Please urinate with precision and elegance

Mac McKee, the outgoing director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory, spoke at Utah State on Friday as part of the Water and Environmental Seminar series.

The Utah Water Research Laboratory exists to provide practical answers to difficult questions about water resources in Utah. As an arm of Utah State University, the lab employs about 200 faculty, staff and students to inform water policy and management and improve water resources engineering in the state.

“The question is, are we doing the right things,” McKee said.

McKee has a diverse academic and professional history. With a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and professional engineering experience in Thailand and the Israel, McKee said the difficult part about water resource engineering isn’t the calculations or construction – it’s the politics.

“It’s easy to make the desert boom if you can do it with water you have stolen from someone else,” McKee said.

As the director of an institution tasked with informing policy suggestions regarding water management in Utah, McKee said there’s a gap between science and legislation. McKee worried the distance between science and policy could become a chasm due to changes from both sides.

“We’re becoming a corporate structure,” McKee said about Utah State University, confidently expressing criticism with his retirement scheduled in the summer. “At research universities money is the only thing that matters but we should be an organic creature.”

McKee used the analogy of a living organism to indicate that the university should be more adaptable and proactive in contributing to water decisions made throughout the state and the intermountain west.

“What is it we’re contributing to society,” McKee said calling for more interdisciplinary research, authentic promotion of curiosity for students and faculty, and incentives to promote research that solves real problems.

Beth Neilson, a faculty member in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at USU, said improved communication between the state’s researchers and lawmakers requires people who stand in between both groups. “We don’t train people to live between these two lines,” Neilson said. “Science doesn’t drive policy.”

“What we need is cross pollination, and an opportunity for people in legislature to say, ‘these are some of the questions we have,’” said Amber Jones, a research engineer in the water lab. “My first reaction is that there’s a disconnect, but maybe behind the scenes there are some connections we don’t know about.”

Referencing the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” McKee said it all comes down to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. In the science-fiction comic by Douglas Adams, a super computer toils with the question for 7.5 million years to come up with the answer – 42.

McKee has his own answer to the ultimate question for water research and engineering inspired by a sign on a men’s restroom door found in his travels. “Please urinate with precision and elegance.”