By the end of 2017, toilet water and other wastewater will be used to irrigate a large swath of Central Valley farmland near Interstate 5, an area that is known as California’s agricultural hub because it produces more than 360 products.
“As long as we keep taking showers and flushing toilets, we can guarantee you water,” Modesto Mayor Garrad Marsh said to farmers at an August 2015 news event.
Treatment facilities in the two inland cities, Modesto and Turlock, will collect the water from sinks, showers, washing machines and toilets, and process it into what’s commonly referred to as “gray water.” Once the not-quite-drinkable H2O is clear of all solid waste, it’s completely safe to be used to water plants or siphoned off to natural wetlands.
By 2018, a $100 million pipeline is expected to transport the processed water to 30,600 acres of farmland roughly 40 miles south.
Two years ago, drought cost California’s state economy an estimated $2.7 billion, according to a study done by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. Water shortages resulted in $247 million in lost crop revenue in 2016.
The gray water should help drought-stricken farmers in the future, as new population growth in this region of California puts increasing pressure on the water supply and scientists predict that climate change could cause future droughts to be more drastic.
“Without something like this, the future for my son and grandson and family — we’re into this third generation — I don’t know if we can keep our business going,” Jim Jasper, owner of Stewart & Jasper Orchards, tells KQED.
California has been recycling water for more than 100 years. Los Angeles County first used treated wastewater in 1929 to water golf courses and parks, and the state has been irrigating farmland with it for more than three decades, according to the Pacific Institute. A 2009 survey (the most recent available) reported that 669,000 acres of California land was irrigated using gray water.
MORE: The Counterintuitive Solution to California’s Drought Crisis
Homepage photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
Tag: drought
The Counterintuitive Solution to California’s Drought Crisis
As drought lowered reservoirs and scorched front lawns, California residents looked longingly to the great body of water at the continent’s edge: the Pacific Ocean, tantalizingly close but undrinkable. At least, until recently.
This December, Poseidon Water, a Boston-based infrastructure developer, opened the world’s largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., a coastal city just north of San Diego. Seventeen years in the making, the new facility removes the salt and purifies 50 million gallons of ocean water every day. At the moment, the technology is expensive — nearly double the price of importing water from outside the county — but Poseidon’s executives believe that extreme weather events and population booms in the future will make water scarcer and, by extension, drive up the price.
“Seawater desalination is the only water supply in the county that’s drought-proof,” says Jessica Jones, spokesperson for Poseidon. “It’s not dependent on snowpack or rainfall.”
A water source like it has been a dream of humankind’s since ancient times, when marooned sailors first tried to remove the salt from seawater by catching the steam rising from boiling pots. In the 1960s, scientists hit upon a way to extract pure water molecules from a tainted source. Using reverse osmosis, the briny water (already treated to remove algae and silt) flows through pipes equipped with a porous membrane, its holes barely one-millionth the diameter of a human hair, Jones explains. At extremely high pressures, the water molecules pass through these microscopic holes, but salt ones are too large to fit. Jones compares the process to trying to fit a baseball into a tennis ball can.
The process works so effectively that Poseidon is in the final stages of obtaining permits to open a similar plant in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. Environmentalists have voiced concerns about damage to sea life sucked in by the facility, but to offset any loss of marine life, Poseidon is restoring wetlands south of San Diego to be a bird and fish habitat.
Could Poseidon’s executives be correct in their belief that technology like this will be the only way to prepare for a harsher, dryer world that’s rapidly approaching?
MORE: This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown
5 Ways Californians Have Changed Their Behavior Because of Drought
With California experiencing its third year of a devastating drought, the state has come up with several ways to conserve this precious resource, from mild (conservation programs, rebates for high-efficiency appliances) to drastic (mandatory rationing in some areas). Encouragingly, individual residents are also taking part in this statewide effort.
The Golden State is now seeing improvement in water conservation: urban residents as a whole have lessened water usage by about 10 percent last month (short, however, of Gov. Jerry Brown’s request of 20 percent savings in January). In August, Californians used 27 billion fewer gallons of water compared to the same time last year — an amount that would fill 41,000 Olympic swimming pools, the San Jose Mercury News notes.
Here are some of the ways that residents are conserving H2O:
1. Waving bye-bye to lawns
With its constant watering, weeding and fertilizing, lawns are no-good for the parched state (citizens can be fined up to $500 for using the scarce resource to shower grass or wash driveways). That’s why Los Angeles residents like Rosemary Plano ripped up her yard for a “low-maintenance desertscape of succulents, heather, and gravel” that’s maintained by drip irrigation, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Many Californian cities, Los Angeles included, pay residents money for tearing up their blades with “Cash for Grass” programs.
2. Not washing cars
California State University, Los Angeles student Heidi Cuett started a small movement in her classroom school after showing up with a dirt-encrusted Prius with a bumper sticker reading “Go Dirty for the Drought,” the Christian Science Monitor reports, inspiring 20 to 30 percent of her classmates to take part in the 60-day #DirtyCarPledge. The campaign, started by LA Waterkeeper, says that if 10,000 Southern Californians who normally wash their cars every two weeks took the two-month pledge to forgo car washes, they’d save about 3 million gallons of water.
3. From tub to landscape
With record-low rainfall, residents are using greywater to support flushing and watering plants. Brooktrails resident Stephanie Willcutt waters her indoor plants with the cold bath water she captures before it turns hot, USA TODAY writes. (In fact, the publication reports that the whole Willcutt family has made conservation efforts such as cutting shower time, and wearing pants a few times before washing, etc, dropping from using 220 gallons daily to just 66 to 96 gallons a day).
4. Drought watch
Yes, it might sound a little Big Brother, but residents can now report on their neighbors for incidents of water waste. There are apps that let residents upload and send photos of their neighbor’s overflown lawn, for example. And in San Jose, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has a website that allows users to report water violators.
5. Changing diets
The water we use isn’t always in plain sight — it takes about 1.1 gallons of water to produce a single almond, for example. Meat production is much worse: the average meat-eating American uses up to 1,000 gallons of water per day. U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-San Fernando Valley) wrote in an editorial that he and his staff are now taking part in Meatless Mondays to reduce their water footprint. “While we all must reduce our water usage at home to help the state survive the drought, we can also make small, but important lifestyle changes that will help,” he wrote. “I am talking about making a conscious decision to compare the large amount of water it takes to produce that steak or pork chop you’re eating, with the likely smaller amount of water needed to produce delicious meatless options.”
DON’T MISS: What’s Your Water Footprint? Find Out Here
What’s Your Water Footprint? Find Out Here
Did you know that the average American uses an incredible 1,190 gallons of water per day? We know that number sounds impossibly high — but it’s important to know that the majority of H2O we use isn’t in plain sight.
As the GRACE Communications Foundation writes, there’s hidden water in everyday products. Besides brushing our teeth and washing dishes, most of the water we inadvertently use is in the products we buy (it takes 900 – 1,500 gallons of water to grow the cotton for a single pair of jeans) and the food we eat (one little almond uses 1.1 gallons of water).
The farming and manufacturing process uses up so much water that “every piece of paper and plastic container we toss in the trash is just water down the drain,” the environmental advocacy organization warns. (This means please reduce, reuse and recycle as often as possible!)
So how much water do you use? With the foundation’s Water Footprint Calculator, you can approximate the number of gallons you and your household uses a day. Once you fill out the quick survey, the site even creates a personalized tip sheet on how you can conserve water in your own home, such as:
1. Switching to water-efficient appliances
According to the organization, a low-flow shower head can reduce water flow 1 gallon per minute; a low-flow faucet reduces water flow by 3.5 gallons per minute and a low-flow toilet reduces water use up to 2.5 gallons per flush. For those who don’t mind the ick-factor, “letting it mellow” instead of flushing saves 10 or more gallons per day.
If you don’t have the funds to upgrade your appliances, there are cheaper ways to save water. In drought-ridden California, San Francisco entrepreneurs are suggesting that placing a good ol’ brick in your toilet’s tank can save around a half of gallon of water per flush (a family of four save around 50 gallons a week).
2. Taking a quick shower
You’ve probably heard this green-living nugget already, but shortening your shower time saves a lot of water. Every minute you reduce in the shower cuts your water usage by 2.5 to 10 gallons per minute. Same goes for turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth or wash your face, which could save 4 or more gallons of water per day.
3. Quit slaving away at the sink
We’ve mentioned before that you can save up to 5,000 gallons of water annually by only running your dishwasher when it’s full instead washing dishes by hand. GRACE also suggests purchasing dishwashers that are Energy Star (which are EPA-approved consumer products that not only saves water but electricity as well) and using fewer dishes when you cook and serve meals.
4. Taking public transportation
Consider taking a bus, riding a bike or carpooling. Cars not only emit a ton of harmful carbon, but the manufacturing process uses a lot of water. “It takes 75,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of steel,” according to GRACE. “Since the average car contains about 2,150 pounds of steel, that means over 80,000 gallons of water is needed to produce the finished steel for one car.”
If you can’t get anywhere without a car, switching to a fuel-efficient vehicle such as electrics or hybrids make a big difference. That’s because gas also uses a lot of water: It takes 1 to 2.5 gallons of water to refine 1 gallon of gasoline.
5. Eating less meat
We know that steaks and dairy products are tasty, but the average meat-eating American uses up to 1,000 gallons of water per day “primarily through the water required for the large amounts of feed the animal consumes,” the organization says. By eating fewer animal products, you can cut water use by hundreds of gallons per day.
MORE WAYS TO SAVE WATER: If Your Community is Parched, Here’s How You Can Help Conserve Water
If There’s One Thing You Should Learn About Drought, It’s This
It’s hard not to be disturbed by the relentless, ongoing drought in the Southwest, so when we first saw this video we were a little skeptical.
Despite the alarming photos of emptying reservoirs and real life accounts of water taps slowing to a trickle, Vic Dibitetto‘s explanation on why drought is just part of the natural climate cycle is pretty convincing.
While it’s hard to explain where Dibitetto’s radical position is coming from, this viral video has already garnered more thousands of comments on Reddit, so he must be onto something.
One piece of advice: Stick around to the video’s end when Dibitetto really drives home his point.
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DON’T MISS: Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
It May Sound Like a Potty Humor, But This Campaign to Conserve Water is Serious Business
California’s drought has marked one of the worst on record, with 100 percent of the state affected. But while some parts of the state are completely tapped out, other areas continue to use water with little regard. Which is why a group of San Francisco entrepreneurs got the bright idea to turn an old money-saving trick into one that could help California save 6 billion gallons of water in just three months.
The Drop-A-Brick project began as a joke among the group about the double meaning of “dropping a brick,” but became an actual solution once the group recognized just how much Californians were flushing away.
Placing a brick in your toilet’s tank can save around a half of gallon of water per flush (a family of four save around 50 gallons a week). For a state under such dire conditions as California, it’s a method worth trying.
“We realized that toilets are the number one user of water in the home,” says Greg Hadden, one of the founders of the project. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates about 26.7 percent of municipal water is flushed away at residential households and California, in particular, wastes around 203 million gallons each day.
“All of us felt that while we were in this huge drought, there’s a massive lack of awareness of it. Nobody really seemed to understand how serious the situation is,” Hadden tells Fast Company.
After researching the practice, Hadden said they realized that actual bricks can dissolve, cause clogging and lead to a pricey visit from the plumber. Instead, the group decided to design their own lightweight, environmentally-friendly rubber brick. Their unique version contains a dye tablet to help identify leaks as another means of water conservation and also ships flat in the mail, plus it doesn’t expand until added to water thanks to a hydrogel technology. The brick is also adaptable and can be formed into different shapes based on toilet design.
“While we’d like to get a lot of bricks out there — we think it’s a great icon for a public awareness campaign — really what we’d like to do is just get people thinking about urban water conservation and how to save water at home,” Hadden says.
The Drop-A-Bricks project is crowdfunding via Indiegogo and is also accepting additional donations to send extra bricks to some of the state’s worst areas that are relying on outsourced water. While the campaign is taking a lighthearted approach to raising awareness about the “big bowl movement,” the drop-a-brick project is a real solution to helping Californians conserve their valuable H2O.
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This App is Helping Californians Understand Their Drought Problem
As California continues to grapple with one of the worst droughts on record, government officials are scrambling to provide an accurate picture of just how severe the water problem is.
In fact, just last month, the state’s water board admitted that it doesn’t actually know how much water residents are using, which makes it pretty difficult to implore Californians to cut back. But a new app is working to help complete that picture for the state, enabling residents to track how much water they use daily.
Dropcountr monitors water use in real-time, alerting users when numbers are particularly high and creating reports to show trends over time. The app also allows users to compare how much water they’re using to other neighbors with similar sized-homes, according to Fast Company.
“The first response we get from folks is, ‘Wow, I had no idea that I used that much water,'” said Robb Barnitt, CEO of Dropcountr. “That’s really the first piece we’re trying to deliver — transparency and visibility. It’s really tough to gain much insight from your water bill.”
The app also informs customers about new regulations or rebates from their local utility. For instance, a resident might not be aware of California’s $500 fine for overwatering lawns or excess use for washing sidewalks and driveways.
“It’s really difficult to understand how much water you’re using, or whether that’s reasonable and appropriate based on your household size,” Barnitt says. “We’ve taken a social approach, where we compare a given account to others like them. We’ve seen that’s a powerful motivator in similar programs on the energy side. People are very interested in how they compare to others.”
The company has just started partnering with utilities and working with property management companies, which typically are unaware of how much water their tenants use. The app is a more accurate alternative to the water bill residents receive every one to two months, illuminating how wasteful people can be. In some areas of California, including parts of Sacramento and Bakersfield, officials don’t use water meters at all.
But the app is not available yet for all 440 water agencies across the state. The startup continues to partner with more utilities, as well as implemented a “poke” feature to enable customers to alert their utility about the service.
Dropcountr is also working on developing a feature that will use patterns of flow to discern how someone is using water. For example, if a person is using water for an outdoor irrigation system or appliances, Barnett told Fast Company, it’s easily identifiable.
Last month, 58 percent of the state was considered to be under “exceptional” drought, notching the harshest level of a five level scale. Implementing an app like Dropcountr is not only smart, but seems critical.
MORE: Even as the Drought Continues, Californians Can Drink From a Firehose of Solutions
Even as the Drought Continues, Californians Can Drink From a Firehose of Solutions
Anyone who follows the news may hold their water bottles a little bit closer as they see how the country is running out of the liquid so central to our lives. After all, there are severe drought conditions — think: farms going thirsty and forests catching fire — in seven states. California, in particular, dominates headlines as it faces its third dry year in a row, with more than 60 percent of the state suffering from exceptional drought.
The list of consequences of this extreme weather will turn your mouth dry — from the billions that could be lost in farm revenue to the possibility of earthquakes brought on by groundwater withdrawal.
While the drought is nothing short of devastating (with some calling the situation in California a modern day Dust Bowl), the responses to the water shortage represent amazing examples of how crisis can yield creativity. Here are a few of our favorites.
California has put water conservation regulations into place, and the Los Angeles Times reports that those who continue to hose down their driveways or install wasteful water decorations can be fined up to $500 a day. Skeptical? Even if the state does not catch H2O wasters, unofficial “water cops” with mobile phones fill the void with their #DroughtShaming hashtag, posting pictures on virtual neighborhood watch programs.
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While these emergency restrictions and responses are temporary for now, they have the potential to raise awareness and change habits forever. Food editor and writer Elaine Corn put it perfectly in her post for the Sacramento Bee: “To protect ourselves from food shortages and to buffer California’s agricultural economy, we all should regard any adjustments that allow us to grow food with less water as permanent.”
Disasters like these demonstrate the connection between crisis and collaboration — both on a local and a global scale. For example, perhaps as we develop a fear about where our food will come from (or at least get scared away by high prices at produce stands), we will start to build our own community-supported agriculture systems. If we team up to give more to the land than we take from it, not only could we collaborate on fresh summer salads to bring to block parties, but we also could enrich our soil to soak up what little rain might fall in the years ahead.
MORE: One in Five Baltimore Residents Live in a Food Desert. These Neighbors are Growing their Own Produce.
In an example of collaboration across borders, researchers from the United States and Chile are working together to harvest fog — turning those tiny droplets you wipe off your windshields into drinking water. These kinds of partnerships will only gain more interest and momentum as the water supply shrinks and the need for new ideas grows. So perhaps as Texas looks to the Gulf of Mexico as a source for fresh water, it might also look a bit further to the Arabian Gulf and countries like Qatar, which already rely on desalinated water for the vast majority of their fresh water needs.
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As other sources of fresh water become scarcer, California is working on harnessing the power of the sun (instead of drawing on oil and gas) as a more sustainable way to power the water desalination process and turn brackish water into something drinkable. And there are other solutions, according to National Geographic, such as a smaller community working to merge its water system with a bigger neighbor, and the Kern County Water Agency is considering pumping nearly 50 miles of the California Aqueduct in reverse.
Of course, sometimes the best solutions come from rethinking how we use the tools already at our disposal, as reflected in a recent report from the Pacific Institute and the National Resources Defense Council, which looks at the massive amounts of water that could be saved by improving water use efficiency, increasing the capture of rainwater and stormwater and recycling and reusing water. See for yourself:
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And with Senate Democrats and House Republicans offering dueling solutions on how to aid California farmers, the state is seeking solutions from beyond the beltway, looking to startups like WellIntel, Tal-Ya, and WatrHub.
Ultimately, the solutions that help California get through the dry days should matter to everyone in America. And it’s not only because we may soon find ourselves dipping our bread and dressing our salad with a bottle of olive oil from the Golden State. It’s also because we can all learn a lot from the way the largest agricultural producer in the nation weathers this storm.
Can This Ancient Farming Method Help Drought-Ridden California?
California is in its third year of a historic drought — and every Californian is feeling the pinch. Lawmakers recently approved a $500 fine for residents who waste water on lawns, but it’s the state’s farmers who are experiencing the most pain.
Agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the state’s water use, and with wells drying up, the results have been environmentally and financially devastating — costing billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. And when half of our nation’s food comes from the Golden State, this is an issue all Americans should be concerned about.
There are already several interesting solutions to counter the catastrophic drought, and in the midst of all that talk, an old-fashioned farming method has also been brought to the table, especially since it requires no irrigation at all. It’s called “dry farming.”
Modern Farmer touts this practice as “a refreshing answer” for farming in arid landscapes such as California that receive precipitation in small spurts. The process (which has been used historically in dry regions in the Mediterranean and the American west) involves sealing the top few inches of soil into a dry crust to prevent moisture from escaping after rainfall. Because crops are getting less water from above, their roots push lower into the ground, searching for moisture.
MORE: The Silver Lining to California’s Terrible Drought
A few Californian vineyards and farms already use dry farming on fruits and vegetables such as grapes, tomatoes, apples, grapes, melons and potatoes. NPR reported that a “garden that goes unwatered for months may produce sweeter, more flavorful fruits than anything available in most mainstream supermarkets.” These crops, since they are so niche and tasty, indeed go for a premium.
Dry farming, however, might not work large-scale since it results in a much lower yield (Slate found that dry-farmed apples averaged 12 to 14 tons per acre versus the 20 to 40 tons per acre on irrigated apple farms) there are some additional benefits. Modern Farmer reports that since dry farms do not use any irrigation methods, it saves on the infrastructure and the maintenance of of wells, pumps, tanks and piping.
But since the drought could cost California’s Central Valley (the state’s farming hub) $810 million in lost crop revenue, dry farming is an alternative that might be worth every penny.
DON’T MISS: The Eco-Friendly Plan to Quench Central California’s Thirst
From Fog To Faucet? Read About This Innovative Source For Drinking Water
Can you imagine turning fog, which is so annoying to drive in, to practical use as drinking water?
That’s just what a group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pontifical Catholic University did, reports the Washington Post — and it just might be a solution to drought in America.
While fog collection has been around for thousands of years in various ways, shapes, and forms, this team’s design is the most efficient and practical method out there. Using an innovative mesh that contains very tightly spaced strands of stainless steel, the system traps water as fog passes through it.
This is no ordinary window screen, though. MIT tapped mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley to create a coating that would make the water droplets stick while also making sure they could slide down and be collected.
The result: A technology that can harvest 10 percent of fog into potable water, which is five times the amount of any predecessors. Although this quantity may sound modest, with scale and over time, the collection adds up. With this team’s continuing research, fog can become a legitimate water source used by millions of people.
The MIT and Pontifical Catholic group did their testing in the Chilean desert, though the fog nets can be used anywhere — including drought-stricken California.
With the water shortage on America’s west coast being a hot topic in recent years, fog catching could be one simple fix to the enormous problem. Constructed from stainless steel (substance already widely used), this technology is practical and applicable. And, with residents being asked to cut back water consumption by 20 percent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, any help to the problem should be welcome.
McKinley envisions fog-heavy areas such as the San Francisco Bay to benefit most from the nets, with other dry areas also making use of this remarkable innovation.
While fog was once at best, a natural beauty and at worst, a safety hazard – now it is showing its worth as a valuable resource.