>>Nick White: I'm Nick White, Senior Groundwater Hydrologist with Truckee Meadows Water Authority.

I do consider myself very fortunate to be with TMWA.

I think I'm most passionate about water resources and working for a water utility where I get to live and play and have a direct contribution to the community makes it extremely important to me.

I enjoyed earth science and engineering and mathematics throughout my academic career.

Soil physics, geology, groundwater hydrology, fluid dynamics, and then all the mathematics, calculus series.

Differential equations, mathematical modeling, engineering statistics.

My stepfather was a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, and I think he kind of started a fire that was hard to put out.

His kind words and motivation, as well as the math and engineering and earth science fixation, was, I think, what had me on the right path.

MUSIC We essentially acquire, preserve, protect and manage the region's water resources, meaning all of our surface water resources along the Truckee River, including those in these upstream reservoirs, as well as groundwater resources across nine different hydrographic basins.

MUSIC The surface water resource starts at Tahoe and runs down the river system.

There's these upstream reservoirs such as Bocas.

When we're standing out here, flows through town, and then it terminates at Pyramid Lake.

Dams are very critical.

Timing is everything, as they say.

And we live and work in a snowmelt driven system.

Snow accumulates in the winter months, and then it runs off roughly April through June.

And then through the summer months.

It's all gone.

So with these dams, they capture water during those critical April through June runoff months.

And then that allows us to time the releases of this water during higher demand season, typically the summer months when demand go up for municipal water supply.

MUSIC Passive recharge is when we essentially rest our assets.

We rest groundwater wells.

We try to let the natural process of recovery and replenishment occur.

For instance, in South Truckee Meadows over many years, there was groundwater overpumping on the Mount Rose fan.

And when TMWA and the county Department of Water Resources merged, TMWA, was able to stretch surface water further south.

So we were we were able to rest a lot of the groundwater wells on the Mount Rose fan.

And over the course of, I'd say, 3 to 5 years, we saw that groundwater levels started, started recovering quite well and replenishing.

So that's passive recharge.

It's really just resting wells and allowing the natural process to take place.

And then there's active recharge, which is where we take treated Truckee River water during the winter months.

And we actually actively inject it into our groundwater wells.

And it's kind of the same story.

We do that where we see issues with, say, declining water levels or water quality to try to mitigate those issues so that we can turn around in the summer months.

And when demand increase, lean on those those resources a little harder.

The benefit with recharge is there is no evaporation, right?

It's stored underground.

You're injecting it into wells, whereas you would observe evaporation from an open reservoir such as this.

If you inject that water into the ground, there is no evaporation.

The water that we see and we manage out here in the field as a scientist turns into water that somebody else treats, which turns into water that's physical, that goes into a pipe that somebody else makes sure gets to your tap at your house.

We always want to make sure we're trying to preserve and protect the resources so that when they're called upon, they're ready to go.

MUSIC Follow their passion in terms of physical science and earth science.

Obviously, if they're they're someone that loves the outdoors and working in the field, that's another good thing to obviously include on the list.

They would at least have to be motivated to learn water resources, study things that are easy to understand, such as our upstream watersheds, all of our upstream reservoirs.

It's it's rather simple to do your own research on Nevada water rights and things like the Truckee River Operating Agreement.

One of the most important things to try to develop while you're in college is technical writing.

Being able to write, I think, is extremely important and undervalued.

If you're interested in water resources in the West, then Reno, locally, TMWA is a great place to start your job search.

MUSIC