New resource addresses water conservation issues from all angles

ALBUQUERQUE- Like many places in the United States, water sources in New Mexico are rapidly being depleted due to population growth, new sub-developments, and big companies who use large amounts of water for their manufacturing and refining processes.

Inspired by this situation, we, Elizabeth Beachy (a public health professional with 10+ years of experience in social marketing/health communications) and Osvaldo Gomez (an MBA with 10+ years experience in marketing and sales), created NUPRANA LLC. We wanted to do something to help preserve the precious natural resources that are left for our son’s generation to enjoy. And of all of our natural resources, none is more precious than water.

Surrounded by the desert, we decided to order high-efficiency fixtures for our home. It took us quite awhile to find the appropriate fixtures on-line but we finally did, installed them, and saw how easy it was to save water. With new fixtures we were able to save significant amounts of water without having to make any major changes to our daily water-use behaviors.

The more we learned about New Mexico’s water situation, the more we started to worry about our family’s health. We will soon be drinking water from the Rio Grande potentially contaminated with pesticides, radioactive waste, and many other non-regulated pollutants. And what about our son’s generation? Where will they get their water in 20 years and how contaminated will it be by then?

Why NUPRANA

The vision driving NUPRANA is a vision of conscious water use, cleaner waterways, safer drinking water, and pristine freshwater sources preserved and revered for their natural beauty. Systematic water conservation is necessary to make this vision a reality.

We are focusing on three main areas to encourage water conservation. The first area is education. Little is known in the general public about the state of our water, and there is still no sense of urgency about saving water, despite over half the country heading toward water shortages. To support our educational efforts we created the “LEARN” section of the Nuprana site, which provides a comprehensive overview of water issues in the world and in the United States. We also seek to keep people up to date on water conservation issues through the “Water Conservation News” section of the site, which posts recent news from local news sources around the country.

Nuprana’s second objective is to empower people to easily save water in their own homes, by offering affordable and user-friendly water conservation products that don’t require tools or a plumber to install. Nuprana products use high-efficiency technologies that compensate for decreased water flow with increased pressure, so that once the products are installed you usually won’t feel the difference. We believe this is important in order to address some of the key barriers to water conservation.

Our third area of focus is advocacy, because while we can contribute to water conservation by using less water in our homes, decisions are being made every day by our elected officials that affect our water quality and availability. We need to be proactive and educate our elected officials and our communities, so that they too can understand the importance of water conservation and make the appropriate decisions.

We encourage you to take a look at the information available on our site at www.nuprana.com. We strongly welcome your feedback! Let us know what you think of our products, the information we’ve posted, and our mission. Please contact us if there is something you think we could be doing better, or if you have suggestions as to how we can better spread the word about water conservation.

Thanks for joining us in this important mission! If we all begin to decrease our water consumption through these simple measures, we can make a difference for the generations to come.

Together, drop by drop, we can conserve the precious water that our lives depend on.

Elizabeth Beachy is co-founder of Nuprana LLC, and editor of Nuprana’s Water Conservation News. She can be reached at ebeachy@nuprana.com