Like most people, water conservation wasn’t on Mary Ann
Dickinson’s radar 30 years ago. With her sights set on
environmental protection, her career entailed issuing permits
and governmental affairs. But after a state law in the late
1980s added water conservation to her list of responsibilities
at a Connecticut water utility, it only took Dickinson a matter
of months to discover something that still drives her today:
Almost everyone—including the green community—takes water for
granted. “I quickly figured out that it was a largely ignored
topic area,” Dickinson remembers. “Everyone was consumed with
energy. Nobody thought about water. Water was presumed to be
abundant enough, and unless you were in India or Africa, water
was not something that you cared about. As a result, it became
sort of a motivated issue for me.” And now, 24 years later,
Dickinson is what some might call one of the modern mothers of
water conservation. As founder, president, and CEO of Chicago-
based Alliance for Water Efficiency, Dickinso