Thirst for Power Screening

For World Water Day, high school students from across San Antonio came to the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts for a free screening of “Thirst for Power,” a documentary about the connection between electricity and water. A student panel followed. We filmed it for DISCO Learning Media, one of the Smart Energy Education initiative’s partners.

The Tobin Center hosted it with CPS Energy, Itron, Inc., and the San Antonio Water System (SAWS). Special guests included then-Mayor Ron Nirenberg; Robert R. Puente, then president and CEO of SAWS; and Angela Rodriguez, then CPS Energy’s director of climate strategy and sustainability.

“Even just turning on a light switch, we don’t realize how water is used in that process,” says Natalia Lopez, an engineering student at the University of Texas San Antonio. Part of the documentary is about how you turn on a faucet and the water’s there, explains Andrea Santos of Students of Service of San Antonio, and the goal is for students to understand how that happens. As Angela puts it, “when you save one, you save the other.”

“Students my age and younger are going to be the people who are taking care of the environment from now on,” says student Catalina Leal of the Mayor’s Youth Engagement for Climate Change. Robert’s advice for anyone who wants to influence decisions: get as much information as you can, then use it “for the betterment of our community.”