Water & Conservation

Global water stress could be alleviated by the year 2050 if countries work to implement six key strategies ranging from building more reservoirs to controlling population growth, according to research from Canada and the Netherlands.

Water stress is defined as occurring when more than 40 percent of the water from a region’s rivers is unavailable because it is already being used — a situation that currently affects roughly one-third of the global population.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the scientists propose six steps they believe can help reduce water stress: planting crops that use water and nutrients more efficiently; using more efficient irrigation methods; improving the efficiency of water use in homes, industry, and municipalities; limiting the rate of population growth so global population stays below 8.5 billion by 2050; increasing reservoir water storage capacity; and intensifying water desalination operations by 50-fold.

California’s agriculture industry is relying too heavily on groundwater to irrigate drought-stricken farmlands — a trend that will not be sustainable long-term, according to a study by the University of California, Davis.

The drought, which is the third most severe on record, is responsible for the greatest water loss ever seen in California agriculture, with river water for Central Valley farms reduced by roughly one-third, the study found. Groundwater pumping will likely replace most river water losses, and some areas have more than doubled their pumping rate over the previous year.

If the drought continues for two more years, the report says, groundwater reserves will continue to be depleted to replace surface water losses and pumping ability will slowly decrease, which could affect crop production.

So far in the current drought, 428,000 acres of cropland — roughly 5 percent — has been made fallow across the Central Valley, Central Coast, and Southern California. The state produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables and nearly a quarter of the nation’s milk and cream.

WaterFX can turn virtually any water source into clean, drinkable water. And all they need is a sunny day.

This is great news for drought-stricken states like California and Texas, where water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. In Central California, for example, the drought has essentially cut off thousands of farmers this year; they have no water, and their land now lays fallow.

Part of what’s draining this precious resource is our energy use. Taking into account the acquisition, treatment, and movement required to ensure water comes out the faucet when we turn it on, it is no surprise that water is among the country’s greatest users of electricity.

Energy and water go hand-in-hand, yet we don’t fully understand our holistic energy-water footprint. If we start thinking about clean energy and water together, we can quickly advance a sustainable future for both of these vital resources, uncover joint cost-savings, and provide people dependability during the driest, most drought-stricken of times.

A company called WaterFX is addressing both our energy and water woes through its unique water treatment system that can generate fresh water from virtually any water source. It runs essentially fossil fuel-free and can be installed just about anywhere. Best of all, its founder wants everyone to copy his innovation, free of charge.

“Our approach is worth copying,” said WaterFX founder and chairman, Aaron Mandell. “The technology that our company is built upon is one that can be replicated anywhere, by anyone, and that could be a game changer for arid regions around the world. It is a vaccine for water scarcity.”

The company calls its Aqua4 system an “engineered aquifer.” It uses concentrated solar still (CSS) technology to evaporate and distill water from any treatable source – from seawater to agricultural discharge – by removing salt and other impurities as an on-site fresh water solution. The system can also store and recycle the excess heat energy it generates, enabling the CSS to run 24/7. Only during prolonged cloudy stretches would the system need to rely on other fuel sources.

“We can provide a turnkey water solution for cities, agricultural districts, and other large-scale water customers that offers long-term cost predictability without requiring them to bear all the upfront costs of new technology,” Mandell said. “They’ll buy our water just like they would from any other provider. It’s the Solar City model for water – why own the solar equipment when you can just get lower cost water.” The comparison to Solar City is quite intriguing when you consider that net metering of solar energy now enables electric meters to run in reverse, putting excess power back on the grid. The same principles can apply to water.

Mandell says one Aqua4 module can generate 65,000 gallons of freshwater a day from wastewater, drainage water, runoff, saline groundwater, industrial process water, or seawater. Because the system is modular, it is easily scalable. Double the modules on-site and you double the freshwater output.

Aqua4 is being put to the test in Central California’s agricultural region, where a scaled-down module is turning 14,000 gallons of agricultural discharge into fresh drinking water each day. That water can then be returned to rivers or recycled back into the agricultural or municipal water supply.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the company is its open source approach. It sees its growth in the service industry as a water provider, owning and running the systems on-site and simply selling the reclaimed water to the buyer. So it’s not patenting its innovations.

Mandell sees a significant advantage to the open source approach. “Technology is an important part of what we’re doing, but not the only part,” he said. “There are countless smart people around the world that will make this technology even better. And when they do, our service will become stronger and everyone will benefit.”

Article by Jim Marston, Associate Vice President US Climate and Energy at EDF, appearing courtesy EDF Blog.

Ocean acidification. It’s one of the least publicized ocean threats. Yet even a slight increase in ocean acidity is detrimental to our seafood supply, local and national economies, marine life and ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs. For this reason, ocean acidification – and ways to combat it – will be a “hot” topic on World Oceans Day, June 8th.

The good news is that progress is being made to fight ocean acidification and understand its impacts. Globally, tens of thousands of people are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2) at the international, national and local levels.

Here at The Ocean Foundation we are working with key state decision-makers in eight coastal states to develop, share and introduce legislation designed to address ocean acidification. We have also created a blue carbon calculator that allows you to offset your carbon footprint through the restoration and protection of seagrass meadows, which account for 11% of the organic carbon stored in the ocean.

Recently, the Obama administration announced one of the most significant actions ever taken to curb carbon emissions and combat the disastrous effects of climate change by proposing new rules to cut emissions at power plants. Human actions are the primary cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, with the ocean absorbing almost half of the amount released and becoming more acidic.

And, on June 16 and 17, Secretary of State John Kerry will host an international conference, entitled “Our Ocean,” that will focus on ocean acidification as well as sustainable fisheries and marine debris. With representatives from more than 80 countries attending, the meeting will highlight the importance of marine issues in formulating foreign policy.

One call to action stemming from this conference is the establishment of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network. In support of this Network, The Ocean Foundation has been selected by the Department of State, NOAA and other stakeholders to host an affinity group called the Friends of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network to mobilize high-level national and international donor commitments that would contribute to the implementation of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network.

The Ocean Foundation will then work with the Network’s Executive Council to set priorities for investing the funds to address needs and gaps in the global ocean acidification observing system. Contributions to this fund will allow more buoys, floats and gliders to be deployed, to provide more training and capacity building, and, of course, for improved data and knowledge sharing. Spending could also be used to facilitate new partnerships with industry, e.g., by promoting a ships-of-opportunity program.

We have yet to fully grasp the ramifications of increased acidification on our marine ecosystems. It is important that we continue to take these steps to understand it and mitigate its effects.

Photo by USFWS Headquarters