Additional Metric Notes

ACT-D stage: Assess Maturity stage: Developing Metric Contribution to Action: Tracking emissions in water-stressed areas enables targeted interventions that advance both site and catchment-level water stewardship toward best practices through continuous system improvement. Observations/Sucesses/Challenges: > Defining “water risk” is complex as water risk varies by scale (local vs. basin-wide), seasonality, and user demand, making standardization difficult. > The same mass of pollutants (e.g., nitrates vs. heavy metals) can have different impacts on water quality, but this metric treats all emissions equally. > Sometimes difficult to measure emissions if going to an unsophisticated central effluent plant > Emissions from sludge disposal are less known and often difficult to measure > Effective use and communication of this metric depend on multi-stakeholder engagement to ensure data veracity, contextual relevance, and collective progress toward risk and impact mitigation.