Articles by Jim Lauria

  1. What Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Can Teach The Water Industry About Flow 1/28/2025

    I first read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience in 1990, then again in 2004, 2014, and 2018. I revisited it most recently when it was referenced by Jim Murphy in Inner Excellence, the book that AJ Brown, wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, was reading on the sidelines during a playoff game. Thanks for the influence, AJ, and for contributing to my efforts to tell water’s story and its connection to everything we hold dear.

  2. An Honorable Profession 8/6/2024

    When I was a kid, baseball cards were hot stuff — collecting them, trading them, flipping them, poring over the photos on the front and statistics on the back. But if you told me that someday collectors in Japan would be going from city to city to seek out trading cards featuring manhole cover art ...well, that would have sounded as strange as trying to sell me a card featuring Willie Mays in a Dodgers uniform.

  3. Water Is Beer 3/25/2024
    My water career started with beer. No, not the amount I drank on my way to my chemical engineering degree at Manhattan College. I mean the 10,000+ hours I spent optimizing filtration systems in breweries throughout the world.
  4. 9/11 Unsung Heroes: How River Water Valves Saved New York City's Subways 9/11/2023

    When Jim Lauria visited New York's 9/11 Memorial and Museum several years ago, he learned there exists a lesser-known tale of heroism beneath the Twin Towers, involving a subterranean network of river water valves that played a vital role in protecting the city's subway system.

  5. Selling The Value Of Water 8/15/2023

    I love to read and recently published My 15 Favorite Water Books. (I just added one more to the list after reading Peter Gleick’s book The Three Ages of Water).

  6. Peace Of Mind Starts With Your Water Supply 7/31/2023

    It's no understatement to say that I am deeply into water. As a water professional, I think about water all the time. I stay current on the technologies that help keep our water supply safe. I am an avid student of the history of water systems. I grew up in New York City, home to the best-tasting water in the world, and I'm fortunate to live in the U.S., which has a high national standard for water quality, safeguarded by the colleagues I saw recently at AWWA's ACE conference.

  7. Water Trading vs. Water Speculation: What Would Michael Lewis Say? 5/2/2023

    I'm a big fan of author, reporter, and overall sharp-eyed observer Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, The Big Short, Moneyball, and other explorations of the depths of economics and humans' capacity for brilliance...and greed. With a new wave of interest in water trading, facilitated by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and NASDAQ listing water as a tradeable commodity, I'm very eager to get Lewis' take on what he sees.

  8. Two Water Movies: The Harmful And The Hopeful 3/8/2023

    Adam Tank and I just had Travis Loop as a guest on our podcast Water We Talking About, and he gave us an update on his initiative to do in-depth reporting on the PFAS issue. And our next guest is Aoife Kelleher, associate producer and lead researcher for the water documentary Brave Blue World. So I thought it would be a good time to repost my review on two very different water movies, Dark Waters and Brave Blue World.

  9. When It Comes To Water, California Is The Canary In The Gold Mine 2/14/2023

    Talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago, the malaprop "canary in the gold mine" popped into the conversation. That was worth a chuckle, but then a moment of reflection. What a perfect way to describe California, nicknamed The Golden State by eager miners during the Gold Rush of the 1840s and '50s, that has been yielding a steady stream of riches from its farms, forests, mines, and minds ever since.

  10. Stormwater Management Is A Worldwide Challenge 2/6/2023

    Last month, I wrote about San Francisco's great rain garden/bio-retention basin project. Strategically placed sunken curb cuts, swales, or park features collect stormwater and let it filter into the ground, reducing the pressure on overwhelmed storm drains and sewers.