Growing Returns

Selected tag(s): disadvantaged communities

Broken pipes. Complex funding applications. The water challenges facing California’s disadvantaged communities.

By EDF Staff / Published: November 7, 2019

This blog post was written by Adriana Fernandez, EDF’s 2019 Tom Graff Diversity Fellow.

California might have the fifth largest economy in the world, but many people in the state’s disadvantaged communities feel like they are living in a third world country because they don’t have safe, clean and affordable drinking water.

Throughout the past year as a Tom Graff Diversity Fellow at EDF, I had the privilege to gain a deeper understanding of these critical water challenges facing low-income, underrepresented communities in California and amplify the voices of community members left out of the decision-making process.

After conducting a series of interviews with community members, local nonprofit leaders, university professors and consultants, I identified three crucial challenges facing some of these communities. One water operator who I interviewed shared the story of a small water system in a rural community in the eastern part of Southern California that struggles with all three of these challenges. Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged california, SGMA, water, western water | Comments are closed

Water heroes emerge in California’s Central Valley

By Ana Lucia Garcia Briones / Bio / Published: December 19, 2016

Water board leaders from 13 communities throughout California’s Central Valley attended the Leadership Academy to build engagement capacity and share lessons about small water system management. (Credit: Kike Arnal)

California’s Central Valley, which stretches 450 miles from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south, is the nation’s richest agricultural region, producing 40 percent of our fruit, vegetables and nuts on nearly 9 million acres of irrigated farmland. The Valley is also ground zero for California’s water problems.

As California endures its fifth year of drought, cities, farms, and communities across the state are experiencing severe water stress. Rivers, lakes and reservoirs are drying up, so residents are turning to groundwater pumping to quench their thirst. As a result, many of the state’s groundwater aquifers are being depleted, causing wells to run dry or become contaminated.

The most critically overdrawn aquifers are in and around small, rural communities in the Central Valley. Here, thousands of people—many of them low-income farm workers—live without safe drinking water.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged California drought, central valley, drinking water, ecosystems, environmental defense fund, environmental justice, groundwater, groundwater management, Partnerships, sustainable groundwater management act, water consumption, water markets, water use, western water, working lands | Read 1 Response

These reforms can unclog California’s water market and help the environment

By Ann Hayden / Bio / Published: May 4, 2016

California has a long tradition of conflict over water. But after five years of drought and an El Niño that failed to live up to its “Godzilla” hype, the conflict has become a crisis. How will the state adjust to a changing climate, increasing demands and prolonged periods of water scarcity?

That’s the question my colleagues and I set out to answer in Better Access. Healthier Environment. Prosperous Communities: Recommendations for Reforming California’s Water Market.

We analyzed the state’s existing market and offered a set of policy reforms to improve the efficiency, accessibility and transparency of the market so that cities, rural communities and ecosystems can benefit without altering existing water rights.

We realize that it will take a portfolio of strategies to increase the state’s resiliency in the face of a growing population and increasingly severe weather. But markets have an especially important role in leveling what has become an uneven playing field. Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged AB 2304, agriculture, california, central valley, climate change, drought, ecosystems, El Niño, environment, environmental defense fund, environmental justice, farmers, regulations, resiliency, The California Water Market Exchange Act, water management, water markets, water transfers, water use, western water, wildlife | Comments are closed