Comprehensive Statewide Needs Assessment - Alaska Department: Fill & Download for Free

Dramatically. This drought builds upon long term trends stressing California's water system built 1-2 generations ago to accommodate a much less crowded state.Here's what that looks like in terms of aggregate supply and demand for Southern California from a canonical 2012 US Bureau of Reclamation Study (aka something done before the current drought stresses).That's why demand management is such a big deal as Steven McQuinn says. You might be tempted to say that this is "just a So Cal" problem but that neglects the minor fact that San Francisco and the other parts of Silicon Valley supplied by the SF PUC receive a decidedly nontrivial part of their water from the Sierras through the Hetch Hetchy project.We're all in this togetherCalifornia's water supply system connects close to 90% of our state's population through an incredibly complex system combining natural and man made water transfer systems. (There's a few parts of the state in the far North and the Sierra's that are largely hydrologically independent.)That big yellow line running down the middle of California is the big aqueduct you see beside the I-5 in the Central Valley. That aqueduct (formally the State Water Project) was built in the 60's by Governor Jerry Brown's dad Pat Brown and Jerry Brown is currently trying to provide some sensible system upgrades to improve water reliability and restore the Delta ecosystem (cool infographic and project description here: http://gov.ca.gov/docs/Delta_Fact_Sheets_4.30.15.pdf )Why California's water future begins with demand managementThe "Delta Fix" to the State Water Project at best only aspires to improve the reliability of existing water supplies and so barring some Captain Kirk-esque moonshot to beam water down from Alaska, we're going to have to figure out how to live with the water we have.The State Water Project dipped into a historically unprecedented zero percent allocation in 2014. That combined with record low Sierra snowpack prompted Governor Brown to declare California's first ever statewide 25% mandatory reductions a month ago and take aim at unnecessary ornamental lawns. It's not like you can't have pretty landscaping btw. There's tons of drought tolerant California natives out there. california native landscaping - Google SearchLook at the map at the right using the US Bureau of Reclamation's drought watch data. The saving grace so far has been that California has still received fairly healthy Colorado river supplies (note the "less red" along new Mexico and Utah and Colorado -- super scientific I know ;) ).What happens if that supply goes the way of the State Water Project and dries up? Then we're not talking about tearing out ornamental turf. That's when we start to have to consider restricting water use to essential health and human services and the big economic impacts to industry start happening. I'm not trying to scare anyone btw -- just give you all a clear eyed appreciation for the realities we face.And note it's tempting to trivialize all this talk of conservation as neglecting the "80% of water that goes to agricultural use" but it's important to know what that number actually means. Do Californians in cities not go to farmer's markets and eat produce? That's a huge amount of "virtual water" water right there folks and effectively zero of that is included in theThat 80% figure also has human uses as the denominator and ignores the 50% of water statewide on average that goes to "environmental" purposes. Though again the categories are a bit simplistic b/c that includes water used for fish like salmon which have some pretty clear human uses: deliciousness ;)And less whimsically, as John Muir wisely noted while traipsing about in the Sierras one summer with little more than a few loaves of bread, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” That deep perspective reminds us to stay humble in the face of future water uncertainty, particularly given we only have a rich historical record of water supply for about a century and climate change shifts California's baselines.The (Old?) Normal: are we ready for a Megadrought?Let's remember that we're only in the fourth year of the current drought. Australia recently had one that lasted over a decade. And scientists looking at tree rings and other ecological artifacts tell us that droughts spanning multiple centuries have occurred several times in the last millennium.See A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America for detail.Will 25% urban conservation be enough to ensure our civilization can survive such an occurrence? No. Yet will we have any chance of dealing with a megadrought if we're still messing around with ornamental lawns that serve no useful purpose?The need for Silicon Valley's "pioneering spirit"There's some cool digital tools out there to communicate better with Californians about conservation like Water Smart and a whole bunch of "tattle on your neighbor" water waste reporting tools that pop up in every "hackathon" touching on water.Yet there's huge categories of demand management that could be done an order of magnitude better with modern digital tools that frankly Silicon Valley is blind to because these opportunities are shrouded behind a "pretzel palace of incredible complexity" to use Jerry Brown's memorable phrase for California's administrative architecture.Consider a few opportunities:1) How the governor's 25% statewide allocation is being implementedThere's a raging debate among water management insiders going on about how to allocate that 25% conservation mandate among ~400 of California's urban water utilities. But beyond all the in the weed arguments about fairness with past conservation, evapotranspiration differentials and other local context there's one glaringly obvious data management fact that you can see right on the State's drought website: State Water Resources Control Board.Here's a super simple Tableau dashboard a buddy and I threw together mashing up that recent State Board data with historical usage to provide a more robust picture of conservation trends:California Statewide Water Usage (February SWRCB + UWMP) And here's a blog post diving into all the water management nit grit: Balancing short and long term conservation to meet Governor Brown's 25% urban water use conservation mandateYet can't we do better than tracking statewide water usage via a giant excel spreadsheet thrown up on an FTP server? Why not parse water usage at a individual household rather than aggregate utility level? That data is personally identifiable but as the Sac Bee says commercial corporations aren't people that deserve privacy protection and residential usage could be aggregated at the Census Block level (on the order of thousands of people) and made public using the same logic as the US Census.That's a principled approach using technologies that exist today that could be implemented in a manner of months if not weeks with the right team and leadership from the top.2) Where are California's lawns?Southern California is spending well over $200 million to pay cash rebates to people that tear out their lawns. Yet good data on how many lawns there are across California at a household level are lacking and "you can't manage what you can't measure."A buddy and I started messing around with publicly available aerial and google streeview imagery for my hometown but there's a ton of ways to improve on our super simplistic approach that you can read about here:Dude where's my lawn?There's also a need to have a time series of landscape type so we can get a better idea of the decision calculus of all households that change from ornamental turf to California native landscaping. Google has that going back to 2007 for most of California but doesn't expose historical images through their streetview api.Strikes me that geotagging lawns and classifying landscapes to help the California drought would be a better toy problem for their image processing geniuses than deciding "cat / no cat" on the Youtube.3) Pioneering a new conservation ethicHere's where one and two come together. Everyone in the water management industry knows we can't get the permanent conservation necessary by paying out cash rebates. That'll run into 10+ figure range.No the strategy has always been to use cash rebates to incentivize early adopters and then a phased approach to achieve market transformation.The data gathered in one and two could be mashed up with other sources like home assessed valuation, party registration and maybe even all the social dataThe logic is pretty simple: do what the Obama campaign did with data to personalize outreach to win hearts and minds to California native landscaping.Digital tools like nationbuilder have proven pretty useful for organizing and galvanizing action so why not use them to develop conservation allies in the community and use volunteers like the California Conservation Corps to help plant California native landscaping?California's incredibly complex administrative architectureI've worked in and around California water issues from more organizations at a state, local and federal level than many (even policy savvy) folks know exist. I don't say that to be like "look at me I'm an expert" but rather to note that I've there's still infinities of administrative complexity that baffle me.For instance, I did the financing numbers on the Governor's Delta Fix a few years back and every time I talk to someone who's in the weeds on the Delta there's another key organization or bureaucratic process instrumental to the success or failure of the plan. It often feels like this "advert" about India's civil service:And note I don't mean that to mock California's dedicated civil servants (that'd lead to many an awkward dinner since I'm close friends with and related to a good number). In fact, I'd note that California's water management community has some of the most talented technocrats in the world.Singapore's the darling of the Aspen Ideas, Economist globe trotting good governance crowd. But where was the recycled water technology underpinning their vaunted NeWater system pioneered and scaled? Yup right here in California.Our states water managers have done an incredible job to manage demand with limited resources and working within an administrative architecture that frankly was built on a logic of supply and for another era. California has roughly a thousand water utilities, each with their unique local history and administrative powers.Try to wrap your mind around the differences between a city water department versus a nonprofit water mutual company versus a converted agricultural irrigation district versus a regulated private water company. Then consider that's just retailers and there's wholesale water suppliers like those that import from the Colorado or the State Water Project not to mention water quality regulators and actors from the state and federal government.Then work to grok that there's a slew of quasi-governmental organizational (somewhat?) outside of the formal administrative architecture like the Association of California Water Agencies that provide insurance through a JPA or funding vehicles at the intersection of all of the above... And of course many environmental and agricultural and other advocacy groups are all but de facto members of California's water governance... California’s Game of Thrones: WaterWhen you accept that despite how much you know you've still just been starting at the administrative "map" of California water and not the territory of how things actually get done, that you may have discovered the proverbial elephant as a blind man but are still blind, you can ease your mind and the lesson will be complete young jedi... Then we can proceed to the next step.The Next Frontier in Drought ManagementFirst note working within that legacy administrative framework California's urban water managers have held water usage constant for the past few decades despite adding millions of people to our cities. That's damn near heroic in my book.Of course there's a ton more that needs to be done. Here's two of the more obvious examples that serve as symbols of the larger opportunities for data science to transform how we manage demand:Better data on agricultural groundwater use so we don't just have pictures like this to judge historical trends:Basic water price informationWhat’s the average price of water charged in California? How has that changed in the last month? In this day and age, why can’t that question be a simple database query rather than a five+ figure survey billed out to some overpriced consulting firm that doesn’t even gather a comprehensive dataset?Look I get to Silicon Valley types with all the oodles of opportunity you kids got that water demand management may not sound like the sexiest thing. But it's necessary. Water has been fundamental to civilization since mankind first built cities in ancient Sumeria.And water management has followed epochal shifts in public administration from the Roman aqueducts that still stand today to the progressive era that not only gave us the public utilities but the civil service system that defines government administration today.California's next gold rush: good governmentWhat story will you want to tell your grandkids? About the great pivot your startup made to create some service that was cool for half a day but made you a million bucks in an aquihire?Or about how you helped transform California's water management to safeguard the California dream for the next generation? Since at least the Post WWII boom, lawns have been an integral part of many California's dream of a better life and that's simply no longer sustainable.Here's our opportunity to not just help California better manage demand but to take the pioneering spirit that's built Hollywood and Silicon Valley and use it to transform how we tackle public problems... pioneer a whole new California dream if you will...Silicon Valley types like to say things like "software is eating the world" but ponder this: where are the barriers that have been holding back the digital revolution for decades? Like say where is data managed in giant excel spreadsheets on FTF servers straight outta 1995...Hint we've been talking about the big ones (politics, bureaucracy...) this whole time... Now imagine what might be possible if those weren't walls but instead wind... ;)Anyway, enough talk for one day. Gotta get back to the water data mines.Hit me up @patwater if you're down to make some plays.Cheers,PAPatrick