On the Water Front

Selected tag(s): groundwater management

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

By Anna Schiller / Published: April 2, 2024
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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Rosa learned how to help her community get reliable, clean water. You can too.

By Mariana Rivera-Torres and afajardoanstine / Published: February 12, 2024

Aerial view shows algae at O’Neill Forebay, a joint Federal-State facility and part of the State Water Project in Merced County, California. Algal blooms may contain toxins that can be harmful to people and pets. Photo taken May 25, 2022.
Florence Low / California Department of Water Resources, FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY

In 2022, Rosa applied for the Water Leadership Institute. Her motivation? To actively address severe water challenges impacting her family in El Nido in Merced County. Located in California’s breadbasket, Merced County is a scene of abundance with lush fields, orchards, and prospering dairy farms. Yet, beneath this scene lies a harsh reality. Rosa’s family and neighbors grappled with the consequences of water contamination, a pervasive issue with a grasp on daily life.

For years, Rosa made the bi-weekly trek to purchase clean water for her family’s ranch. Routinely, she stocked up on large quantities of jugs and bottled water to ensure her family had safe water to cook, clean, and drink. When this water ran low, they reluctantly turned to their domestic well for cleaning and personal care. Her family was aware that the well was not clean, but that was the best alternative available. Oftentimes, when they turned on the faucet, the water was foamy, had a strange smell, and ran white, the same color as the milk from the nearby dairy farms. She and her neighbors even began noticing their hair would fall out when they used the faucet water for bathing.

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Water is a high-level priority at COP 28, we need to look to ground-level users for solutions

By Ann Hayden / Published: November 30, 2023

Water has finally reached the highest levels of global climate negotiations. The path to a sustainable freshwater future, however, lies with ground-level users. At COP 28, EDF is elevating their voices, their needs and the approaches they find most useful.

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While greenhouse gases drive climate change, many of its impacts are inherently liquid. Whether through drought, flood, sea-level rise, or contamination, water increasingly forms the turbulent core of the climate crisis.

Over the past year, this basic reality was finally acknowledged at the global planning table.  Thanks to a strong push from its Egyptian hosts, last year’s edition of the main UN climate conference, COP 27, made water a central theme. The cover decision — the summation of the conference’s key agreements — featured water and food for the first time. The decision acknowledged the central role of water in countering climate impacts and called for water-related targets in national climate planning. 

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Posted in Agriculture, Community, COP, Drought, Groundwater, Land Repurposing / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Authors: / Leave a comment

‘We are driving a car without a fuel gauge’ — data and localization needs dominate the emerging global consensus on groundwater

By Jonathan Seefeldt / Published: August 28, 2023

Groundwater professionals have long united around the desire to “make the invisible visible.” It’s a slogan that finds its way into most conversations, publications, and speeches on the global groundwater crisis. Last year’s United Nations World Water Development Report focused entirely on groundwater. It’s chosen title? Groundwater, making the invisible visible.

One could be forgiven then for expecting groundwater to be highly visible at last week’s World Water Week—the sprawling annual gathering around which much of the global discussion on water pivots. Yet, mirroring ground-reality across much of the world, groundwater remained largely out of the spotlight. Only a handful of sessions, out of hundreds on offer, focused on the topic and none received center-stage treatment.

That is not to say there were no fruitful discussions on groundwater in Stockholm. In fact, the sessions that did focus on the topic produced some substantial conversations that provide a glimpse at the emerging global consensus on both the need for improved management at multiple scales and specific steps required to facilitate such improvements. Read More »

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