12wonderY
2013 blog about Nestlé chairman quote on "Water Not a Right, Should Be Given a 'Market Value' and Privatized."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-mcgraw/nestle-chairman-peter-brabeck-water_...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-mcgraw/nestle-chairman-peter-brabeck-water_...
22wonderY
RBC Canadian Water Attitudes Study
http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/environment/rbc-blue-water/water-att...
http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/environment/rbc-blue-water/water-att...
42wonderY
California’s Water Strategy: A Marvelous Action Plan For Our Climate Future
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnsabo/2022/11/04/californias-water-strategy-a-ma...
Too much climate change resource planning is rooted in the present — which means it’s not adaptive to the threats and (dare I say it?) opportunities of a future under climate change’s increasing extremes.
But now California actually has a water supply plan that prepares for that future. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recently released California Water Supply Strategy reflects an adaptive approach that takes the state much closer to securing water in an age of climate extremes — not by managing for increasing water scarcity, but by exploiting the opportunities climate change gives us to create water abundance.
It’s a marvelous action plan that’s future-forward, and it offers ideas that every other state should consider.
But California’s unique geography also offers it an opportunity to capture the abundance of extreme rainfall from “atmospheric rivers” — streams of water vapor in the sky hundreds of kilometers wide that arrive every 10-17 years because of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. These “rivers” contain several times more water than the discharge of the Mississippi River at its mouth and drop as much as 18 feet of snow on the California Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as heavy downpours. This “new” water, if captured, could be stored for later use not just in reservoirs but in wetlands and aquifers.
Is Water Abundance Really Possible?
California isn’t unique when it comes to the occurrence of climate extremes. But if there’s any state that needs to approach water management by maximizing the abundance opportunities of the future, it’s California. Not only is it the most populous state, it has the largest agriculture industry in the nation — one that’s vulnerable to the more frequent, more intense droughts climate change is already bringing much of the United States.
And the strategy prioritizes capturing this new water. For instance, the largest project in the strategy is the Sites Reservoir, on which construction will begin in 2024. Here’s why Sites exemplifies seizing opportunities for abundance:
Sites is engineered nature at its best — a 1.5 million acre-feet surface storage system in northern California that’s in essence a managed wetland, managed not just for (downstream) environmental benefit but for storage resilience and community, farm and business benefit.
Sites is future-forward because it’s designed to capture rainfall, not snowpack, which is how climate change will shift the contributors to California’s annual water supply. (With climate change, snowmelt will happen earlier and rain will become more important to overall water supply.)
Sites is environmentally friendly because it is “offsite” (off the mainstem of a river) — it’s not blocking the Sacramento and blocking Chinook salmon from reaching their spawning grounds, which would be a no-starter politically in California.
But while Sites is a big project, it’s also far away from many of California’s urban centers — it can’t deliver water to Los Angeles, for instance. Projects have to be smaller and closer to where they’re needed. Fortunately, the strategy delivers fairly well on that front as well.
The Future of Water Projects: Small, Close and Conjunctive Use
The strategy prioritizes investing in smaller, local projects such as the Willow Springs Water Bank Conjunctive Use Project. And many of them (like Willow Springs) are what’s known as conjunctive use projects, those projects that manage groundwater and surface water together. Conjunctive use projects exemplify the abundance mindset because they seek to capture “new” water from extreme incidents and store it for later use — often in available underground storage capacity such as an aquifer.
Other prioritized projects in the strategy include the Chino Basin Conjunctive Use Environmental Water Storage/Exchange Program (which relies on recycled water not impacted by climate change or changes in hydrology) and the groundwater-restoring Harvest Water Program. Both of these projects are near California population centers where bigger projects like Sites aren’t feasible.
Those projects represent the other significant innovative quality of the strategy: It recognizes that these conjunctive use projects are optimally sited near the communities and nature they will serve. There aren’t many places left where building giant reservoirs on rivers is the best path forward. The future is a lot of small projects, strategically sited and distributed.
The strategy sets up distributed storage systems designed to hold water so that communities can access local supply as extremes create greater variability. Similar to the “sponge city” concept, this distributed approach holds on to the resource where it exists as opposed to the costly and wasteful endeavor of moving water around.
And the cumulative impact will be substantial: as I read it, Newsom’s strategy proposes to help facilitate — through regulatory streamlining and technical assistance from the state to communities — the build of nearly 340 groundwater recharge projects that could store as much as 500,000 to 2.2M acre feet.
Listen Up, States — and I’m Looking at You, Texas
There is surely still work to do. To know just how much additional storage California could gain from underway and proposed projects, a combination of science and law is needed. We still need to know where each project is getting its water and who has legal rights (if any) to that “extra” water in winter storms. And there’s no doubt that Newsom’s strategy could and should go even further toward conjunctive use and distribution at the hyper-local scale to increase efficiency and resiliency for people and important industries — notably agriculture.
At the same time, many, if not most, states should take a serious look at California’s new approach. If population is a reason for a similar level of urgency, Texas is next in line with about 29 million residents. Rapid development and drought are draining aquifers in some areas of that state, while others are experiencing storm surge and flooding. If the six other states in the Colorado River Basin (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) followed California’s lead, we could reduce the pressure on that system. That could lead to greater independence for each state and less overall risk of that system failing.
California’s new strategy addresses the reality that “managing for supply” in an age of climate extremes inevitably creates further crises when supplies go down. It also demonstrates that states do not have to view water through a “feast or famine” lens if we maximize water storage in times of over-supply for use in times of drought.
Just as diversifying your investment portfolio reduces risk, balancing our dependence on either surface or groundwater helps us not only handle climate extremes better, but also benefit from that holistic approach. California is setting the pace with a plan that’s scientifically sound, practical — and essential.
John Sabo
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnsabo/2022/11/04/californias-water-strategy-a-ma...
Too much climate change resource planning is rooted in the present — which means it’s not adaptive to the threats and (dare I say it?) opportunities of a future under climate change’s increasing extremes.
But now California actually has a water supply plan that prepares for that future. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recently released California Water Supply Strategy reflects an adaptive approach that takes the state much closer to securing water in an age of climate extremes — not by managing for increasing water scarcity, but by exploiting the opportunities climate change gives us to create water abundance.
It’s a marvelous action plan that’s future-forward, and it offers ideas that every other state should consider.
But California’s unique geography also offers it an opportunity to capture the abundance of extreme rainfall from “atmospheric rivers” — streams of water vapor in the sky hundreds of kilometers wide that arrive every 10-17 years because of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. These “rivers” contain several times more water than the discharge of the Mississippi River at its mouth and drop as much as 18 feet of snow on the California Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as heavy downpours. This “new” water, if captured, could be stored for later use not just in reservoirs but in wetlands and aquifers.
Is Water Abundance Really Possible?
California isn’t unique when it comes to the occurrence of climate extremes. But if there’s any state that needs to approach water management by maximizing the abundance opportunities of the future, it’s California. Not only is it the most populous state, it has the largest agriculture industry in the nation — one that’s vulnerable to the more frequent, more intense droughts climate change is already bringing much of the United States.
And the strategy prioritizes capturing this new water. For instance, the largest project in the strategy is the Sites Reservoir, on which construction will begin in 2024. Here’s why Sites exemplifies seizing opportunities for abundance:
Sites is engineered nature at its best — a 1.5 million acre-feet surface storage system in northern California that’s in essence a managed wetland, managed not just for (downstream) environmental benefit but for storage resilience and community, farm and business benefit.
Sites is future-forward because it’s designed to capture rainfall, not snowpack, which is how climate change will shift the contributors to California’s annual water supply. (With climate change, snowmelt will happen earlier and rain will become more important to overall water supply.)
Sites is environmentally friendly because it is “offsite” (off the mainstem of a river) — it’s not blocking the Sacramento and blocking Chinook salmon from reaching their spawning grounds, which would be a no-starter politically in California.
But while Sites is a big project, it’s also far away from many of California’s urban centers — it can’t deliver water to Los Angeles, for instance. Projects have to be smaller and closer to where they’re needed. Fortunately, the strategy delivers fairly well on that front as well.
The Future of Water Projects: Small, Close and Conjunctive Use
The strategy prioritizes investing in smaller, local projects such as the Willow Springs Water Bank Conjunctive Use Project. And many of them (like Willow Springs) are what’s known as conjunctive use projects, those projects that manage groundwater and surface water together. Conjunctive use projects exemplify the abundance mindset because they seek to capture “new” water from extreme incidents and store it for later use — often in available underground storage capacity such as an aquifer.
Other prioritized projects in the strategy include the Chino Basin Conjunctive Use Environmental Water Storage/Exchange Program (which relies on recycled water not impacted by climate change or changes in hydrology) and the groundwater-restoring Harvest Water Program. Both of these projects are near California population centers where bigger projects like Sites aren’t feasible.
Those projects represent the other significant innovative quality of the strategy: It recognizes that these conjunctive use projects are optimally sited near the communities and nature they will serve. There aren’t many places left where building giant reservoirs on rivers is the best path forward. The future is a lot of small projects, strategically sited and distributed.
The strategy sets up distributed storage systems designed to hold water so that communities can access local supply as extremes create greater variability. Similar to the “sponge city” concept, this distributed approach holds on to the resource where it exists as opposed to the costly and wasteful endeavor of moving water around.
And the cumulative impact will be substantial: as I read it, Newsom’s strategy proposes to help facilitate — through regulatory streamlining and technical assistance from the state to communities — the build of nearly 340 groundwater recharge projects that could store as much as 500,000 to 2.2M acre feet.
Listen Up, States — and I’m Looking at You, Texas
There is surely still work to do. To know just how much additional storage California could gain from underway and proposed projects, a combination of science and law is needed. We still need to know where each project is getting its water and who has legal rights (if any) to that “extra” water in winter storms. And there’s no doubt that Newsom’s strategy could and should go even further toward conjunctive use and distribution at the hyper-local scale to increase efficiency and resiliency for people and important industries — notably agriculture.
At the same time, many, if not most, states should take a serious look at California’s new approach. If population is a reason for a similar level of urgency, Texas is next in line with about 29 million residents. Rapid development and drought are draining aquifers in some areas of that state, while others are experiencing storm surge and flooding. If the six other states in the Colorado River Basin (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) followed California’s lead, we could reduce the pressure on that system. That could lead to greater independence for each state and less overall risk of that system failing.
California’s new strategy addresses the reality that “managing for supply” in an age of climate extremes inevitably creates further crises when supplies go down. It also demonstrates that states do not have to view water through a “feast or famine” lens if we maximize water storage in times of over-supply for use in times of drought.
Just as diversifying your investment portfolio reduces risk, balancing our dependence on either surface or groundwater helps us not only handle climate extremes better, but also benefit from that holistic approach. California is setting the pace with a plan that’s scientifically sound, practical — and essential.
John Sabo
52wonderY
CALIFORNIA’S WATER SUPPLY STRATEGY
AUG
2022
Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future
https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Water-Resilience...
AUG
2022
Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future
https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Water-Resilience...
62wonderY
Pink snow is a red flag for the West’s water
Researchers are trying to understand what drives snow algal blooms and how they could alter water supplies.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.12/north-water-pink-snow-is-a-red-flag-for-the-wes...
Researchers are trying to understand what drives snow algal blooms and how they could alter water supplies.
https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.12/north-water-pink-snow-is-a-red-flag-for-the-wes...
72wonderY
Nasa's Swot satellite will survey millions of rivers and lakes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63980843
82wonderY
An Unmistakable Stain in America’s Most Pristine Rivers
Climate change is rusting Alaska’s waterways.
And scientists are only theorizing
https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-water-alaskas-arctic-waterways-are-turning-or...
Climate change is rusting Alaska’s waterways.
And scientists are only theorizing
https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-water-alaskas-arctic-waterways-are-turning-or...
