I am excited to release a new white paper regarding the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, entitled Dark Clouds Over California. Please download the white paper and share with your colleagues. For your convenience, the executive summary is published below. Additionally, the Act is spread across three legislative bills, some of which modify each other, making them difficult to read. A compiled version of the Act is available here. Other provisions of the three bills that are not contained within the main body of the Act may be found here.
McKinsey Global Institute Report on Global Municipal Water Demands
The McKinsey Global Institute has published a new report entitled Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class (2012) on increasing global urbanization and meeting the increased demands associated with urban consumption, including municipal water demands. The speed and scale of urbanization today is unprecedented in global history and, significantly, is distributed unevenly, with the majority of urban growth occurring in emerging regions.
Drought to Persist in Southern US
On February 10, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published new maps showing drought conditions across the southeastern US. States that are experiencing particular drought include Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia and Florida. In all of these states except Arkansas, drought is expected to persist or worsen over the spring of 2011 and possibly beyond.
Combined with the drought and possible effects of climate change are demographic and regulatory challenges facing water supplies, including population growth in the Texaplex cities (Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio) and litigation in federal court that is limiting access by metropolitan Atlanta to Lake Lanier.
These challenges collectively mean that the southeastern states, which only recently emerged from a multi-year drought, will need to continue developing their physical, institutional and legal infrastructure for water supplies. There is likely to be appropriate emphasis on water use efficiency, recycling, desalination, conjunctive use and interbasin transfers. Texas, Georgia and Florida are likely to be the most active. Texas has the clearest path, while both Georgia and Florida are tied up in interstate stream litigation with Alabama. Water resource managers and strategic advisors certainly are living in interesting times.
National Water Policy in Australia
In my last post I promised a report on water in Australia, and now that I have returned from the trip (OK, a couple weeks ago, but I had work to do!), this is the first of hopefully several posts. It was a great tour; I met many wonderful people and learned much.
Australia Water Study Tour
For the next two weeks, I will be traveling around Australia with a US delegation as guests of the Government here, meeting with water managers and touring facilities related to water reuse, desalination and irrigation. Australia is actively promoting its water management experience, with a group of companies coming together to form Water Australia with the stated goal of exporting at least $5 billion of water-related goods and services by 2015. It is certainly true that Australia has experienced significant droughts over the past decade, and they have responded aggressively to the situation (e.g., as reported yesterday in the New York Times), although certainly not without pain and controversy. I am interested to see some of their solutions on the ground, especially in comparison to California, which over the three years of the 2007-2009 drought did almost nothing.
