Dear Deeply Readers,
Welcome to the archives of Water Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 1, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on water resilience. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Tara Lohan is managing editor of Water Deeply. She tweets from @taralohan and lives in San Francisco. You can reach her at [email protected]
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In the second of a two-part interview, urban water expert David Sedlak, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, talks about technologies that are helping to fuel a new revolution in urban water systems.
The drought has spurred a longer-term initiative to rethink the future of California’s urban water systems. In the first of a two-part interview, we talk with urban water expert David Sedlak, a professor at U.C. Berkeley.
The city is leveraging the power of green bonds by issuing the first certified under the Water Climate Bonds Standard to help fund projects to repair the city’s aging water infrastructure, including the stormwater and sewer systems.
Satellite data from NASA show that more than half of the world’s major aquifers are in decline – and that those threatened aquifers support major food-producing regions, including California’s Central Valley.
Based on the adage that you “can’t manage what you can’t measure,” the California Data Collaborative is hoping to give water managers better tools to fight drought by standardizing and analyzing water data.
A special kind of satellite system is able to help reveal important information about the amount of water in our aquifers, explains Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A new Executive Order by Gov. Jerry Brown and a draft plan by the State Water Resources Control Board staff puts in motion big changes to California’s emergency conservation mandate.
Three organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service to stop water withdrawals in the San Bernardino National Forest by Nestle, which uses the water for its Arrowhead bottled water brand.
California assembly member Rich Gordon talks about a new report examining how the state can make the most of stormwater and water recycling and reuse to increase water supplies in the future.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s conservation mandate for cities last year spurred water savings across Silicon Valley. Here are some of the highlights of what communities accomplished and how they did it.
California’s emergency water conservation mandate was extended until October, but the Water Board is contemplating changing it after pressure from water suppliers that would like to see regulations eased or eliminated.
Santa Clara County depends heavily on water imported through the Delta, which is why the county’s wholesale water provider may participate in an expensive plan to build new water conveyance tunnels under the Delta.
The legislative session in Sacramento has seen a number of bills introduced that could have an impact on California’s water supply issues, including the controversial plan to build two Delta tunnels.
The small towns of coastal San Mateo county have weathered the drought very differently from most of the rest of Silicon Valley. Without large water projects, reservoirs or utilities to rely on, the fish, farms and people share limited water resources from creeks and aquifers.
Sebastien Tilmans, director of operations at the William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford University, says wastewater should be viewed as a raw material and important resource, instead of a hazardous waste. And he tells us how it can be used to create water, energy and materials.
It is clear now that California’s drought is continuing in most of the state and we may also be in for a future of more extreme weather patterns – including more drought. Here’s a look at new research on the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, why El Niño disappointed and what all this means for water management.
The drought has highlighted the need to conserve water, but it is also spurring interest in recycling water to increase supply. Silicon Valley could be poised to greatly increase the use of recycled water at the home, business and municipal level, but first there are a few hurdles to overcome.
Our traditional, centralized water systems aren’t going to go away any time soon, but as we modernize and upgrade our infrastructure we’ll need to also add smaller, distributed systems. Newsha Ajami, from Stanford’s Water in the West program, talks about how to drive and fund this innovation.
Silicon Valley’s population has skyrocketed in the last several decades and, to keep up, development is booming. Some residents are worried this will put a strain on water resources, which are especially tight during California’s drought. But experts say that smart development can also be water wise.
Information is a key to behavioral change and that’s why Robb Barnitt started Dropcountr, an application that can help customers save water by using technology to better understand their usage and offer the best opportunities to conserve. Water Deeply spoke to Barnitt about his company and its impact.
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