WaterWired

Paper From Water - MDPI: 'Decoupling Urban Water Use and Growth in Response to Water Scarcity'

Just received notification of this fascinating paper from MDPI's Water: 'Decoupling Urban Water Use and Growth in Response to Water Scarcity' by Brian Richter, Kendall Benoit, Jesse Dugan, Gabriella Getacho, Natalie LaRoe, Bailey Moro, Tyler Rynne, Maria Tahamtani, and Allen Townsend. Water 2020, 12(10), 2868; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12102868

Brian Richter is the former freshwater guru for The Nature Conservancy. I use his book Chasing Water in several of my classes.

Here is a PDF: Download Water-12-02868

To read the paper online, click here. For a news story of the paper click here.

I've pasted the Abstract and Introduction below.

Abstract
Many cities in the western US face difficult challenges in trying to secure water supplies for rapidly growing urban populations in the context of intensifying water scarcity. We obtained annual data from urban water utilities across the western US to document trends in their water usage and service populations. We found that many cities have been able to accommodate population increases while simultaneously reducing their volume of water use, thereby decoupling growth from water use. This outcome is largely attributable to reductions in per-capita residential use. We identify additional untapped potential that can sustain and widen this decoupling for many cities.

1. Introduction
Access to additional water supplies has been a prerequisite for population and economic growth throughout human history. When early Roman towns outgrew their local water supplies, they engineered aqueducts to bring water from distant springs. Two thousand years later, the City of Los Angeles, California, built a 674-km aqueduct from the Sierra Nevada Mountains that unleashed a ten-fold population increase in the first half of the 20th Century. Other engineering advancements throughout the past century enabled the construction of massive storage reservoirs and wells tapping groundwater hundreds of meters deep, facilitating the growth of modern mega-cities, industries, and extensive irrigated farming regions.

 

It is therefore unsurprising that many urban planners and political leaders continue to assume that growing populations and economies will require ever-more water. Abraham and others [1] found that future demand projections by the ten largest water utilities in the State of California overestimated future demands 98% of the time, with projections that proved to be 23–26% too high even when the forecast length was only five years. The authors attributed these over-projections primarily to underestimation of the rate by which cities were reducing their per-capita usage.

 

Similarly, when the US Bureau of Reclamation in 2012 projected multi-decadal future water demands from the Colorado River of the western US, it assumed that the population-following trend of increasing water use over the past 90 years would largely continue throughout the next 50 years (Figure 1) [2]. Based on a suite of planning scenarios ranging from slow (+23%) to rapid (+93%) population growth, the Bureau projected increased water demands of 27%–49% by 2060. These projected increases in demands were based almost entirely on expected increases in municipal and industrial water needs due to population growth [2].

 

Figure 1. Historical traces of available water and actual use shown here refer to the natural supply of surface water from the Colorado River and the consumptive use of that water over time. The Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study conducted by the US Bureau of Reclamation in 2012 included water demand forecasts through 2060, based upon scenarios ranging from slow to rapid population growth [2]. It is now evident that this demand forecasting did not adequately account for recent downward trends in water consumption (historical estimates of available water and total consumptive use from US Bureau of Reclamation [3]).

However, the Bureau’s projected water demands for 2015—based primarily on forecasts from each of the seven states sharing Colorado River water—proved to be ~20% too high, even though the forecast was published only three years earlier (Figure 1). Water consumption in the basin has not increased as projected, but has instead dropped by 16% from 2000−2015 (Figure 1) [3]. The Bureau’s water planners and their state-agency peers participating in the 2012 study inadequately recognized the strength of downward trends in per-capita municipal water use during recent decades. As reported later in this paper, the nine cities we surveyed that source water supplies from the Colorado River basin lowered their per-capita use by 19–48% during 2000–2015.

 

As discussed in greater detail below, we conducted a survey of water utility managers in 20 western US cities. In our discussions with water utility staff about their motivations for implementing water conservation strategies, water scarcity and the difficulty or expense of securing additional water supplies for their growing populations were universally expressed as leading motivations. As an example, Figure 1 illustrates the fact that during recent decades, consumptive water use in the Colorado River basin has exceeded total river flow in most years since the early 1990s, enabled by progressively depleting large storage reservoirs in the basin [3].

 

In recent years, various agencies have suggested that as water scarcity expands and intensifies globally, a decoupling of water use from growth will be essential in sustaining economic growth and well-being [4]. In 2016, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that “half the world faces severe water stress by 2030 unless water use is ‘decoupled’ from economic growth” [4]. At the global level, economic decoupling appears to be well underway, as the global economy grew at a rate five times that of global water consumption during the past century [4].

A similar trend of decoupling has been observed in the US. After reaching a zenith in 1980, total US water use had dropped by 27% by 2015, even while the country’s population grew by 42% and GDP expanded more than six-fold [5,6]. During 2000–2015, the period of focus in this paper, substantial reductions in water use were observed in each major water-use category: Irrigation (−55%), Public Water Supply (−45%), Industrial (−40%), and Thermoelectric Power (−30%).

 

However, as UNEP asserts [4], the need and potential for decoupling is most appropriately assessed at local or regional scales; such local assessment can reveal the benefit of decoupling strategies on stressed water sources. This is exemplified by research into water decoupling efforts in China. Of 31 provinces in China, over 60% displayed strong decoupling between water consumption and economic growth after 2011, the year that China began to place a deliberate urgency on environmental protection efforts [7]. The Yellow River—the country’s second largest river basin—has been identified as a water-risk hotspot by the World Resources Institute [8]. Within this basin, the Beijing–Tianjen–Heibei region exhibited strong decoupling between water consumption and economic growth from 2004–2017, which was attributed to improved water-use efficiencies and conservation awareness on an individual scale, as researchers documented a substantial decline in the annual per-capita water footprint over this period [9]. Similarly, in a comparative urban review of China’s three largest megacities for the period 2005–2015, Guangzhou was found to display the strongest decoupling between economic growth and water usage, followed by Shanghai and Beijing.

 

In this study, we sought to better understand the policy drivers and incentives that have enabled decoupling between urban growth (measured by both population size and by gross domestic product or GDP) and water demands, through an examination of recent trends in western US cities.

 

Cutting to the chase....

6. Looking Forward

Great progress has been made in reducing urban water use in recent decades. The cities surveyed in our analysis document the fact that substantial increases in service populations can be accommodated without increasing total water use. Key to this decoupling has been their ability to push down per-capita water use at a rate greater than the demands associated with adding newcomers into their service populations.

 

There appears to be much room for continued improvement within cities that have not yet attained the high levels of performance we document here, as well as within cities that are already engaged in water conservation. DeOreo and others [18] project that residential indoor use in the US will drop by another 37% in coming years due to the fact that less than half of American homes have installed highly efficient toilets or clothes washers, two of the greatest uses of water indoors. By comparison, 86% of Australian homes now have high-efficiency toilets [39]. Leak reduction has the potential to save an additional 14% of water use in homes, on average [18]. This suggests that total indoor water use in American homes could potentially drop by at least another 50% in coming years.

 

DeOreo and others [18] also suggest that outdoor water use could be further reduced by 16% by eliminating excessive watering practices. We add that capturing rainwater for use outdoors holds great promise for alleviating pressure on freshwater supplies. Cahill and Lund [39] documented that more than 40% of Australian households are using rainwater storage tanks, whereas they are used by only a tiny fraction of American homeowners and businesses.

 

We also see great potential in the use of alternative water sources—wastewater reuse, large-scale stormwater capture, desalination, and even condensate capture from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems—as an important strategy for reducing freshwater extractions in water-stressed areas [40]. One bellwether is the City of Los Angeles’ commitment to recycle 100% of its wastewater by 2035, at which time recycled water will be providing 35% of the city’s supply as compared to only 2% today [41]. Another important factor will be the increased frequency and volume of voluntary, compensated transfers of water conserved on irrigated farms to meet urban needs, a very cost-effective strategy in regions with large acreage of irrigated farms [42,43,44].

 

We note that the challenge of holding the line on total water use appears more difficult for larger cities or utilities with very high rates of population increase, simply because per-capita use must drop by a greater extent to keep total volume constant. All but one of the cities in our survey were able to attain total volume reductions during 2000–2015 (the San Antonio Water System experienced an increase of 21% in its total water use over this period). This utility experienced extreme growth (56%) in its service population during this period, which resulted from both population growth and a merger with another water provider, and it had already substantially reduced its per-capita water use prior to 2000.

 

For cities across the US, water conservation and the use of alternative water sources will both continue to offer tremendous potential for accommodating population growth without placing further pressure on stressed freshwater supplies in the coming decades [42]. More than half of all US counties were already able to do this during 2000–2015 [10]. The challenge for urban water managers will be to fully harvest the potential for water savings that can help constrain their needs within the limits of available water supplies.

Enjoy!

 

"Despotism corrupts the person who submits to it far more than the person who imposes it." - Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted in the @washingtonpost via @TheWeek

CRS Report: 'Land and Water Conservation Fund: Processes and Criteria for Allocating Funds'

Carol Hardy Vincent, Anne A. Riddle, R. Eliot Crafton and Laura A. Hanson crafted this CRS report (6 October 2020) about a little-known program: 'Land and Water Conservation Fund: Processes and Criteria for Allocating Funds'.

Download CRS_Report_Land_Water_Conservation_Fund_6October2020 

Introduction
The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Act of 1965 was enacted to help preserve, develop, and ensure access to outdoor recreation to foster the health of U.S. citizens. The law created the LWCF in the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a funding source to implement its outdoor recreation goals. The fund accrues revenues from multiple sources. Monies in the fund are mandatory spending, allocated among a variety of purposes.

This report first identifies the LWCF’s revenue sources and discusses the mandatory nature of the appropriations from the fund. It next identifies the purposes for which the LWCF can be used. It focuses on the two primary purposes that are set out in the LWCF Act—(1) land acquisition by federal agencies and (2) outdoor recreation grants to states. It also focuses on two other programs that have received appropriations from the LWCF for about two decades—(1) the Forest Legacy Program (FLP) and (2) financial assistance under Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The latter program is sometimes referred to as Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund (CESCF) grants.

This report then sets out the method for allocating LWCF appropriations among the fund’s main purposes. For each of these purposes, the report describes the processes and criteria for prioritizing and using appropriations from the LWCF. The processes and criteria differ based on statutes; distribution formulas; and programmatic, agency, and state priorities; among other factors. The report concludes with a discussion of why LWCF funding has varied widely among states since the LWCF’s origin.

In recent years, the allocation of LWCF funds among agencies, programs, and states has been a topic of congressional interest. Congress has several roles related to the allocation of LWCF funds. These roles include determining the total amount and type of appropriations for LWCF programs through enactment and amendment of statute. For instance, under the LWCF Act, Congress set the appropriations at $900 million annually. Previously, the monies had been discretionary, as discussed in the next section. More recently, through enactment of the Great American Outdoors Act (P.L. 116-152), Congress amended the LWCF Act to permanently appropriate the $900 million (i.e., mandatory appropriations). Congress also has established methods of allocating LWCF funds, as per the allocation method set out in P.L. 116-152. (See herein “Amendments in the Great American Outdoors Act” under “Allocation of LWCF Funds Among Purposes.”) Further, through statute, Congress has established programs and activities which receive LWCF funding. Congress may add, alter, or abolish such programs or change their eligibility for LWCF monies. The outdoor recreation grants to states program, for instance, is established in statute and has been amended over time. Further, Congress oversees agency management of programs that receive LWCF funding and agency expenditures of LWCF appropriations.

Enjoy!

"Cowing people is not the sane as converting them." - columnist Michael Goldberg

CRS Report: 'Agricultural Research - Background and Issues'

Ag research and water - what a combination! Genevieve K. Croft wrote the CRS report (24 September 2020): 'Agricultural Research - Background and Issues'

Click on the graphics to enlarge them. The graphics don't appear in the same location as they do in the report.

Download CRS_Report_Ag_Research_Background_Issues_24Sept2020

Overview
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Research, Education, and Economics(REE) mission area funds billions of dollars annually for biological, physical, and social science research that is related to agriculture, food, and natural resources. Four agencies carry out REE responsibilities: the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), and the Economic Research Service (ERS). The Under Secretary for REE, who oversees the REE agencies, holds the title of USDA Chief Scientist and is responsible for coordinating research, education, and extension activities across the entire department. The Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS)—a staff office within the Office of the Under Secretary for REE—supports this coordination role. Discretionary funding for the REE mission area totaled approximately $3.4 billion in FY2020, and mandatory funding from the 2018 farm bill adds another $177 million per year on average.

USDA administers federal funding to states and local partners through its extramural research agency: NIFA. NIFA administers this extramural funding through capacity grants (allocated to the states based on formulas in statute) and competitive grants (awarded based on a peer-review process). USDAalso conducts its own research at its intramural research agencies: ARS, NASS, and ERS.

Debates over the direction of public agricultural research and the nature of how it is funded continue. Ongoing issues include whether federal funding is sufficient to support agricultural research, education, and extension activities; the different roles of extramural versus intramural research; and the implications of allocating extramural funds via capacity grants versus competitive grants.

Many groups believe that Congress should increase support of U.S. agriculture through expanded federal support of research, education, and extension programs, whereas others believe that the private sector, not taxpayer dollars, should be used to support these activities.

Cutting to the chase:

Funding Agricultural Research: Looking Ahead
In a constrained budget environment, agriculture competes for federal funding against other federal priorities. Within the funding allocated for agriculture, agricultural research competes for funding against other agricultural programs, such as conservation, farm income and risk management programs, food safety inspection, rural development, and domestic and foreign food aid programs. Historically, Congress has not solely prioritized funding for agricultural research, education, and extension activities but has also prioritized funding for programs designed to provide more immediate benefits to farmers, such as income support and crop insurance.

Stakeholders have varying perspectives on the needs for federal investments in agricultural research. Some want more public spending on agricultural research to maintain U.S. competitiveness and to increase agricultural productivity and innovation in the face of growing food demand and increasing agricultural challenges (e.g., pests, natural disasters). Some argue that the stagnant growth in inflation-adjusted USDA funding for agricultural research, education, and extension over the past few decades has hindered the ability of the U.S. agricultural sector to stay productive and competitive.

New innovations and technologies related to production, processing, marketing, and natural resource management are widely acknowledged as essential for continued productivity gains and economic growth of the sector. Some argue that agriculture has not achieved the same priority level with policymakers as other sectors, such as health, and that U.S. agriculture will suffer over the long term because of a lack of new innovations. These critics argue that the lack of public investment in new agricultural innovations will have dire consequences in the future, especially given new and varied challenges, such as rising production costs; new pest and disease outbreaks; increasing frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods; and climate change. In a step toward increasing innovation for agricultural research, the 2018 farm bill authorized a new Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AGARDA) pilot program (P.L. 115-334, §7132) at USDA to carry out innovative research and to develop and deploy advanced solutions to agricultural threats. As of September 2020, this pilot program has not received appropriations.

In contrast to those calling for increased funding, some stakeholders argue that the federal government should have a limited role in funding agricultural research and that taxpayer dollars should not be used to support what they believe should be a private sector endeavor. Others believe that the states and the private sector should fill the research funding gap left by the federal government.

At the same time, while private sector funding has increased over time, some have expressed concerns that private sector funding focuses primarily on bringing existing technologies to market (i.e., more applied research) and does not focus on basic research to address challenges that the agricultural sector may face in the future, such as environmental sustainability or adaptation to climate change.

Finally, some advocates have argued that some of USDA’s research portfolio duplicates private sector activities on major crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. They argue that funding should be reallocated to basic, noncommercial research to benefit the public good that is not addressed through private efforts. Others point out that the major crops are economically important to the food, feed, and energy sectors and should continue to receive significant amounts of public funding, especially for emerging threats such as new pests and pathogens, limited water availability, and impacts of agriculture on human and environmental health.

Enjoy!

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." - W.B. Yeats

Publication: 'Locking Carbon in Wetlands - Enhancing Climate Action by Including Wetlands in NDCs'

Report from the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) and Wetlands International: Locking Carbon in Wetlands: Enhancing Climate Action by Including Wetlands in NDCs. It is authored by Nureen F. Anisha, Alex Mauroner, Gina Lovett, Arthur Neher, Marcel Servos, Tatiana Minayeva, Hans Schutten and Lucilla Minelli. Nureen Anisha, the lead author, is an Environmental Sciences PhD student here at Oregon State University.

Download Locking-Carbon-in-Wetlands_report-1-1

Download Locking_Carbon_in_Wetlands_Policy_Brief   

Click on the graphics to enlarage them.

From the website:

Capitalizing on wetlands’ potential to help us meet mitigation targets and strengthen NDCs

The way we collectively use, manage, and govern wetlands has a significant impact on national carbon budgets, the well-being and health of ecosystems, and the ability to communities to adapt to climate change. Locking Carbon in Wetlands: Enhancing Climate Action by Including Wetlands in NDCs is a report directed towards the policymakers and national climate planners with the aim to provide clear and concrete examples of how wetland conservation, restoration, and wise use can be integrated into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and used as an instrument to enhance climate ambition.

The ecosystem services provided by natural wetlands make up for 43.5% of the monetary value of all natural biomes. Yet despite their large potential to function as carbon sinks, wetlands are facing the most rapid decline of all ecosystems. This report advocates for nature-based solutions, such as wetland protection and restoration, as a means through which Parties can meet both climate mitigation and adaptation goals, while simultaneously providing significant disaster risk reduction (DRR), ecological, and societal co-benefits

AGWA, together with Wetlands International, has published the report with three goals in mind: 1) to illustrate the scientific rationale behind the use of wetlands as a climate mitigation tool; 2) to demonstrate the prevalence and function of wetlands across landscapes and geographies; and 3) to provide a set of clear policy recommendations that will enable Parties to the UNFCCC to conserve, restore and wisely use wetlands by incorporating them into their climate mitigation plans. The report and associated policy recommendations are designed to support countries in developing revised and enhanced NDCs that benefit economies, ecosystems, communities and biodiversity through climate-smart wetland management.

The report was made possible with support from the Sector Programme for Sustainable Water Policy of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Enjoy!

"Never offend an enemy in a small way." - Gore Vidal

CRS InFocus Report: 'A Brief Overview of FEMA’s Individual Assistance Program' Updated: 26 August 2020

Elizabeth M. Webster crafted this timely CRS InFocus two-pager on: 'A Brief Overview of FEMA’s Individual Assistance Program' (Updated: 26 August 2020).

Download CRS_InFocus_Report_FEMA_IA Pgm_26August2020

Hard to think of a more important domestic agency at this time of year - the North Atlantic Hurricane Season.

Click on the graphics to enlarge them.

Here we go:

Introduction
This In Focus provides an overview of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) Individual Assistance (IA) program, including brief descriptions of some types of IA and the factors considered when determining whether to authorize IA pursuant to a declaration under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act; 42 U.S.C. §§5121 et seq.).

IA Programs
Federal assistance is intended to supplement—not supplant—the local, state, territorial, or Indian tribal government’s response and recovery efforts. For this reason, state, territorial, and Indian tribal governments do not automatically receive a presidential declaration of emergency or major disaster, nor do they automatically receive IA. Instead, generally, the governor or chief executive must request that the President declare an emergency or major disaster and that IA be authorized.

When authorized, the forms of IA that may be available to affected individuals and households include

•   Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program (CCP) provides grant funding to local, state, territorial, and Indian tribal governments, and nongovernmental organizations following a major disaster, to assist individuals and communities through community-based outreach and the provision of psycho-educational services.

•   Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) may assist individuals ineligible for regular unemployment insurance who were previously employed or self- employed and rendered jobless, or whose employment was interrupted as a direct result of a major disaster.

•   Disaster Legal Services (DLS) may be provided for free to help low-income individuals secure benefits or make claims arising from a major disaster.

•   Disaster Case Management (DCM) partners case managers with disaster survivors to develop and implement disaster recovery plans that address their unmet needs following a major disaster.

•   Individuals and Households Program (IHP) provides financial and/or direct assistance, in the forms of Housing Assistance and Other Needs Assistance (ONA), to eligible individuals and households who have uninsured or under-insured necessary expenses and serious needs resulting from an emergency or major disaster, which cannot be met through other means or forms of assistance.

Figure 1 depicts the general timing of IA program delivery (see report for extensive notes):

Cutting to the chase...

FEMA also considers other relevant information submitted by the governor or chief executive. Figure 2 depicts the declaration request process.

Stay safe!

Enjoy!

"You do have a plan for when Zoom goes down, correct?" - @ass_deans