The 2026 Water Forum brought together leading voices across the water sector to discuss the market realities shaping investment, development, and infrastructure decisions today.
This page serves as a central repository for the insights, analysis, articles, and thought leadership created from those conversations — covering everything from policy risk and project finance to AI-driven water demand, water scarcity, and the future of infrastructure development.
Explore the key takeaways driving the industry conversation forward.
Navigating Water Risk Across Agriculture, Infrastructure, and Capital
Your hub for the full discussion and what comes next
Marshall & Stevens convened leaders in water infrastructure, technology, institutional investment, agriculture, and law for a solutions-first conversation on Western water, infrastructure, competing uses, and investment risk. This page is the starting point for the Forum: watch the full recording below, then explore the key takeaways and the four-part article series that goes deeper on each major theme.
Across the Forum, one theme surfaced repeatedly: water challenges cannot be reduced to a single issue, user, or solution. Long-term decision-making must consider water opportunity in addition to water risk.
Table of Contents
This page brings together the full Forum recording, key takeaways, and a four-part article series on Western water, infrastructure, competing uses, and investment risk. Jump to sections on this page, or follow the links to explore each resource.
2026 Water Forum Panelists
Moderated by Jennifer Simmonson, MAI, the discussion brought together perspectives from Megan Nicholas Harper of Nuveen Natural Capital, Rosemary Knight of Stanford University, Nati Louzon of IDE Technologies, and Bobby Majumder of FBT Gibbons.
Watch the Forum
Watch the complete 2026 Marshall & Stevens Water Forum discussion on demand, featuring candid perspectives from industry leaders across development, finance, legal, analytics, infrastructure, and valuation.
2026 Water Forum Articles
Explore the Forum key takeaways and the four-part article series that goes deeper on each major theme: water in the West, infrastructure and technology responses, competing uses among water users, and valuation and investment risk.
2026 Water Forum: Key Takeaways
Water underpins agriculture, communities, industry, and economic growth. As demand outruns supply, businesses, investors, and communities face increasingly urgent questions: where water comes from, who manages it, and how reliably it will arrive. Marshall & Stevens convened leaders in water infrastructure, technology, institutional investment, agriculture, and law at the 2026 Water Forum to examine those questions from every angle and to present workable solutions.
Water in the West: A Systemic Crisis
Water shortages across the western United States are often most visible during drought: reservoirs decline, rivers run low and competition for available supplies intensifies. But the first discussion of the 2026 Marshall & Stevens Water Forum examined challenges that extend beyond any individual drought. The panel explored the relationship between surface water and groundwater, the long-term imbalance between water supply and demand, the implications of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) for agriculture, and the potential role of alternative water sources such as desalination and water reuse.
Infrastructure and Technology Responses
After examining the structural causes of water shortages in the western United States, the second discussion of the 2026 Marshall & Stevens Water Forum focused on responses that could increase supply, improve storage and reduce demand. The panel considered groundwater recharge, the use of data to identify suitable recharge locations, safeguards for water quality, investment in recharge and water-banking infrastructure, advances in wastewater treatment and reuse, lower-water cooling technologies for data centers, and the operating practices needed to maintain reliable, cost-effective water treatment and desalination plants.
Competing Uses: Data Centers and Agriculture
The third discussion of the 2026 Marshall & Stevens Water Forum examined how agriculture, data centers and other users fit within water systems that are already under pressure. The panel addressed the difference between water use and water stress, the importance of location in land-use decisions, whether agriculture and data centers directly compete for the same water, opportunities to use recycled water, and the regulatory and permitting approaches emerging around data-center development.
Valuation Volatility and Investment Risk
The final discussion of the 2026 Marshall & Stevens Water Forum examined how water scarcity is entering decisions about financing, underwriting, valuation and development. The panel addressed the treatment of water risk in data-center credit assessments, changes in agricultural investment analysis, water resilience as a data-center siting consideration, the value of natural ecosystems, the role and cost of new water supplies, and the practical constraints affecting water transfers.
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