"Water supports life in lakes, in mountains — mountains are large reservoirs or water," Asher Shomrone, founder and executive of the New York Museum of Water, said at a New York City event on March 22, World Water Day. "Our civilization is water. Life is water. We are water."

An opening date for the museum is less than, well, solid right now, as another $500,000 to $1 million will be needed to find a space in Manhattan, hire more than a skeleton staff and see to the basic needs of an institution, Shomrone says.

***

So far, Shomrone has funded the preparations for the museum through private donations and money from friends and family. The museum itself is a program of the 1-BluePlanet Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing potable water to 250 million of the world's neediest people by 2015.

"We're right on watershed, as it were, about whether we're going to create a real viable future," said Johnanne Winchester, vice president of international alliances for the communications-coordination committee for the U.N.

We are on a mission to create entertainment centers that act as an ambassador for water, its protection, and our childrens future access to clean and ample water. Our purpose is to create the world's clearinghouse for all water related themes and to do it in an entertaining and accessible fashion that engages as wide an audience as possible and brings joy and wonder to peoples lives.