When I was enrolled in university, my political science courses discussed future conflict and migrations resulting from water scarcity. I did not think that I would see evidence of this so soon after graduation. A government geological study notes that there is a major cone of depression in the Memphis area as a result of long-term pumping of water at municipal and industrial well fields. This problem is in addition to the $615,000,000 lawsuit from Mississippi against Tennessee challenging the intense pumping of aquifer water in Memphis. This pumping has allegedly caused a depression in the Mississippi water table and altered the direction that water moves underground. This issue of our water aquifer is not a fad of environmentalism, nor is it a fund-raising platform for the Sierra Club. This is the kind of issue that will come to define our era, and Memphians are at the forefront of it in a very real way. With climate change altering rain patterns and, ultimately, aquifer recharge rates, it seems foolish to blindly obligate millions of gallons of this precious resource to the Tennessee Valley Authority for its proposed use in the cooling of their new natural gas plant here. A 2015 study cited that just 6 percent of groundwater is replenished within a “human lifetime” of 50 years. The water we drink from the Memphis Sand Aquifer is 2,000 years old. Let that sink in. While water may be a renewable resource, it is finite in quantity and vulnerable to contamination. Brian Waldron, a researcher at the Ground Water Institute, has warned, “We don’t really know the…