um thinking about water technology and innovation here in Chicago and Illinois and now more broadly across the region. About a little over a year ago, we were awarded one of then 10 uh regional innovation engine awards from the National Science Foundation to expand with a group of partners about 60 or more now across six states thinking about how to recover um recover useful nutrients and minerals from water and waste water, remove harmful chemicals, think more broadly both about the research, the commercial activities and the workforce necessary to build this economy around water for our entire region. And water, as Kindy mentioned, is this incredibly ubiquitous thing. It is fundament by training. It’s a fundamental molecule of life, but it’s also fundamental to economic activity. And interestingly, I think which is really unusual for something that is so ubiquitous in our lives is also an economic and national security asset and something that often forms um both connective tissue and potential sources of conflict between states and nations and boundaries around the world. And so this particular panel tonight is an incredible example of people coming at all of those problems both technological, commercial, human, and diplomatic around water all across both our region here locally and around the world. So I’m going to give each of our panelists an opportunity to will far better introduce their own work than I ever could. Um and I will start with professor Eric Serva who is the director and president I believe of the UNESCO international hydraology program in Belleier and has done extraordinary work both as a very hard scientist and a diplomat in water all over the world. Thank you very much Nina. I’m very happy to be there tonight and I would like to thank the consulate for inviting me to come here and to take part in the panel. Um yeah uh I try to as a as a director of a UNESCO center I try to organize science and I try to be a diplomat for many things. Um you know UNESCO is such a big house. Um we we try to address what will be the next um challenges regarding water sciences and water resources um quantity quality uh ideological risks. That’s very very important and um what you have to consider what you have to have to get in mind uh when you are thinking of water resources is the fact that um in 2050 there will be 10 billions of people on earth. That’s two more than now that right now you will have seven people out of 10 living in tons and when you live in town you your water uh consumption is much more important that when you’re not and of course you have the climate change. So climate change, demographic pressure, uh a rapid urbanization that makes uh that make a big differences when uh if you consider the the current situation. And so we try to address these uh issues uh by putting together scientists from many research fields, many different research fields in M. We have hydrologist. I myself hydraologist you you have chemists, you have um specialists in public policies, economics, all of them have to work together. If we want to address challenges we are facing for the next decades, we have to put all together our knowledge and our ability to work and to address uh the challenges we are facing. That’s very very important. Theory and interdisciplinary approaches are what we need to address the challenges. Are there specific challenges in particular that you see from the vantage point of a UNESCO which convenes hundreds of countries around the world member states? Are there specific global challenges that seem most urgent?
I I don’t think so. I I don’t think so. I think u um water is a universal issue and but it’s different from a place to another one. In some places the problem is that you don’t have enough water. In another place you have too too much water. In other places you have water but you can’t use it because the pollution. So everywhere you have to face with uh difficulties with problems. They are different. They all need specific solutions. But you can’t really say the biggest one is this one. You have to consider the local conditions and what you are facing locally to try to adapt the best solution as possible to the challenge you’re facing. That sounds very complicated um and very nuanced and I think I want to throw it to Professor Rachel Havllock from the University of Illinois Chicago and the Freshwater Lab. You have done this work similar diplomatic kind of cross-disciplinary work first in the Middle East for a long time a very notably water scarce region. Now here in the Great Lakes, kind of the opposite, water abundant. Are there similarities? Are there is it really entirely location dependent? And how do you bridge all these disciplines to do that kind of work?
Great. Thanks so much for the question and hi everyone, thanks for being here. So when it comes to water, I think that the materiality of water, right? what water is, what’s in the water, how much you have access to, how little uh you have to conserve. There’s a very unique relationship between humans and this water because the water that we consume and come into contact with forms us in many biological um health, social and cultural ways. And our social and cultural decisions impact that water, right? How contaminated is it? who uh faces the worst floods, uh who deals with the most degraded infrastructure. So that’s the first reciprocity. It’s kind of the materiality of being a human being and all of those impacts that we have in relationship with water. And then there’s a a real specificity because water’s a generalizing term, but there’s also something that’s quite geographically bound. And and for me the most powerful unit and scale of thinking about water really is the watershed. Now what’s a watershed? I’m sure many people in this room know it, but it’s when you think about the kind of boundaries that are formed when rain drains across landscape. So I’ll give you a hypothetical example because Chicago is a very unique place. But hypothetically, if a drop of rain fell right here, it would drain into Lake Michigan. It would be in the Lake Michigan watershed. Again, also hypothetically, if it fell west of Ridge Road, a road a bit west of here, it would be in the Mississippi River Basin. And the way that water drains across landscape, of course, influences soil health species, but also what I’d like to suggest human cultures and solidarities and we all have the most in common and the most at stake with the people with whom we share a source of water. Right? What goes on in that water impacts us all. Now, it certainly doesn’t impact us all equally. Uh we know that there are many factors that determine uh why it is that certain communities uh face the the hardest water challenges, but there’s a kind of a human unity there that’s very very powerful and it’s a scale that especially in my work in the Middle East really can almost transcend uh national, ethnic and religious conflicts. And I’ll I’ll just give a a very short example. Uh I know it can be hard to say in public, but uh my initial water diplomacy was in the context of uh Israel and Palestine and Jordan. And we would bring together community leaders that shared a single water source. And something that was quite interesting is that each group needed to hear from their scientists in their own language, people that they could trust. And once each group met with their scientists and had that baseline established and right science usually comes pretty close with some variation. They could establish a kind of scientific baseline and they would confront things like our wershed will not be viable in 10 or 20 years or oh my gosh having no wastewater treatment means we’re all receiving um contaminated groundwater. And it was a very powerful and practical way to bring people together. And it’s incredible to be in this international forum because, you know, I’ I’ve long thought that we can come to kind of the the best agreement with those who share our water and really connect very powerfully across borders in a kind of watershed politics. Because so much of what we’re confronting, whether it’s flooding or whether it’s scarcity or whether it’s contamination, these are things that recur across the water. But I think that tuning in to the particularity of our own experience and those with whom we share a watershed is really the the basis for coming up with the right solutions. This is the perfect segue for Dr. Claire Albasi from San because you are a chemist but you’re doing this really dis interdisciplinary work right now with these living laboratories on a much like not international but very hyper local level. Can you talk a little bit about I think there’s a lot of parallels with this work. Thanks Nina for the introduction and thank you all for listening me to be here for me. So yes I at this moment in France in Tudus I’m co-charge with another colleague from M from the city where edit come from. I’m in charge of a large research program where we ask uh about the where the central question is the necessity of water reuse. Is water reuse a good or bad solution? And so for that we have uh we have spread the the fundings into conventional research program but we have also um built something which which is quite new. We try to uh perform the research through um the device we call living lab. So what is a live lab is firstly it’s uh consisting the identification of the leader of the of the liveing lab and we did that thanks to the help of the the funders or the the region in fact the region of CN so these uh leaders are most most for most of them they are water managers so can people in which are in charge of water management uh I mean um portable water as well as um waste water mainly waste water for for the reuse. Then with these people we have identified a territory which can be uh in the dimension of some some thousands of kilometers or or more. Um and then we have identified uh so the idea is to um lean the research on the reality of the field. So the idea is to constitute um steering committee with representative people of the society. I mean it could be um citizens if the live lab is is on the city. It can be farmers if the live lab is on a agricultural territory. It is also component of um water managers of course and so we have decided about we have invited something some five to 10 people to participate to this steering committee and we also asked to some academics to join the steering committee. So each so we have six living labs at the scale of the region and we have u invited. So for each of the committee has something like 12 to 15 people and the role of this committee is to identify the problems the questions around the the reuse uh whatever the reuse is still implemented in the on the territory or not or if reuse is a is project and then the role of the committee is to with the academics is to transform this realistic questions into research question and we gave to the to the the academics the ability and the funding for master project and it is the role of the master project to answer to the question. Um so nowadays the the program has two years and a half so we began to have some results and what is interesting is that These results have been obtained not only from the academic point of view but also with the uh applicants with the people of the from from the city from the field and so it’s a way for them also to uh appropriate themselves the results and more easily uh use use them. So it can be question of treatment to apply or question of how the how the management of the reuse uh can be conducted. Uh what is the price to give? Who will who will pay this new treatment and the distribution of such a water and so so this um it is really an enthusiastic way of performing research to to to have the chance to manage such a project. Fantastic. and you’ve set up Dean because we’ve talked about international scale diplomacy, local scale diplomacy, science and technology and stakeholders and let’s talk about the market. So where does the market come into all of this and how do you is it antithetical to some of these bigger diplomatic endeavors? Do they can they work hand in hand? How do you see that playing out at the water council? So, uh, nice to meet everybody and thanks for very much for inviting me. Just to set the context also, uh, have anybody seen the the movie Wayne’s World just as an example and you’ve heard the the the bit Alice Cooper say about, you know, Milwaukee and, you know, in terms of the the history. So, Milwaukee was founded by the Native Americans and, you know, Alice Cooper said in Wayne’s world, you know, interpretation of the word Milwaukee good place by the land or good place by the water. But you know it really our location was founded by people who were using water as the resource to raise their families uh and to conduct trade. And interesting enough is that the first settlers from Europe that came to Milwaukee area were the French and they used the waterways to come to Milwaukee and to trade um you know and those were the first settlers hundreds and hundreds of years ago. And now after the French came the Germans and with Germans they brought beer. Uh again a very unique aspect of bringing people together. And so when we look our industry um that we have here in the Milwaukee region, it really is based around frankly the brewing industry because those breweries uh when Milwaukee was the you know brewery capital um they needed to have the supply chain, the companies that were making the pipes and the pumps and the valves and the meters to supply that you know and process water. All of those companies have evolved over a period of time. And it was really about 20 years ago when we discovered that there was this unique aspect of these all these water technology companies in the region. And early on though, it was also this relationship on a global scale, you know, because we were looking to see, you know, what other regions where there were these water technology uh industry focuses. And we came to realize that the that we were engaged with and we’ve got about 250 water tech companies in the region were all pretty much global industries um because they needed to work you know across the entire world as well and I think that is an example of how this is all being driven as well. you know, I was listening into the discussion that we had or that was happening earlier as well and and the emphasis around municipalities and you know um governments as well and that that is all very very true as well. But you know what’s really impactful are the businesses that are providing the resources and the technologies that those utilities are using but also the businesses that use water. Uh and and frankly there are so many many more of those as well. But you know the the the challenges are very global but it’s also I’m reminded of a a phrase that in politics here in the United States is you know all politics is local and you know frankly all water is local as well and I think you heard that from you know the others as well but what we can learn from places in France and we’ve been working with in mier for several years and in Paris as well there’s a lot of uh sharing of information and the technologies industries. Um, and that can be from entrepreneurs on up to the large corporations. And frankly, these corporations are thinking globally every single day. That’s how they operate. That’s where their customers are. That’s where their partners are. And we’ve taken that frame of mind and really work on a global scale to be able to partner with other entities like we were doing uh with Aqua Valley, you know, again for 10 years. Fantastic. Thank you. I Eric, you said something earlier today. The there’s sort of a list of 300 places worldwide where conflict over water might be a reality. And that absolut 300 number blew my mind. Honestly, it’s an extraordinary kind of prospect that people would be in conflict that overwater in that many places in the world. So I’m curious both Rachel and you what have you seen that works to diffuse that? And then actually Dean, I’m curious about how you think about sort of how does that impact all of these businesses that are trying to work globally when conflict arises over the very thing that their products are meant to address? But take you first. Yes. Um the United Nations tried to establish a kind of um with the um the the locations in the world where um transboundary resources like aquifers or rivers um are shared by two, three, many countries and there are three 300 locations in the world where it could be a source of potential um conflict. hard conflicts um with military processes and and and so on. For instance, just let me give you one you um um you all of you you know the Nile Nile basin in Egypt and the um the the dam named ASW which is the one regulating um the the Nile and allowing uh Egypt to water resources and to have agriculture and and so on. Just keep in mind the fact that at the time being only 3% of uh the water of the Nile is going directly to Mediterranean basin. It means that 97% of the Nile river is used by the people and at the frontier between Ethiopia and and Sudan of South Sudan um which is the blue n uh Ethiopian decided to build a dam but not just a dam a dam with 50 billions of cubic meters billions. It’s incredible. We can’t even imagine what is 15 billions of cubic meters. It’s it’s huge. If you know France for instance, we have a big river which is the name is Lauron going to Mediterranean. If you want to feel the barrage, the barrage of the Renaissance, you have to uh it’s it’s the same thing that one year of the home bringing water to Mediterranean basin one year and then you will have filled the bar. And so you can imagine that Egyptians at the time being are quite u worried by the fact that the dam is built now because uh there will be an impact on the barrage on the the dam of asan and on the night. So it can be a potential source of conflict and uh we have to be very careful and we have to be very careful everywhere in the world where this kind of situation um is is is real. But sometimes um the the shared uh resource shared water resource can also be um a matter of cooperation between the countries even if they were enemies before. One example is for instance the Sagal, you know, Synagal River and um in the 80s um you had very strong and hard conflicts between Moritania and Sineagal regarding the Sagal, the river Sineagal, which is the frontier on the north of Sineagal between Sineagal and Moritania with with militaries conflict and and so on. But At one time maybe someone was more favor than the others and they they decided to put um to um structure an organization which is called OMVs for organization to value the Sagal Valley. And um now they were not the best friends before but now around the table you have people from Moritana from Sineagal from Mali and from Guinea and all of them are concerned by Sagal and it’s so so much a success that people thought that they could maybe propose MBS to be a Nobel Prize for the piece. So you see it’s sometimes can be the worst but sometimes it also can be the best. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. And I’ll add to what Eric said. Studies have also shown that it’s very difficult to get to a water agreement or some kind of pact. Right? Like all diplomacy, it takes a lot to get there. It also takes skilled diplomats. But once a treaty has been signed around water. It is the most durable kind of treaty that exists on earth. So let me say it again. The most resilient treaty that can exist on earth is one that is drawn over water. So I think that gives a lot of leverage when we think about actually the act of peace building that water can be this incredible means of reaching you know not always um you know complete reconciliation but a commitment by all the parties to shared coexistence because if you look down the other way of what happens when a watershed uh diminishes disappears becomes irrediably contaminated. Everyone loses in that situation. So again, this kind of tangibility of water offers a a tremendous example. And you know, here we are in the Great Lakes basin. The United States and Canada have a treaty that goes back to 1909. Uh it has achieved the kind of stability and cooperation between the countries that’s engendered many many more bational governance organizations. So that’s one for the diplomats. But I I want to say one more thing for the business leaders in the room is often when diplomats or political leaders go into the process of negotiating a water treaty like they’re trying to work out around the Colorado River in the West. the uh elected officials are in a certain way speaking for business because they are trying to protect the allocations to their industries and to agriculture. Well, there’s a real role that I think business can play and it can take many forms, but let’s focus on just one right here with technologies of water recycling and reuse with geothermal possibilities of heating and cooling, right? Industries can also play a role in fact of increasing the overall supply of water through techniques of recycling it those loop systems in their industry of interacting with lakes and rivers with uh deep lake cooling systems that they cycle through and treat. So again, there’s there’s a way in which especially around issues of scarcity or flooding contamination, you know, the the elected officials are always speaking for you business leaders and there’s a way that you can be contributing in advance and in parallel that can make more water available, can make technologies widely available and that can have a stabilizing effect on the society. you’re speaking about and this can be in places of extreme conflict but it can even be in wealthy places. So there there’s a way in which there’s often a sense of like oh we want the politicians to allocate this or give us that but there’s I think around water a unique role for business to lead and to parallel and and you know really in terms of implementing technologies where in thirsty industries use less water or are supplied a single time or supply water to replenish waterheds or recharge aquafers. Like there’s room for leadership that can actually help the diplomats. Great statement on that. I mean, I’ll just echo that. But it’s also one where you know these conflicts are happening for lots of different reasons and very very very very complicated as well. But there are companies that are coming up with amazing innovations across the entire world. And you know, you put a challenge out to these companies, these the water tech solution companies, they love that challenge to figure this whole thing out and to come up with these novel approaches uh to be able to use water so effectively and they’ve done that in Singapore and Israel and other places as well. But I think it’s also I was really struck by watching the video earlier and seeing the young people that were on the video but also here in the audience because that’s going to be our next innovator and our next you know solution provider in this as well. The other thing I wanted to comment is that we often think of those conflicts around water as that’s someplace else. Um that’s not the case because we have conflicts here within the United States and even you know within this, you know, Great Lakes area. And I think back to uh this was a few decades ago, uh a governor from, I think it was New Mexico or Arizona was running for president and said, “Listen, I have a great idea what we’re going to do. The southwest part of the United States needs all this water. We’re going to run a pipe from the Great Lakes and we’re going to send it down to the southwest um because they need water.” That campaign, I think, lasted one more week because he basically lost all of the Great Lakes. U and they really became united to create the Great Lakes Compact uh to say this is a shared resource that we have in this region as well. Mind you, even within our region, um, there were conflicts because we were the sort of first community to test the compact because there was a community west of Milwaukee, just a few kilometers to the west that was growing and expanding. They needed water because all of their water, when that drop of water hits, it went down to the Mississippi. And for many many years there was a big conflict to go on that people were literally across the street from each other fighting over water and to be able to come up with an agreement that was workable for everybody. So it’s this conflict doesn’t have to happen in many other parts of the world. It’s happening here because water is so precious. There’s many options when it comes to energy but there is only one source of water and Everything needs water. Uh whether it be our individuals, plants, animals. Um it is so critical to be able to have any kind of uh economies uh or obviously civilization as well. Do we have questions from the audience? Is that something we audience might know everything already? like when we attract inbound investment like a TSMC, this administration for example is going after many other largecale thirsty industries if you will. What does that look like from a Midwest perspective? I’m also from Arizona so water a very big deal to us. They grew up in that environment and they have a very interesting uh compactor on water themselves. But I’m just curious as we try to grow and relocize industry in the US what that strategy should look like from a diplomatic perspective and from a business perspective. I’ll start this off. Um, as we talk with a lot of companies, uh, particularly the large corporations that we’re engaged with, they’re already doing things. You know, we we in many ways we just like do your thing because they know how to get into other places as well. But it’s the entrepreneurs, the small businesses who look at the United States and see a huge market. And it is it is unbelievable in terms of people who come in and see this you know vast area of opportunity and it’s I still struck by people who fly in whether it’s Chicago or Milwaukee when they’re flying across the lake and they go that is an ocean out there. Um, but it’s, you know, that ocean, you know, to my left is also just a sample of what’s going on within the United States. And I think that those businesses, we need to be able to bring them here because they’ve got technologies, got solutions, they’ve got people as well to be able to develop those new ideas. But it’s also comes back, it’s very different of what you’re going to develop here versus Arizona versus in Florida and so forth. And for certain companies. I know there was one that we were working with out of France. This is several years ago had a great technology using uh solar to you know uh clean water wasn’t necessarily the best fit for us you know in the you know cold and the cloudy but we were like hey listen this is a great technology for the southwest and really to encourage that piloting those technologies there. I can uh jump on too with a a very local Chicago example. So you know this interaction between government and industry really does set geography and infrastructure. So you know famous example the lovely river that is here is the world’s only river that runs backward. Now why does it run backward? Because in the 19th century with early industry, meat packing, coal, brick making and the like, the idea was come industries, come laborers, right? All the kind of part of Chicago is based on that. But the waste poured into the what was once a little meandering Chicago River and it contaminated the drinking water supply. massive outbreaks of diseases and a lot of geoengineering was tried before they eventually said, “Okay, let’s send our waste out of here and uh send it down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.” And that goes on until today, which you know uh my freshwater lab is actively trying to transform because this is the largest freshwater diversion on Earth. This is valuable water in a time of water scarcity. So, you know, we really are at this 21st century moment of needing to rethink that infrastructure and that geography and the value of that water that we’ve been paying to treat as waste instead of taking all the valuable minerals, metals, nutrients, and actual water from it. But really to your question, so the question that you ask is a huge one because it it really sets the map for going forward. And I think in attracting industries uh whether in the arid West or the relatively water abundant Great Lakes, industrial use should be all unrecycled water. Now, there isn’t a one-sizefits-all of water recycling. And you know, I love Claire’s question. You also have to ask, does it make sense or does it not? Like, that’s the the quintessential scientific question. And the answer isn’t always that. It doesn’t always make sense, but the expectation should be as we build our next economy and our next industrial profile. We should be doing that as close to a closed loop as possible. I mean, we need to get off a model of production and waste because like what is waste but the possible source of the next production. And so that’s really key. And again, these are all things for uh you know, all the smart people in this room and and others to to work out. But um I think for all new industries going forward, we get off the waste model because I think we all know whether it’s the uh wastewater of the Chicago metropolitan area or the plastic wrappings of the things we consume. There is no way. There is no way anywhere locally or globally to send waste. So we have to get off the waist stream idea and really innovate our way out of it. You have set up the perfect segue once again to Claire because she right the waste of the 19th century was obvious you could see it. The waste of the 21st century is invisible. It’s microlastics. It’s PAS chemicals. What are the technologies that you feel are the next best options? I know you’ve kind of evolved from pure chemistry into also some molecular biology. So where are you seeing the greatest possibilities? Thanks for for this question. Indeed probably most of most of you in the room knows that it exists a lot of technology um to treat the water. So to treat the water we have two points. The first one is to eliminate uh what we call organic matter and which is essentially carbon and nitrogen. So this part of the of the treatment is quite master today and mainly lean on biological treatment. Why? Because it is one of the more easier to to um to to proceed. It’s just so I put just into marks just needs to irate a little and and mix. So this is the and it is necessary for that to provide some energy. Um recently we had in France a new law uh which uh focus on 2020 seven where uh all of the uh plants larger than 100,000 inhabitants would provide their own energy. So that’s that’s one part to to work on. Um the other part of the pollution we have to treat and which is more and more uh hard to treat and hard to detect is the question of microplastics more globally the micropollutant. So I don’t know if you know what is micropollutant the definition of a micropolutant is a chemical molecule which is in a concentration lower than a microgram per liter. What is a micro per liter for the younger? It’s the the equivalent of a piece of sugar in a swimming in an Olympic swimming pool. That’s the concentration of micropolitans. But despite this very low concentration, these molecules may have large effects and especially large effects if they are um sent back to the river. So send back to the river. It’s the step after the west of the treatment plant. So today we also have this question of the treatment of micropolitan PAS and techniques exist physical more physical techniques exist I think at the nation so which is the generation of uh 03 ozone is 03 so it’s quite expensive to to produce another solution is to concentrate this micropolitan thanks to membranes in filtration membranes nanoptration membranes reverse osmosis so I really believe in this uh in this last process I think it’s a one of which we will have to cope in the the future but really um what I think we have to to work with again is the nature uh and so I do believe in the abil of microorganisms to help us to uh to clean this water. It is just necessary to understand how they live and understand how we can force them to u to uh feed to feed with the carbon source constituted by the micropolitans. for that I think the processes of the future is not one process but it is the hybridization of several processes. So for example a very conventional activated slush for the basic depolution and then maybe concentration with membrane coupled with a biological process where we are forced the microorganisms for example to put because in that configuration they’re able to resist to a toxic effects which can be provided by the micropolitan for example. So this is the idea for for the future and also what we have to be conscious about is that there is no um my recordization processes. I think there is each of the case we have to um to study uh water remediation and these new types of pollution um each case needs its own solution. So there is um a large panel of solution of combination and we have to we have to handle the choice of the combination and I feel as researcher we have this role. Um we know the processes we know the how they how they manage uh we know the cost but we have to provide tools for helping these choice in the combination of processes faced to a of wateration. Did we have anybody else in the audience who Yes. Question right there?
Okay. Thank you so much for all of this. I want to sort of kick this into the future a little bit. So the word innovation gets used a lot, but what we mean by it is a little vague. there’s a you know sense that digital and AI gets into it but innovation can be I don’t know as as as physical and creative as coming up with a new way to line pipes so that they can handle briney water so for cooling and that kind of thing. So I’m wondering what five innovations do you see going forward and any which direction you can have one, you can have two, however many you want. Um that really have got your imagination that have got you looking and saying that’s a great way forward. I’m going to respond by not giving you five. I’ll give you 20. No, I know. I’m actually going to sort of look at it a different way. And this I really became sort of a believer in this the last two years. I think we try from innovators is to try to always overengineer and always perfect. Always always trying to do something more and bigger and fancier and more expensive. And we forget to actually in some ways make it more accessible to smaller m smaller utilities, smaller businesses. You know, there are so many different utilities that are out there that are run by one person who’s also cutting the grass, you know, for the little league and so forth. And we overengineer some of these things. And I would really challenge from an innovation standpoint is how do we make these technologies accessible to small businesses, medium-sized businesses, uh, as well as utilities as well because, um, they afford some of these big fancy things. And I’ll just end my comment real quickly. There was a small business up in northern Wisconsin who plastic extrusion company use a lot of water. They were using 900 gallons of water a day. They brought they they had to do an expansion. They brought in some new uh equipment. They went from 900 to 19 gallons a day. and they said, “Wow, we saved a lot on our w water bill, but our energy bill plummeted.” And that motivated them to look at other avenues and approaches. Just doing some things really, really simple can have a big huge impact. And I’m a also a strong believer on the supply chain. I know that was talked about earlier. We have to be able to engineer for the supply chain because those small businesses are vital to those big corporations and they want to be able to keep those customers, but we can’t overengineer because they can’t afford it, they can’t use it, they has to be accessible to them. You have taken the words right out of my mouth. Um I remember years ago after the West African Ebola outbreak talk hearing from someone who had been working in a clinic in I think Liberia who said the number one technological solution that we really really needed was a fax machine because we could not get the word out, right? And so a lot of the time it is access and affordability and the supply chain and yes innovation gets thrown around all the time but that is also a place you can innovate right is the business models of getting the technologies that do exist to the people who need them. That being said I’m a biology nerd and so I’m with Claire and I think that solving chemistry problems with biology is the way to go. So I’m very interested in engineered organisms and um yeah using that to solve problems that historically have been solved by chemistry and materials. Yeah. Um I would say that the best innovation is the one you need where you are. It’s very important because um what I was saying is u water issue is a universal one but the solutions are linked to the local conditions. If I take the the case in France for instance, in France in the north of France all the all this year there was a lot of rain, too many rain and so the problem was so different from the one we had in the south of France for instance at the border with Spain where the climate was the equivalent of what we have in the salian areas in Africa desert one and so we need innovation specific innovation in north of France to face this uh huge amount of rain and we need specific innovation in the south of France where we have no rain and we I think we these are innovations produced imagined adapted um in developed countries but we also need specific innovations in the countries where you don’t have the money, but you have the people. And they live in so difficult conditions that you need to bring them specific innovation. Something that won’t need the money but will produce them water and water with quality. Enough water and quality water. So the right innovation is the one you need where you are where you live. That’s very important. And so it’s difficult to have to give you one or two or three. It’s really depends the the way you the place you you live and the means you have to um implement the innovation. For instance, um we know here how to depolute water we we can do it we can do it here uh we can do it in France but you won’t have in many for instance in Mali or in other parts of Africa you won’t have the means to install um stations to depolute water so you need to imagine for instance very local stations maybe with plants no technical uh means but plants very located for a few number of families but it will provide them with right water to be used. So really we have to think of the place before thinking of I will come there with my innovation. Maybe another innovation could be so for example and dealing with the pas uh I don’t know how is it here but in France we had this year a new regulation that for for yeah that forbid the usage of P4 in in the manufacturer manufactur goods such as clothes and things like that. Um when I say so I also think that we as as water users we can be careful in the the amount of water we are using and the things we are putting in this water by our everyday gesture. So I think the kind of flashiest innovation that’s exciting to me is this rethinking of the wastewater treatment plant. Uh here at the Stikney plant, the biggest in the world in the Chicago area, they harvest the phosphorus and um sell it as a slowrelease fertilizer. So, that’s something that’s a pollutant, but they’re able to take the phosphorus and um it’s remarkable because it also doesn’t overfertilize the soil. I’m also very excited um to see things that are going on in the state of Ohio where the wastewater plants are opening up office parks so that the industries that come connect uh to recycled water. So kind of plumbing it and priming it in advance. So that’s really as as I think everyone’s getting I really uh want to like banish waste from our vocabulary and our world and really really want to do away with what I call singleuse water. The idea that we use water a single time and dispense with it. The second thing I’ll say has to do with water pricing and they have implemented something in Philadelphia that I think is a really good way forward and something we’re we’re going to want to be looking at globally which is a water bill that’s tiered to your income so that no household in uh you know again a wealthiest country on earth you know this should never happen in my view around the great lakes bas that no household uh is denied water because of a lack of ability to pay. So I think taring people’s bills according to income is a brilliant thing because we should all contribute to the health of our water system but not everyone can contribute equally. So water affordability would be the next innovation. And finally, and I I think my uh my solidarity as an educator will come out here, but the best innovations really come out of having young people engaged and involved in their watershed and where they live and being tasked and asked with what do you think should be happening here and how do you work together? So I think that investment in water literacy and water engagement and the next generation is is all the best ideas I’ve encountered have have really come through through those means. I can’t think of a better note to end this on. I want to help please join me in thanking everyone on this panel who are so phenomenal. And many thanks to all of you and to our hosts again, the French consulate and everyone involved. Thank you so much for coming tonight.