Tetra Tech partnered with Cascade Pass Publishing to produce Future Engineering: The Clean Water Challenge, a book that helps elementary school students increase their knowledge of water sources, water usage, and conservation. The book addresses one of the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges of Engineering for the 21st century—Provide Access to Clean Water.

Access to clean, safe, and potable water is not always a guarantee. As our climate changes, water scarcity is beginning to affect more communities around the world. This book explains the water cycle and presents current and future challenges within the water sector. It expands on what people around the world are doing to get access to clean water and what can be done to ensure that we will have clean water in the future.

Tetra Tech staff representing different water-related disciplines contributed their expertise to the book—from providing sustainable methods for purifying water in developing countries, to designing desalination plants to make ocean water usable for humans, to using green infrastructure to capture stormwater.

The book challenges students to think about different ways of conserving water and decreasing their water consumption. Children also learn about engineering careers that support access to clean, safe water. The book includes two lesson plans with projects that teachers can use to demonstrate how we use water in our daily lives.

The National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges of Engineering were identified by an international group of leading technological thinkers. The 14 challenges range from energy to health to enhancing virtual reality, emphasizing the opportunity to engineer a better future.