Oregon’s 2023 legislative session concluded with a wide-ranging drought package passing through the House and the Senate, enabling key investments necessary to building a water-secure future for Oregon’s communities and ecosystems. Read More
On the Water Front
Selected tag(s): groundwater
Bi-partisan efforts yield important wins for water in Oregon
EDF and partners launch interactive Grand Canyon website
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
New report: Investing in Arizona’s water future
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.
Interactive story map captures iconic Texas spring — and the importance of collaboration to protect its future
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.
Texas is growing. The way we manage groundwater needs to keep up.
“Protect our groundwater rights and Texas aquifers.”
That was the rallying cry for a group of landowners at a key Texas Senate committee meeting last November on the potential danger of a massive Central Texas groundwater export project.
The landowners depend on groundwater from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, which encompasses the Carrizo and underlying Simsboro aquifers. The Vista Ridge Pipeline project pumps 16 billion gallons per year out of the aquifer in rural Burleson County and sends it 142 miles southwest to San Antonio. Read More
Water Leadership Institute celebrates graduation of new cohort of water equity advocates
Amid music, laughter and a few tears, the latest cohort in EDF and Rural Community Assistance Corporation’s Water Leadership Institute graduated Saturday, enthusiastically committing to put their learnings into practice and tackle significant water challenges in their communities.
It’s hard to believe, but in California, the fifth largest economy in the world, approximately one million people — primarily in small, low-income, Spanish-speaking communities — lack access to clean and affordable drinking water. As the state grapples with groundwater overpumping and extreme drought, these communities are often left out of important water planning and decision-making. The Water Leadership Institute aims to change that.