27 research outputs found
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Accelerating Cost-Effective Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Learning From Local Implementation
Although green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is critical to solving stormwater management challenges, GSI is evolving technology with inconsistent performance and uncertain costs. Our report recommends enhancing learning from local implementation efforts to address knowledge gaps and speed cost-effective deployment. We identify key actions the EPA and state water quality authorities can take to help drive data collection and sharing
Recommended from our members
Accelerating Cost-Effective Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Learning From Local Implementation
Although green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is critical to solving stormwater management challenges, GSI is evolving technology with inconsistent performance and uncertain costs. Our report recommends enhancing learning from local implementation efforts to address knowledge gaps and speed cost-effective deployment. We identify key actions the EPA and state water quality authorities can take to help drive data collection and sharing
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Learning from California’s Experience with Small Water System Consolidations: A Workshop Synthesis
California recognizes a human right to safe, affordable drinking water. However, small and disadvantaged communities can find it especially challenging to fund the water systems necessary to achieve this goal. Small water systems are responsible for the bulk of the state’s drinking water quality violations, and an estimated 300 disadvantaged communities in California are served by systems that fail to meet state drinking water standards.Water system consolidations can create economies of scale that help address persistent water system inadequacies in small and disadvantaged communities. More than 100 consolidation projects have been completed or are ongoing in California, and many more communities are likely to pursue consolidations in the future. While consolidation offers many potential benefits for communities served by unreliable water systems, the costs and benefits associated with different consolidation options have not been well documented. During the current legislative session, legislators have introduced several legislative proposals to address perceived needs related to consolidation.This project begins to take stock of past and current consolidation efforts—and the lessons they provide—with the goal of helping to accelerate cost-effective solutions for near-term water needs and long-term water system resilience. A daylong workshop held at UC Berkeley in March 2018 aimed to identify key lessons learned and emerging issues from California’s experience to date with small water system consolidations. This document synthesizes that facilitated dialogue, exploring the factors that drive and influence consolidations. It enumerates barriers to effective consolidations and identifies potential solutions for overcoming those barriers, highlighting which entities may be best situated to implement them.In addition to laying the foundation for further constructive and inclusive dialogue, this work aims to inform the development of legislative and administrative policy proposals and a future research agenda
California Groundwater Management, Science-Policy Interfaces, and the Legacies of Artificial Legal Distinctions
California water law has traditionally treated groundwater and surface water as separate resources. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) broke with this tradition by requiring groundwater managers to avoid significant and unreasonable adverse impacts to beneficial uses of surface water. This paper considers the trajectory of this partial integration of science, law, and resource management policy. Drawing on legal analysis and participatory workshops with subject area experts, we describe the challenges of reconciling the separate legal systems that grew out of an artificial legal distinction between different aspects of the same resource.
Our analysis offers two main contributions. First, it demonstrates that laws that subdivide an interconnected resource can have legacy effects that linger long after lawmakers begin dismantling the artificial divides. Using SGMA as a case study, the article illustrates the complexities of reconciling law with science, showing that reconciliation is a process that does not end with updating statutes, or with any other single intervention. Second, we introduce a framework for evaluating the elements of an effort to reconcile law with scientific understanding, whether that reform effort involves groundwater or some other resource. Applying that framework helps reveal where lingering legacy effects still need to be addressed. More generally, it reveals the need for literature addressing science-policy interactions to devote more attention to the multifaceted nature of law and policy reform. Much of that literature describes policy-making in broad and undifferentiated terms, often referring simply to the science-policy interface. But as the SGMA case study illustrates, the complex and multi-layered nature of policy-making means that a successful reform effort may need to address many science-policy interfaces
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Five Guiding Principles for Effective Voluntary Agreements: A Case Study on VAs for Water and Habitat in California’s Bay-Delta Watershed
California has increasingly emphasized efforts to develop voluntary agreements (VAs) with water users as a means of achieving regulatory goals in certain watersheds. In theory, a VA can combine the protectiveness of a regulatory backstop with the creativity and flexibility of a negotiated deal to produce outcomes as good as, or better than, those achievable through strict application of regulatory requirements alone. However, reality has not always measured up to this ideal. This policy paper uses the Bay-Delta watershed as a case study to inform five principles to guide the appropriate use and evaluation of VAs
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Addressing Institutional Vulnerabilities in California’s Drought Water Allocation, Part 1: Water Rights Administration and Oversight During Major Statewide Droughts, 1976–2016
California droughts are likely to become more frequent, longer, and more intense in the future, posing increasing challenges for water management, and raising the stakes for effective drought response. This project aims to help state water governance and decision-making structures adapt to this changing climatic reality.The State Water Resources Control Board (Board) has significant responsibilities for California water rights administration and oversight, and the decisions it makes affect how scarce water resources are allocated among different human and environmental uses during droughts. We analyzed the strategies the Board used for water rights administration and oversight during the last four major statewide droughts, in water years 1976–1977, 1987–1992, 2007–2009, and 2012– 2016. The Board employed an array of different drought response strategies that varied in depth and breadth from drought to drought. We discuss thirteen types of strategies organized into four broad categories: (1) addressing urgent water right requests, (2) providing oversight of existing diversions, (3) providing oversight of water use by end users, and (4) cross-cutting strategies that support or complement strategies in the first three groups. The Board engaged in the greatest breadth and depth of strategies during the recent drought.Despite some significant and creative in-drought efforts by the Board and others, which led to positive developments during and immediately following each drought, relatively little proactive preparation for drought-specific water rights administration and oversight appears to have occurred between droughts. Instead, our research suggests the Board developed its drought responses on a largely ad hoc basis in the midst of each drought emergency, with varying degrees of success. We conclude that more proactive planning and preparation would improve the Board’s future drought responses, making them more transparent, predictable, timely, and effective. A companion report in this volume builds on this analysis with specific recommendation
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Managing Water Scarcity: A Framework for Fair and Effective Water Right Curtailment in California
Droughts are becoming more frequent and intense in California. Many California watersheds experience seasonal water scarcity nearly every year. To protect water rights, human health and safety, and the environment from serious harm, California’s State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) needs to be able to routinely curtail unlawful water uses. But it has struggled to carry out this basic function, running into resource constraints and technical, legal, and political barriers. This report describes the legal context for and history of curtailments in California. It also recommends actions the SWRCB and State Legislature can take to build a framework for fair and effective curtailment in California