A new website from EDF, American Rivers, and Four Corners Mapping provides a special look at the Grand Canyon through an educational, interactive journey. The interactive tool invites people to take a tour through the Grand Canyon and learn how the complexities of the Colorado River crisis impact the Grand Canyon and its surrounding communities and ecosystems through words, images, and short videos. Read More
This blog is co-authored by Rachel O’Connor, Manager, Climate Resilient Water Systems.
As Arizona’s water crisis worsens due to extreme drought and overuse, more attention than ever is being directed toward addressing this critical issue. At the federal level, an influx of funding has become available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. And at the state level, the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA) has just begun accepting proposals for its first allocation of $200M for water conservation projects.
While differing ideas abound, it is critical that our finite time and resources are dedicated to a combination of sensible and distributed multi-benefit projects that stand to bring genuine benefits to Arizonans and the environment. Single “silver-bullet” solutions are often unrealistic and obscure potential negative social, economic, and environmental impacts.
To facilitate the conversation, the Water for Arizona Coalition, which includes EDF, has released a new report titled, Investing in Arizona’s Water Future. The report provides a succinct overview of some of the water conservation and augmentation options that have been brought forward including estimates for the water benefit, cost, and time-frame for each option along with additional considerations.
This blog is co-authored by Sue Ruiz (Education Manager, Self-Help Enterprises), Chris Freimund (Director of Development, Watershed Progressive), and Laura Dubin, Rural Community Assistance Corporation
During a rainy Saturday in Visalia, graduates from the Water Leadership Institute (WLI) gathered for an alumni reunion. It only seemed fitting that alumni congregated to discuss solutions to water challenges in an area that historically suffered from drought and recently suffered from severe flooding.
Co-hosted by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC), Self-Help Enterprises (SHE), and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the gathering was meant to foster a support network for community water leaders and influence the future of the WLI. The alumni reunion also included local organizations that work to engage communities to promote equity and water resilience, including the Community Water Center (CWC), Watershed Progressive, and Linguistica Interpreting and Translation. Read More
Most of California’s Central Valley is dedicated to productive and diverse farmland, helping make California the country’s fruit, nut, and vegetable basket. However, due in part to increasingly intense and variable climate conditions, we must manage agricultural landscapes to ensure productivity and reliance for future generations. The 2,100-acre Dos Rios Ranch Preserve near Modesto is an inspiring example of how marginal farmland can be reimagined to support sustainable agriculture. It also serves as a model to create an abundance of new community and environmental benefits, similar to the types of projects that will be funded by California’s new Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program, a program that incentivizes landowners to voluntarily repurpose land to support long-term water sustainability in the Central Valley. Furthermore, the organization has planted over 350,000 native trees and vegetation, restored 8 miles of riverfront land, and created nearly 250 jobs — an overall success for the area’s ecosystems and economy. The Ranch provides a multitude of new uses, building biodiversity, recreational, climate resilience, cultural, and flood control benefits while improving the health and stability of our water systems which are the backbone of our economy.
Photo Credit: River Partners
We asked Julie Rentner, President of River Partners, to sit down with EDF to discuss the Preserve’s beginnings and journey from irrigated cropland to one of the state’s most significant and largest private-public floodplain restoration projects.
This blog is co-authored by Dan Mueller, Senior Manager, Climate Resilient Water Systems, Environmental Defense Fund
San Solomon Springs is a Texas icon. It’s also a beacon of both caution and opportunity in sustaining Texas’s groundwater resources and the springs and streams that depend on them.
The springs — located in the Chihuahuan Desert, near the town of Balmorhea — have for centuries offered humans and wildlife a source of fresh water in a place that desperately needs it.
In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the world’s largest spring-fed pool there. The pool draws people from all over the world to a remote, beautiful part of the desert. The pool, along with the fresh water flowing from the springs, helps maintain an economy as well as an elaborate and fragile ecosystem.
Today, the springs are as vulnerable as they are precious. The West Texas region has already seen another iconic groundwater supply — Comanche Springs, in Fort Stockton — dry up due to the overpumping of groundwater.
The same scientific, regulatory, and environmental risks face San Solomon Springs. More than that, communities all over Texas confront these challenges. Across the state, there is a critical need to better understand groundwater flow and the connection and interaction between groundwater and surface water, and to create scientific and regulatory tools through which local communities and groundwater managers can sustainably manage Texas’s water resources.
The story of San Solomon Springs is a rich, complex, and human one. It requires community voices, historic perspective, and scientific insight. Texas needs to understand the scope of it — not just for that region, but also for all of the other endangered bodies of groundwater that preserve people, plants, animals, streams, and economies above-ground.
To tell it right, EDF developed an online, interactive story map called, “Water in the Texas Desert; the Story of the San Solomon Springs System.” This storytelling experience features interviews with more than a dozen residents and experts, historic images and contemporary photos, maps and scientific diagrams, and an extensive narrative laying out the springs’ past and present — as well as the critical collaborative efforts of researchers, landowners, and local community who are working to protect its future.
We launched the story map on World Water Day 2023. We hope this resource demonstrates to officials in West Texas — and far beyond — the vital importance of understanding and preserving our groundwater.
Yesterday, California’s Department of Conservation opened a second application round for the state’s timely and in-demand Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program (MLRP).
Now through March 29th, Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and their local non-profit and public agency partners can apply for nearly $9 million block grants to plan for and implement projects that reduce regional groundwater demand and beneficially repurpose formerly irrigated farmland. Block grantees can use MLRP funding in part to provide payments to growers for voluntarily repurposing land to new uses that require less water and create benefits, such as habitat, community parks, restored floodplains, multibenefit recharge areas, dryland crops, managed rangeland, or low-impact solar. Direct funding is also available for federally recognized and non-federally recognized California Native American tribes that are working to reestablish tribal land uses, enact tribal cultural practices, acquire land or easements, and conduct other land repurposing projects.
