On the Water Front

It’s Colorado River Day — a time to celebrate a dedicated stream of water funding

Colorado River

To mark Colorado River Day today, it seems fitting to celebrate Colorado’s 10-year journey to dedicating $50+ million a year to fund water projects and support the resource that makes Colorado so special: its water. And I’d like to briefly highlight three very different projects that have benefited from this vital new funding stream.

It started with the first Colorado Water Plan.

While drinking water utilities and large agricultural districts can often tap ratepayer fees to fund millions if not billions of dollars of improvement and maintenance projects, the same has not historically been the case for Colorado’s beloved rivers and streams. In 2015, the first Colorado Water Plan highlighted the urgent need to fill a gap for reliable, dedicated funding to support rivers, restoration, recreation, and aging agricultural infrastructure.

Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights makes creating a new funding stream extremely challenging, but a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision provided a new opening by eliminating a ban on state-based sports betting. In 2019, thanks in part to a bipartisan campaign supported by EDF, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and a host of other water users, Colorado voters approved Proposition DD, which legalized sports betting and dedicated the tax revenues from it specifically to fund water projects.

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EDF deepens efforts to recharge groundwater, bolster farmer prosperity in India


EDF’s Leah Beaulac (bottom right) and Nikhil Goveas (right) listen to a groundwater user group meeting in Kadiri, Andhra Pradesh.

EDF is helping farmers address one of their core climate challenges: securing a reliable water supply. This September, an EDF team led by Ann Hayden, Nikhil GoveasGopal Penny and Leah Beaulac conducted a series of comprehensive site visits and workshops across drought-prone areas of central India.

Water availability in India is a core climate issue for the world. India is by far the largest user of groundwater in the world. More than 60% of the country’s irrigated agriculture and 85% of drinking water supplies depend on groundwater. Global food prices and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of farmers depend on India finding a path to sustainable groundwater use. EDF is committed to building a network of partnerships to help achieve this critical climate goal.

EDF’s work in India spans a number of workstreams including Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Climate Resilient Water Systems (CRWS).

Every year, billions are invested from the public and private sector in water management in India, yet little is known about the effectiveness of various interventions. That’s where EDF and partners are stepping in to evaluate these approaches on the ground and thereby improve investments and overall resilience at scale.

The water team’s trip deepened EDF’s partnerships with in-country organizations and experts doing remarkable work to recharge groundwater, create more resilience to water scarcity and help farmers thrive.

EDF’s Gopal Penny (left) works with WELL Labs’ Lakshmikantha NR and Avinash Pande to inspect groundwater recharge structures in Jalna, Maharashtra. Photo: Ananya Revanna

First up on the visit: treks through many fields muddied by a generous monsoon to inspect field-level groundwater recharge structures in north-central Maharashtra. EDF and WELL Labs — an India-based solutions-focused research startup — have been supporting local partners in evaluating the design and impact of these structures on local groundwater recharge and farmer prosperity in the region. Our new joint report explains more.


EDF staff listen to leaders of a regional non-profit describe the history of a unique groundwater collectivization program whose impact EDF is helping to quantify.

Next, some long discussions and delicious homemade meals with farmers working the beautiful, bouldered landscape of western Andhra Pradesh. EDF and WELL Labs are evaluating the effectiveness of a remarkable groundwater sharing program that has set up water user associations where neighbors share groundwater and agree to forgo drilling new borewells. The negotiations are hard work. Sharing water can be a deeply personal issue. Yet many are buying into the message of working together rather than drilling alone — which could further overdraft the aquifer. The participants and the design of the program are deeply inspiring and serve as a model of community spirit that we need more echoes of in other groundwater-strained regions.

(From L to R) WELL Labs’ Vivek Grewal, EDF’s Nikhil Goveas, Ann Hayden, and Gopal Penny help lead a lively discussion during the national roundtable on India’s water sector that EDF co-hosted in New Delhi.

Finally, the EDF team ended the historic visit by co-hosting an intense, first-ever national roundtable on monitoring, evaluation, and learning in India’s water sector. Leading scholars, non-profit practitioners, funders and business leaders joined us in the leafy confines of New Delhi’s India International Centre for a stimulating day of discussion. EDF is supporting the development of a data-rich toolbox to help inform government, corporate, and non-profit water interventions across India. Check out key takeaways and next steps from the event.


EDF co-hosted, alongside our in-country partner WELL Labs, the first-ever national roundtable on monitoring, evaluation, and learning in India’s water sector. The event featured leading experts from academic, non-profit, and corporate groups.

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Revisiting the first OpenET Applications Conference: how satellite-based data is transforming water, farm, and forest management 

This spring, hundreds of scientists, engineers, water managers, farmers and ranchers gathered in New Mexico to share and learn about how OpenET data is being used to advance water resources management. OpenET has radically improved access to data on evapotranspiration (ET) — or how much water plants and other vegetation consume. The result has been a flood of new applications of ET data in land and water management. 

This year’s convening in New Mexico was a first-ever chance to take stock of all the ways people are using OpenET. The conference cut across a wide range of geographies and sectors and revealed a quickly emerging, dynamic community of practice centered on the platform.  Read More »

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How public-private partnerships can improve water sustainability

The scale of the global freshwater crisis requires an all hands effort. Fostering diverse, sometimes difficult, partnerships — particularly between policymakers, producers, and frontline communities — is at the heart of EDF’s water program.

Buzz Thompson’s new book argues the scale of the water crisis requires stronger public-private collaboration.

Partnership is also at the center of an intriguing new book from Stanford law and environmental social sciences professor Barton “Buzz” Thompson. In Liquid Asset: How Business and Government Can Partner to Solve the Freshwater Crisis, Thompson argues partnership — between the private sector, lawmakers, state agencies, philanthropic foundations, and non-profits such as EDF — gives us the best chance to address the growing freshwater challenges confronting the world today. He explores exactly how such public-private partnerships can develop by addressing four key questions:

    1. Does the private sector promise anything unique in solving the global water crisis?
    2. What are the risks of private involvement given the “public-ness” of water?
    3. What are the challenges of working in a traditionally public sector?
    4. How exactly can the private and public sectors partner?

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Cómo la reutilización de tierras está comenzando a transformar comunidades y ecosistemas vulnerables en California

[View the English version of this post]

El extenso Valle Central de California se enfrenta a la disminución de los niveles de agua subterránea y al incremento de cambios bruscos de clima, entre sequias e inundaciones, por cambio climático.

La próxima vez que te encuentres buscando direcciones en tu teléfono móvil, mueve el mapa hacia el centro de California y haz zoom. Activa la capa de satélite. Lo que verás es un desconcertante mosaico. Un inmenso tablero de ajedrez marrón y verde, dividido en rectángulos, cortado por autopistas, rodeado por colinas y montañas. Este es el famoso y problemático Valle Central de California, potencia mundial en producción agrícola que cada vez más se asocia con titulares sobre la sobreexplotación de aguas subterráneas, las crecientes olas de inundaciones y sequías. No es un paisaje que uno asociaría inmediatamente con colaboración y  transformación.  Read More »

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Here’s how land repurposing is beginning to transform strained communities and ecosystems in California

Satellite image of California's Central Valley

California’s sprawling Central Valley is confronting declining groundwater levels and increasing ‘climate whiplash’ between drought and flood.

Next time you find yourself looking up driving directions on your phone, scroll over to central California and zoom out a bit. Turn on the satellite layer. What you’ll see is a mindboggling patchwork. A massive brown and green checkerboard, cut up in rectangles, sliced by highways, besieged by a ring of arid foothills. This is California’s famed and troubled Central Valley — an agricultural powerhouse that’s increasingly associated with headlines about disappearing groundwater and growing waves of flood and drought. Filled with sharp lines, it’s not a landscape one would immediately associate with collaboration and transformation.   Read More »

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