Elected leaders from Eastern Washington and North Idaho agreed last year that they needed to work together to save a resource shared by both states: The Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.

The Regional Water Management Dialogue group decided to meet regularly to brainstorm to preserve the irreplaceable, sole source of drinking water for nearly 500,000 residents. The group held its second meeting Thursday afternoon, and the Spokane Convention Center room was filled with Inland Northwest decision-makers – mayors, city council members, county commissioners, state legislators, conservationists, business leaders and water district representatives.

The region is growing, but the capacity of the aquifer is not. As Rich Hadley, president of Greater Spokane Incorporated, pointed out: “Unlike energy, what’s the alternative for water? There’s no alternative way to create it.”

Some Inland Northwest cities, including Post Falls, Four Lakes and Medical Lake, already have mandatory restrictions in the summer months. The group’s water quantity subcommittee hopes to follow the lead of these cities by recommending mandatory water restrictions throughout the Inland Northwest in the summer months. The restrictions should be uniform throughout the region, the subcommittee concluded, such as no lawn watering between noon and 6 p.m. and/or an odd-even day watering system.

The strong recommendation generated a good discussion about the challenges. It’s unclear what entity would implement and enforce the restrictions: municipalities, land-use authorities or water systems. Can public and private open spaces be irrigated adequately with daytime restrictions? And what about the kids who run through sprinklers during the hottest summer days?

Today is Earth Day. When it began April 22, 1970, people here still burned their garbage in backyard burners, and Oregon was a year away from enacting revolutionary recycling legislation. If you returned bottles for reuse, you’d get a small refund.

Uniform, mandatory water rationing in the Inland Northwest may be one of those big ideas that reality can’t meet quite yet. But those at the meeting agreed to take this proposal, and all its challenges, back to their respective cities, counties and water districts, and get dialogues started there, too.

That’s key to raising awareness that the aquifer’s bounty is not limitless. It not only belongs to the Earth, to quote an Earth Day cliché, but it belongs to the children and grandchildren of those leaders brainstorming today how to preserve into perpetuity the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.