“Can we end the global water crisis?… No, we can’t end it. I’m sorry. It’s too big for humanity to beat down and conquer. We’ve passed too many tipping points – with climate change and with population growth and with human behavior – to be able to turn an extremely critical situation around.”

So, why bother taking action?  Because we still can make a difference!

“I truly believe that with a shared vision, with leadership and commitment from governments around the world, and with public and private partnerships, we can manage our way through to ensure a sustainable water future. “

I thought it would be a good idea to define the global water crisis in the context of my talk. Here’s what I put forward:

“In it’s simplest form, the global water crisis is the inability to provide a reliable supply of potable water to villages, towns, cities and regional populations, all over the world. Globally, about a billion people around the world lack reliable access to potable water.

Today, about a billion people lack reliable access to potable water.

When I think about the global water crisis I see several key components…

There are the obvious crises of freshwater availability and of water quality – is there enough water available in a particular region, and is it clean enough so that when we drink it we don’t get sick?

However, even where water is available and clean, we see:

A crisis of management: are water resources being managed efficiently, or, is there a government commitment to even deliver water to its people?

A crisis of economics: does a country have the wealth to build and maintain the infrastructure to treat and distribute water?

And a crisis of understanding:  does the public and do our elected officials really understand what’s happening with water, nationally and globally?  If they did, I contend that we could make some real progress towards managing this crisis.”

I made the point that hydrologists like myself have a clear mission “to help elevate awareness of critical water issues to the level of everyday understanding.”

Much of my talk focused on our research using the NASA GRACE satellite mission to track how freshwater availability is changing around the world.  Some of that work has been written about in Water Currents before, for example, our work in India, California and the Middle East have all been highlighted.  Most recently we’ve published a map of the United States that shows several regional hotspots where groundwater depletion is threatening water supply reserves, or where increasingly wet conditions are leading to regional flooding.

However, my bottom line was this:

“Now we can see that groundwater depletion is a global phenomenon.  At least 2 billion people rely on groundwater as their primary water source, and most of their water comes from these aquifers that are at risk of running dry in the coming decades…” so that the number of people who currently already lack access to a reliable supply of potable freshwater (~1 billion) is on the rise.

I’m no expert in water quality, but I do know this:

“The history of humanity, and of economic development, has had at least a couple of distinct phases with respect to water quality – an early phase in which we really didn’t understand how the water cycle worked so we did things like dump toxic materials right on the ground or directly into rivers; and a more recent phase in which we actually know better, but choose to do it anyway, because it’s easy and cheap.

Fen River pollution. Photo by National Geographic

The unfortunate reality is that we humans have been living along or above our water supplies for a very, very long time, doing our thing for century after century, all the while using our waters as an all too convenient dumping grounds. It should come as no surprise – but yet it does for many people – that most of our waters around the world, where we still have them, are dangerously dirty and require considerable and expensive treatment before we can use them.”

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that in order to keep people from sticking their heads in the sand after hearing all of this bad news, is that they need hope.  They need to feel empowered. They need to know that there is a pathway forward, and that if we work together, we can definitely make a difference.

I returned to some of my favorite themes, which I will probably keep writing and talking about until a) we actually start doing something about it; or b) I die.  I anticipate that both will take a while, but you never know.

“First, we need to figure out how much fresh water we actually have on the planet. The truth is that we really don’t know. Especially groundwater. It’s our biggest stock of freshwater, yet we have not done the exploration that we need to, and that’s just unacceptable.

Second, we need to determine how much water we actually need, to grow food, for industry, to generate power and for domestic use. And by all means, let’s not forget the environment. Humans cannot expect to use all available waters and still have a healthy planet to live on.

Third, how are both of these, and the gaps between them, changing over time, with climate change, with population growth, and with increased awareness, conservation and efficiency.”

Feeling feisty, I threw down the virtual gauntlet:

“Today I challenge our government and others around the world to do the exploration that needs doing. If water is in fact the new oil, let’s finally do the exploration with the same vigor.  We cannot begin to address sustainability issues unless we actually know how much water we have.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Let’s actually monitor groundwater withdrawals, both public and private.   Right now, in many parts of the world, including most states in the U.S., if you own property, you can pump the groundwater beneath it at will, even if that means that you are drawing in water from beneath your neighbor’s property.  It’s not unlike having several straws in a glass of water, and everyone sipping at will. If we want to make the water in the glass last, the free-for-all must end at once.

Let’s focus on improved water conservation and efficiency, especially in agriculture, the biggest use of water around the globe. We can do so much more with so much less.  We need more efficient irrigation, better crop selection, more saline and drought tolerant crops, more greenhouse agriculture, and yes, better pricing. Here need to look to world leaders in conservation and efficiency like Israel.

Only after we’ve done these easier and cheaper things should we significantly ramp up our recycling and desalination efforts. But don’t get me wrong – these are already both critical components of water security in many regions around the world, including right here in Southern California.”

And now, a pitch for public-private partnerships. I feel strongly about what I said next, and as above, you will continue to hear this from me into the foreseeable future.

“The realities of our modern economy are that there are many demands for a limited amount of funds.  This is where vision and leadership come into play. We need champions in our state and local governments to carry the torch.

Wanted: Vision and leadership to ensure a sustainable water future

And beyond governments, we need more public and private partnerships to move this agenda forward.  The private sector has the resources and the agility to partner with our universities and research labs to make a huge impact.  Many of the technologies that we need to monitor and manage water much more efficiently already exist. Public-private partnerships can make this happen far more quickly than convincing a giant bureaucracy.”

Denouement time: we can’t end the global water crisis, but…

“We can take steps to manage our way through this global crisis and ensure a sustainable water future for everyone.  But we need to confront the realities that I’ve shared with you today, head on, and begin to deal with them now.

Water availability will be more contentious in the future.  We can see the haves and have nots developing already.  However, water can also be a vehicle for peacebuiliding, since these transboundary, regional problems require transboundary, regional solutions.

Therefore, we need to deal, now, with the required political and legal frameworks and the civil infrastructure to peaceably share, use and reuse water, within regions and across political boundaries.

We need a national water policy in the U. S., and we need new, global, international water law.

And we need to integrate water discussions into the fabric of our diplomatic efforts, especially in places like the Middle East and other hotspots where threats to water security may trigger violent conflict.

We can’t squeeze water from a …planet…but, we can manage our way through this crisis to ensure a sustainable water future.

We can and must take back our environment, including our water environment. Economic growth and environmental preservation are not mutually exclusive.  A green economy can be a very, very strong economy, and the water sector can be a big part of that. And remember, without water, we don’t even have an economy.

The nexus of water and energy and food will define our quality of life in this century. It already is.

Ultimately, water will be limiting in all respects, unless learn to do more with a lot less, and to reuse and reuse more and more, and to manage our way to a sustainable water future.”

That’s my message.  A little dramatic for sure, but it was after all a TEDx talk, so I wanted to just hang it all out there. Thanks for reading.  If I have inspired you, please, share this with your family, friends and colleagues.  We need your help to  spread the word.

The geopolitics of water management in the Middle East are primarily governed by the basic distribution of freshwater resources: there are vast differences between the naturally available water resources in the region. Layer to this the additional complexity of political stability, financial assets, and other socioeconomic factors, and the potential for improved transboundary water management in the Middle East becomes vastly complicated.

Simply, some nations have few water resources and a lack of capabilities to effectively manage their limited resources – their water security is at risk. Other nations, those with more technological and economic capacity to maximize their limited resources, have less at stake. Our recent trip to the Middle East in February underscored the well-known perspective that while Israel is making great advances in water management in the region, Palestine and Jordan are simply further behind.

The actions, decisions, and processes that led to this imbalance are complex. While Israel is currently a regional (and global) leader in water management strategies, the nation has faced many challenges with competing user-groups, made trade-offs between short-term economic investment versus long-term sustainability, and leveraged its economic and political clout to ensure that the financial assets were in hand to prioritize water management solutions.

Israel’s path to achieve water management success was not simple or easy. At the same time, while Jordan and Palestine have historically encountered many struggles to manage their incredibly scarce water resources, which for Palestine includes the challenge of being land-locked (save its Dead Sea access), making autonomous desalination impossible.  Water managers in Palestine and Jordan are actively striving to improve the technological capacity and policy portfolio to optimize water use in the future.

Israel’s Geopolitical Advantages

As described in our previous post in Water Currents, Israel is a regional and global leader in water management strategies. Israel has a diverse portfolio of water sources that includes an extensive supply of desalinated water and recycled wastewater and, consequently, puts less pressure on its limited, natural freshwater sources from surface water and groundwater. Israeli water managers have detailed knowledge and data about how much water they have, the precise source of that water, how much water is being used at any given moment, and specifically who is using that water and for what purpose.  Every last drop of water is accounted for. There is a direct line of communication between the Water Authority and Mekorot, the national water utility company, which allows for the supply and demand as well as the pricing of water in Israel to be meticulously monitored and regulated. Israel’s water management system is a well-oiled, robust machine.

Israel’s detailed understanding of its water resources has allowed the nation to strategically invest in new technology and solutions that allow for more stable and sustainable water planning. Furthermore, the economic and political clout that Israel can leverage to finance such solutions is significant. Without investment, political commitment, and long-term planning, Israel’s water success would not exist. In addition, Israel’s geographic assets – mainly it’s shoreline on the Mediterranean Sea – are essential to its success. The Mediterranean provides Israel an unlimited supply of water as long as the investment for infrastructure and energy costs for desalination are met. With new natural gas reserves discovered off the coast, once prohibitive energy expenses will now be obsolete. Armed with detailed knowledge about its water resources, new energy sources, and a strong sociopolitical backing, Israel’s water future looks bright.

An ancient aqueduct in East Bethlehem now runs dry and is filled with trash – a symbol of the West Bank’s deteriorated water infrastructure. Photo by: Kate Voss.

Tapping the Root of Jordan and Palestine’s Struggle

Yet while Israel is leading the world in innovative water strategies, its neighbors, Palestine and Jordan, are clearly struggling. The core differences in the naturally available water resources as well as the social, economic, and political capability to address water resource management challenges was staggering. Before meeting with water management officials in Jordan, we had the opportunity to drive beyond the sprawl of Amman and into the surrounding desert.

The land outside the city boundaries is vast, dry, and desolate – there are no water resources to speak of. Communities that dot the highway are dependent on either dwindling groundwater reserves or weekly water tankers. The situation is dire. Without proactive efforts to find and transport new sources of water, many of these communities will probably cease to exist, leaving only the shadow of a civilization, akin to the ancient ruins of Petra.

Jordan’s water managers are trying their best to develop innovative, long-term solutions to its water crisis. The pioneering solutions from Israel, such as desalination or wastewater recycling, may have a place in Jordan’s water strategy, but even those options are difficult to acquire. Wastewater recycling necessitates steep financial investment, as does desalination, and these solutions often force Jordan to place its water security in the hands of another nation. Neither option is perfect. Consequently, long-distance conveyance alternatives from friendly neighbors, such as pumping groundwater from Saudi Arabia or tanking water from Turkey, do not seem obscure when forced to cope with a physical water scarcity emergency.

Jordan’s dire water situation is not for lack of effort or vision, but mainly a lack of resources. Few natural water assets combined with a weak socioeconomic foundation makes investment in long-term water strategies incredibly difficult. In Palestine, the situation is similar. According to a World Bank report from 2009, “economic disparities between West Bank Gaza (WBG) and Israel are large – in 2005, Israel’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita was almost eighteen times the Palestinian GNI per capita. Water resources availability in the two neighbors is likewise far apart, with fresh water per capita in Israel is about four times that of WBG. Whereas Israel is known for efficient water infrastructure and management, Palestinians are struggling to attain the most basic level of infrastructure and services of a low income country.”  Add to the weak economy the fact that water rights in Palestine are directly linked to the broader conflict between Palestine and Israel, particularly in the West Bank, and water management in Palestine becomes more convoluted and challenging.  Palestine’s situation is analogous to Jordan’s crisis, but with the added complexity of unclear sovereign rights to access and improve water resources.

The moon rises over Amman, a sprawling city surrounded by desert. With increasing population and limited water resources, Jordan’s capital is already facing a water crisis. Photo by: Kate Voss.

Knowledge for a Sustainable Water Future

While visiting with water management officials  in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, we discussed the shared need for better monitoring — a need that the U.S. has in common with the Middle East — in order to have essential, baseline data for characterizing regional water availability.  Based on this information, water managers can develop short- and long-term strategies that are rooted in the reality of actual water availability and use. Without this information, any decisions or solutions are based on speculation, at best, and politics at worst.

As previously mentioned, Israel has a stronger foundation in data and monitoring than either of Palestine and Jordan. That said, water managers in Palestine and Jordan are actively making substantial efforts to lay the framework for an improved water monitoring system and are beginning to collect core data on their native resources.  With clear evidence about their changing water availability, water managers will hold more power to leverage for the political and economic support they need to create actual change. In the future, our hope is that we at UCCHM will be able to support these efforts by providing training workshops based on our research, to provide the capacity for water managers in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan to utilize new advances in satellite data to monitor and manage their water.

With these fundamental data and information in hand, water managers in Palestine and Jordan can begin to close the gap on their investment needs and to implement their own innovative solutions to tackle their water challenges. For Israel, there are clear economic and political benefits for improved water management in Palestine and Jordan. With any luck, water management will come forward as an issue of mutual interest for regional cooperation. This will, of course, necessitate strong political, economic, and social backing from national, regional, and international leaders.

Throughout the Middle East we heard that “water cannot be removed from politics” in this region. Consequently, the broader political and socioeconomic intricacies must be incorporated into water management and vice versa. With this complexity in mind we can only hope that the political currents of the region lead to improved water management and that, collectively, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan can see the benefit of sustainable solutions for their shared water future.

A young boy explores along the shoreline of the Dead Sea in February, 2013. Photo by Kate Voss.

Posted from Tel Aviv by Sasha Richey, UCCHM Graduate Fellow. This is the third in a series of posts on our Water Diplomacy trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine.  Other posts in the series: 1) Middle East Lost a Dead Sea Amount of Water in 7 Years, by Jay Famiglietti ; and 2) Parallel Worlds:  Water Management in Israel and California, by UCCHM Policy Fellow Kate Voss.

The Dead Sea sits in the heart of the world’s three main religions. According to the Torah, the Dead Sea was created by God in Sodom and its neighboring cities. It was where the Prophet Lot was sent for pilgrimage according to the Quran. The Dead Sea is fed by the waters that are said to have baptized Jesus Christ, the “mighty” Jordan River.

Despite the cultural, hydrological, historical, and socio-economic value of this unique water body, unsustainable use of the Jordan River and mining of its minerals continues to threaten the existence of the Dead Sea as it loses water at a rate of about one meter per year. However, the very project that is proposed to restore the sea has the potential to destroy it as well. The UCCHM water diplomacy team attended the February 19, 2013 Multi-Stakeholder Consultation in Jerusalem on the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance program with the hope of learning more about the future of the project from stakeholders in Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.

Overview of the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance

There are three main objectives for the Red Sea-Dead Sea conveyance project: 1) to save the Dead Sea from environmental degradation; 2) to desalinate Red Sea water as a drinking water source for Amman, Jordan; and 3) to build a symbol of peace and cooperation between the three stakeholder entities. The “identified option” to meet these three goals is the “Red-Dead conduit,” which proposes to build a $10.6 billion dollar conveyance system to transfer saline water over 200 kilometers from the Red Sea north to the Dead Sea. The water would first be pumped up 250 meters from the Red Sea, and then would provide hydroelectricity as it travels down to the Dead Sea (elevation 423 meters below mean sea level). A desalination plant would be built by the Dead Sea to send freshwater up to Amman (elevation about 800 meters above mean sea level). The brine waste from desalination and extra seawater would be disposed of in the Dead Sea in order to restore and stabilize its water level.

Red Sea (left) and Dead Sea (right). Image from Tractebel Engineering.

The project was initially proposed by the Jordanian government, which then joined with Israel to present the concept to the World Bank. At that point, the World Bank required that the Palestinian Authority be added as a main stakeholder based on their riparian rights to the Dead Sea, which created a trilateral, cooperative project. Since then, the World Bank has acted in a management role to coordinate the project study efforts and to gain international support should the member countries choose to go forward with the project. The aim of the February 19, 2013 stakeholder meeting that we attended in Jerusalem was to present the key findings of the five initial studies conducted for the project, including a Feasibility Study and an Environmental and Social Assessment (ESA) Study, and to gain insight about the concerns and criticisms of leading civil society stakeholders in each country. Parallel consultations were held in Jordan and the Palestinian territories.

Participants discuss the Red Sea – Dead Sea Conveyance at a public hearing in Jerusalem on February 19, 2013. Photo by Kate Voss.

Based on the feedback from the public hearing and the five initial studies, it is not clear that adequate work has been done to fully understand the impacts of the “identified option.” The Feasibility Study reports that a minimum of 700 million cubic meters of additional water per year are necessary to stabilize the Dead Sea’s current water level, while more water will be needed to replenish it to historical levels.  At about 400 million cubic meters per year of additional water, the amount of groundwater depletion in the surrounding area will stabilize.

The project managers proposed a pilot project to further explore the project’s feasibility and environmental impacts, but the pilot would only add up to 400 million cubic meters per year. It is exactly at this point that uncertainty is introduced in the ESA, whereby the environmental impacts of adding more than 400 million cubic meters of Red Sea water and brine to the Dead Sea are unknown.

According to Alex McPhail, the World Bank team leader on the project, there are only two other alternatives to the Red-Dead conduit that meet the three project objectives. The first is building a conveyance system from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea for desalination. The second is a combination of desalination in the Gulf of Aqaba, water transfers from the Mediterranean, recycling and conservation, and water transfers from Turkey.

As our group’s recent paper on groundwater depletion trends from GRACE in the Tigris-Euphrates and Western Iran region shows, Turkey is losing large amounts of groundwater and surface water, and is therefore not a reliable water supply source. Prof. Jay Famiglietti made these comments during the open discussion period of the stakeholder meeting in Jerusalem (video to be uploaded shortly).

Stakeholder Perspectives and Water Management Challenges

The Red-Dead conduit epitomizes the global challenge of balancing water supply and demand between environmental, domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. Our first impressions of the Red-Dead conduit have remained with us throughout our discussions with different stakeholders; it is an incredibly expensive project with dangerously little known about the environmental impact to the Dead Sea ecosystem.

It is not clear that this large infrastructure project would accurately represent the type of “peace project” that is described as a main project goal; nor will it provide environmental restoration to the Dead Sea beyond stabilizing its water level. However, our initial impressions have been challenged by the realities faced on the ground in relation to managing water scarcity, particularly in Jordan.

While in Amman, we met with the Secretary General Assistant of Technical Affairs in the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Ali Subah. According to the Secretary General Assistant, the Jordanian government opposed the idea of a Red-Dead conduit 10 years ago, but has since been forced to change its position due to increasing water scarcity. Shuba told us, “Never put your soil in other hands with relation to water,” and that “without the Red-Dead project there is no way to keep water security in Jordan.”

He described an example of Jordan’s water challenges, with a reservoir that was constructed to capture water from the Yarmouk River. The reservoir was constructed with a capacity of about 110 million cubic meters, just half of the capacity recommended by scientists, anticipating the challenges that they would have with filling it. The reality was worse than planned, with a maximum volume of just 15 million cubic meters accumulated between 2007 to 2012. Upstream water use and climactic factors had severely reduced Jordan’s water supply to a small fraction of their legal allocation. The combination of population growth, an influx of Syrian refugees, and a limited economy based on mining, mineral extraction, and tourism are putting a huge strain on Jordan’s minimal natural resources. Jordan is looking for a big fix, and it now sees the Red-Dead conduit as its great hope for a sustainable water future.

Gidon Bromberg of the FoEME comments during the public hearing on the Red Sea – Dead Sea Conveyance Project, February 19, 2013. Photo by Kate Voss.

In contrast, Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a non-profit organization that brings Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmentalists to work together, says the fix should come from restoring the Dead Sea’s source waters, the Jordan River. Munqeth Mehyar, the Jordanian Director of FoEME said the Red-Dead conduit, “would kill us,” from both an environmental perspective and the necessary reliance on foreign aid to fund the project.

At UCCHM, we agree that promoting conservation, efficiency, repairing of existing infrastructure, monitoring groundwater extraction and improved water pricing are among the best ways to begin restoring the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Part of the goal of our trip here is to see how our GRACE results and detailed water modeling can contribute to regional water management decisions, such as exploring the full environmental implications of mega-projects like the Red-Dead conduit, as well as comprehensive evaluation of its alternatives. However, there continues to be challenges to combine the best available science with political willpower for efficient water management decisions.

An Uncertain Future

The Red-Dead conduit project represents daunting challenges for water management in the Israel-Jordan-Palestinian Authority region. Although the specifics of the project are unique to this area, the broader challenge of balancing environmental preservation with a reliable water supply for human use is universal. For example, California already transfers large volumes of water over hundreds of kilometers in an effort to achieve this balance.

It is clear that there is no single solution, including the Red-Dead conduit, that will meet all water demands in a region. Lessons must be taken from places like New York City and its restoration of the Catskills Mountains, as a model to restore the Jordan River. Orange County’s own Groundwater Replenishment System, which treats and reuses wastewater, is an example of a large infrastructure project that has the potential to be hugely successful in water-scarce regions. But, ecosystem restoration and infrastructure must be coupled with “small” fixes, such as repairing leaky pipes, implementing conservation and efficiency, and increasing transparency and communication between all end-users of shared water resources. This is a grand challenge in a region with the political and physical complexity of the Dead Sea basin, but a necessary one.

The “mighty Jordan,” a shadow of its former self, as viewed from the proposed Jordan River Peace Park at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers. Photo by Kate Voss.

The future of the Red-Dead conduit remains uncertain. Political willpower, the need for environmental preservation, and a substantial amount of fundraising will dictate how priorities and resources are allocated. Moving forward, the project’s goals must be clear, whether the priority is to try to restore the Dead Sea first or to provide freshwater in Amman.  As the project currently stands, these goals cannot be met in tandem. We hope that our work at UCCHM can provide a regional perspective for water transfers and management decisions, but ultimately the decision will come down to the key governmental and civil society stakeholders.

The striking similarities between, California and the United States and the Red-Dead conduit provide a case study of the challenges for water management and large-scale water conveyance systems. The U. S. and other highly developed countries have made numerous environmental mistakes en route to developing the infrastructure required to maintain reliable water supplies to growing populations.  Hopefully the Israel-Jordan-Palestinian Authority region can learn from these mistakes, and provide the world with a new model for combining ecosystem restoration with cooperative water management.

As we left the Ben Gurion-Tel Aviv airport, my colleagues and I excitedly scanned the new landscape that surrounded us.  Our first impression was how incredibly familiar it felt to California.  A field of orange trees, perfect rows of irrigated crops, a salty breeze from the Mediterranean Sea.  Maybe we were just hyper-aware of our surroundings, looking to find parallels between our home and this new region, but the reality is that Israel and California share a striking similarity in their physical environments and, subsequently, their challenges to manage water resources.

Agricultural fields in northern Israel. Photo by Kate Voss

The Israel-California Water Link

This core connection between California and the Middle East, particularly Israel, was one motivation for our trip.  The other was the release of our recent paper on groundwater depletion in the Tigris-Euphrates-Western Iran region.  It is a well-known fact that this entire region faces extreme challenges to manage their scarce water resources.  Drought, increasing agricultural water demand, population pressures, and competing stakeholders add to an already stressed water system.  Despite these challenges, this region is at the forefront of water management.   The regional efforts to collaboratively manage surface water resources from the Jordan River and groundwater aquifers, for example by Friends of the Earth Middle East, as well as Israel’s strategies to maximize and efficiently use every last drop of water, are revolutionary.

In Israel, wastewater from urban areas is used to irrigate nearly 100% of crops in a desert while desalination accounts for 60% of water supply in densely populated regions.  Pricing for water accurately reflects the costs to transport and produce the water, but these prices are affordable for all.  Crops that can be grown with “poor quality” water, such as brackish or reclaimed wastewater, are cultivated while water-intensive agriculture and flood irrigation is rejected.  Greenhouses and drip irrigation systems dominate the irrigation landscape.  Clearly, the world, and including California, could learn a thing or two from Israel.

Greenhouses in the Jordan River Valley are used to conserve water and reduce losses through evapotranspiration. Photo by Kate Voss

Over the course of our two weeks in the Middle East, we will meet with the key water authorities, water utility companies, civil society members, and university researchers in Israel, Palestinian territories, and Jordan.  During our “science diplomacy” trip, we hope to not only share our research, but to learn from a region that is a prototype for effective water management.

Lessons from Technion University

Technion University was our first stop on this water journey, where we met with researchers at the Grand Water Research Institute (GWRI).  During our conversation at Technion, we learned about the Israeli tools to allocate, reuse, and distribute water and how academic research improves these tools.  Israel’s water monitoring and allocation system is phenomenal – every drop of water, from freshwater resources to desalinated water, is accounted for, priced accordingly, and delivered to the end-user.  Although agriculture has the largest demand for freshwater resources, the government water policy restricts the freshwater allocation to approximately 0.450 km³ and not a drop more.  The residual agricultural water demand is fulfilled by Israel’s extensive recycled wastewater and brackish water distribution system.  The other major end-user, domestic water demand, is met by desalination, surface water from the Sea of Galilee, freshwater rivers and aquifer supplies.

Dr. Jay Famiglietti presents to a group at the Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion University, Israel. Photo by Kate Voss

For we Californians, it was surprising and inspiring to hear about the innovative strategies in place to meet agricultural water demands and, even more so, that the farmers were completely in support of these policies.  In the States, we have very little monitoring of agricultural water use, particularly of groundwater abstraction.  If groundwater were as closely allocated and monitored in the U. S. as the resources are in Israel, the monitoring may be regarded as a breach of personal freedoms, since groundwater rights are tied to property rights in much of the country.  Yet here in Israel, the farmers have fully supported this progressive strategy to both strictly monitor and allocate water resources and to introduce new supplies through desalination and recycled water.  Much of their support appears to be the result of an ongoing communication and social outreach initiative to inform farmers about the limits to water resources and the opportunities to meet water demands through more sustainable practices.  How could we drive a shift in the United States to emulate this support for innovative water management policies?

As our discussions at Technion illustrated, the support for such innovative management policies begins with knowledge transfer to stakeholders.  For example, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture hosts annual meetings that farmers, academics, and decision makers attend with the goal of sharing their respective water experiences and to work toward more efficient water practices. A core aspect of that effective communication is creating practical, actionable results rooted in technical research.  During our discussion at Technion, we repeatedly heard an emphasis on interdisciplinary research, bringing together economists, engineers, hydrologists, and politicians to guide those actionable results for water management.    Technion is one of many universities that are part of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) Water Centers for Excellence project, sponsored by USAID.  This platform provides the foundation for collaboration between researchers throughout the MENA region including in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan.

The concept of a “water research network” is lacking in the United States, as is the connection between researchers and decision-makers at the local, state, and national levels.  In Israel, this model of collaboration has resulted in meticulous monitoring of water resources to inform water management policies and the subsequent support from all stakeholders.  If we could shift our water management paradigm in the United States to effectively link researchers, policy-makers, and local stakeholders with open lines of communication, the outcome could be groundbreaking.

Collaborating for a Sustainable Water Future

Our meeting at the GWRI at the Technion left us with many ideas for potential collaboration between our research center at UC Irvine and  the Technion.  On a technical level, we discussed a wide variety of potential research topics, ranging from the development of a 3D groundwater model; the evaluation of the linkages between water and soil management at a global scale; the use of enviromatics to better manage and monitor regional water systems; and optimization of land-surface and water management models to better reflect the reality of water demand and supply.  On a broader level, our meeting provided a glimpse at new strategies and tools that we, in California, can use to more effectively manage water resources, link stakeholders, communicate knowledge, and develop policies to sustainably manage our resources.

Group picture from the UCCHM visit to the Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion University. Photo by Sasha Richey.

This Israel-California knowledge transfer model is an exciting venture, and we hope that over the duration of our trip we will find more ideas, collaboration opportunities, and links with civil society, academic, and governmental agencies.  From domestic water use strategies to effective agricultural irrigation and high-tech water system modeling to the development of innovative distribution systems, the possibilities for international learning are endless.  In the next few posts, you’ll hear about our conversations with key civil society leaders, such as Friends of the Earth Middle East, and regional water managers in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan as well as our insights to the region’s water initiatives, such as the proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea conduit.  With this new cross-regional network as a foundation, our water future is looking brighter.

This week my research team and I published a new study on recent (2003-2009) water losses in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.  We used data from a NASA satellite mission called GRACE (short for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) that essentially weighs regional water storage changes from space.  The picture is not a pretty one.

In the seven-year period that we analyzed, the region lost over 144 cubic kilometers of fresh water, an amount equivalent in volume to the Dead Sea. More detailed analysis revealed that over 60% of the water loss was due to groundwater pumping. Much of this occurred during the drought that began in 2006, and was most likely used for agricultural irrigation.

Depending on varying standards for per capita water use in the region, that’s enough water to supply tens of millions, to over a hundred million people with water for a year.  We continue to monitor the region, and the rates of water loss that we report are continuing into the present.

Israel excels in highly water efficient farming, but much of the Middle East is still loosing a lot of groundwater. Photo: Brian Clark Howard

Our team’s expectation is that the water situation in the Middle East will only degrade with time, primarily due to climate change.  The best available science indicates that the arid and semi-arid regions of the world will become even more so:  the dry areas of the world will become drier (while conversely, the wet areas will become wetter).  Consequences for the Middle East include more prolonged drought, which means that the underground aquifers that store the region’s groundwater will not be replenished during our lifetimes, nor during those of future generations.

Moreover, the rapid rates of groundwater depletion that we report will only accelerate the drying of the region, placing additional stress on already overtaxed resources.  After all, a typical human response to drought is to rely more heavily on groundwater resources, since more accessible surface waters are not available.

Declining water availability in the Middle East is consistent with an emerging, if not alarming, global picture.  Our satellite data and available measurements on the ground now tell us that most of the world’s aquifers in the dry parts of our planet are being rapidly depleted. The human fingerprint of water management has left an indelible and irreversible impression on our water landscape.  Climate change and population growth only conspire to make this bad situation worse.  The Middle East is by no means alone in its water woes.  Analogies are present on nearly every continent, including the key aquifers in the U. S. – the Ogallala and the Central Valley.

Water for Peace

Following the release of our report, lead author Kate Voss (our Water Policy Fellow at the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling (UCCHM)),  UCCHM Graduate Fellow Sasha Richey, Larry Gold from the UC Irvine Chancellor’s Office, and I are visiting Israel, Jordan and Palestine for a two-week water diplomacy trip. We will present and discuss our findings with the national water authorities, at university campuses and to NGOs like the Friends of the Earth Middle East.  We also expect to learn much about how our hosts cope with some of the most severe levels of water stress in the world.  Please see the links at the top of this page for our series of Water Currents posts during the course of our trip.

Prof. Jay Famiglietti presenting the team’s research findings at The Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University, February 20. Photo by Sasha Richey.

Serendipitously, our report and trip provide a timely opportunity for President Obama in the run-up to his own upcoming visit.  The groundwork could not have been better prepared: a unique opportunity has presented itself to encourage new dialogue on Middle Eastern water issues, and in particular, how they can be a source for collaboration rather than continued, if not heightened conflict.

Better Water Management

We cannot reverse climate change and its impact on water availability, but we can and must do a far better job with water management, including the modernization of national and international water policy.  Our research and its implications point to the following critical needs, not only for the Middle East, but in all regions of the world where groundwater resources are in decline.

First, it’s high time for groundwater to be included under the water management umbrella. In most of the world, groundwater pumping is unmonitored and unregulated.  It is as true in much of the U. S. as it is in the Middle East.  That’s no different than making withdrawals from a savings account without keeping track of the amount or the remaining balance:  irresponsible without question, and a recipe for disaster when multiple account holders are acting independently.

Second, since nearly 80% of the world’s water resources are used to support agriculture, continued improvements in agricultural and irrigation conservation and efficiency should be an important focus for research, development, investment and cooperation.  In the Middle East, some countries, notably Israel, are pioneers of efficiency, while others are less advanced.  Much of the technology is in place. It just needs to be disseminated and embraced across the entire region.

Greenhouses abound in the Jordan River Valley, limiting water losses by evapotranspiration. Photo by Kate Voss.

Third, our report and others that have preceded it clearly demonstrate that satellite technology has advanced to the point where a reliable assessment of regional hydrology can be produced with little access to observations on the ground. Our 2009 study of groundwater depletion in India is yet another example of current capabilities. My point is that data denial policies amongst nations will ultimately be rendered obsolete.  It will be far better to share key measurements now, to enhance and fully utilize the satellite picture for mutually beneficial water management in the long term.

Finally, the priority of international water policy discussions must be elevated.  All around the world, we will increasingly be faced with the need to share water across political boundaries, either within nations or between them.  More generally, our common water future must accommodate the ability to move water, either literally or virtually, from the regions that have it to the regions that do not. The international policy and legal framework is simply not in place to ensure peaceable water management capable of circumnavigating the complexities of the 21^st century water landscape.  In the Middle East, the difference in interpretation of how Tigris-Euprhates waters should be shared amongst riparian countries is a prime example of obstacles that must be overcome, cooperatively.

Screening ‘Last Call at the Oasis’ at Al-Quds University in the Palestinian Authority, joint with Friends of the Earth Middle East. Photo by Kate Voss.

A sustainable water future, in the Middle East and around the world, is going to require considerable thoughtfulness, planning and cooperation. Collaboration amongst diverse stakeholders, including those with significant economic, political, or social differences, is imperative.  There really is no other choice. But with great effort, an effective strategy is within our reach.

With President Obama’s upcoming visit, now seems like a very good time to start the process. Otherwise, I’m afraid he may find it difficult to get even a glass of water.

Addendum: Response from Andy Revkin at the New York Times.

The water vapor tower, or ‘aerological accelerator’ of Starr and Anati, as depicted in the 1973 Scientific American article ‘The Control of the Water Cycle’ by Jose P. Peixoto and M. Ali Kettani

Mad science. That’s what I thought when I first read the 1973 Scientific American classic ‘The Control of the Water Cycle’ by Professors Jose Peixoto and Ali Kettani. The two discussed a radical idea, originally proposed by their colleagues Victor Starr and David Anati of MIT.

Why not build giant, solar-heated water vapor towers on the shores of our arid coastlines?  Warmed air would rise inside the monster chimneys, mimicking natural convection and drawing in moist air from the nearby sea.   Like sky-high smokestacks, the towers would inject water vapor high into the atmosphere, so that somewhere in the downwind direction on the land (hopefully locally), it would condense out and form precipitation.

Nutty professors, I thought.  Trying to engineer the natural evaporation-condensation cycle for benefit of humans.  A sort of crazy, anthropogenic-driven loop in the water cycle.

Fast forward, 40 years.  Were they really that crazy?  Or rather, were they just incredibly prescient?  After all, they knew that the recipe for making rain includes as a key ingredient, an ample supply of water vapor. Sprinkle in a good handful of cloud condensation nucleii (the tiny atmospheric dust particles that provide a ‘seed’ for condensation and the formation of rain drops) and add a generous amount of upward air motion  (to cool the air, bring it to its dew point and ‘squeeze’ out the moisture) and you’ve got yourself a vigorous storm system.

Little did they know that we were already, very likely running such human-driven loops, albeit unintentionally (and without the sci-fi towers).

Recently, my former Ph.D. student and postdoctoral researcher Prof. Min-Hui Lo and I published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, in which we explored the far-field climate impacts of large-scale irrigation in California’s Central Valley. (The paper is freely available to the general public. Please download it. I paid extra for that.)  We’d already done work with satellites to quantify the rapid rates of groundwater depletion in the Valley. Now we wanted to explore where all that water was going, and what was happening along the way.

Honestly, what we found surprised us, but probably would not have surprised Prof. Peixoto and colleagues at all.  Using a global climate model (the computer models like those used in the IPCC), we added realistic rates of summertime irrigation to the Central Valley (about 40% of which was groundwater) and then ran the model for 90 years.

The nutty professors. Jay Famiglietti and Min-Hui Lo in Irvine, CA. January, 2012.

The result?  Evaporation in the Valley doubled, leading to a major export of water vapor downwind, to the arid American Southwest.  Here, the extra water vapor collided with the powerful North American monsoon system that spans the 4-state region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and is home to much of the Colorado River basin.

Once in the region, the extra moisture ‘strengthened’ the monsoon by increasing summer rainfall by 15%, and by triggering further upward motion in the monsoon circulation, thereby drawing in even more water vapor from the Gulfs of California and Mexico. The wetter soil in the 4-state region generated 8% more evaporation, which also contributed to the increased monsoon precipitation.

All of that extra rainfall resulted in a 28% increase in runoff to the Colorado River, or more than 11 billion gallons of water.  That’s enough to supply about 3 million people with water for a year. Certainly an intriguing result for those of us who live in the west and rely on the river for a major fraction of our regional water supply.  Where I live in southern California for example, 25% of our water supply comes from the Colorado.

When we consider that in the Lower Colorado River Basin, all of that extra streamflow winds up in Lake Mead, and that most of the water allocated from Lake Mead is shipped to California through water supply conveyances like the All-American Canal and the Colorado River Aqueduct, one of the things that captured our attention was that, really, we’ve created a regional, anthropogenic loop in the water cycle.  Sounding familiar?

How the Water Loop Works

The anthropogenic loop works like this.  Summer irrigation in the Central Valley doubles evaporation there. The additional water vapor travels to the 4-corners region, where it encounters the active monsoon system, and, like throwing fuel on a fire, it strengthens the monsoon by increasing precipitation, evaporation and runoff.

OC Register graphic by Sonya Quick and Maxwell Henderson that accompanied science writer Pat Brennan’s great article about our paper.

The extra runoff increases Colorado River streamflow, which ultimately flows into Lake Mead.  Some of that water, which started out as surface or groundwater in the Central Valley, completes its round trip journey by returning to California via one of our water supply canals.

In short, according to our computer model simulations, the Valley is acting like Peixoto et al.’s water towers, injecting water vapor into the atmosphere (click here to see an animation from our study) and kicking off a chain of downwind phenomena that end up returning the water, by both natural and artificial means, pretty close to its original point of departure.

When building and running computer simulation models however, there’s an important question that we should always ask ourselves.  Are these results realistic, or are they just computer model fiction?

The mechanisms are surely plausible.  As I outlined in the recipe for rainfall above, we know what it takes for precipitation to form, and our findings fall well within the limits of feasibility.

Irrigated rice fields, Sacramento River Valley, Sutter County, CA. Photo by Tom Myers

Next Steps

However, it is absolutely imperative that the scientific community work towards better representing water management in its hydrology and climate models.  Many more of these types of simulations must be conducted so that the significance and transferability of our findings can be verified.

Likewise, we need to analyze available datasets on regional irrigation rates, evaporation, vapor transport, precipitation, runoff and monsoon intensity.  That unfortunately, is easier said than done.  Many of these variables are not measured frequently enough, or with enough spatial coverage, to really determine irrigation’s remote impacts.  Or, even worse, some of them are just not measured at all.

So, we start with computer models and hope that our work will stimulate serious discussion on improving our simulation tools and our network of water cycle observations on the ground.

Let’s assume for the moment that the irrigation impacts that we have highlighted are real. What then are the implications for regional water availability and management?  Let me list a just few here.

Suppose that, in the coming decades, as groundwater depletion continues in the Central Valley, agriculture at its current mega-scale is no longer sustainable. As planted acreage and irrigation decrease, a significant source of moisture for the monsoon and Colorado River streamflow will begin to disappear.  Will we see yet another stressor on the river flow that will lead its further decrease?  More generally, can the strength of the monsoon, and by extension, runoff into the Colorado River, be modulated by managing human contributions to vapor transport into the region?

Many water-stressed regions, like the Middle East for example, already recognize the importance of water lost through evaporation and transport of the vapor out of the region.  Israel has invested heavily in minimizing evaporative and water vapor losses by employing precision drip irrigation (below the surface and almost directly on roots), by covering surface soils with plastic sheeting, and by extensive use of greenhouses.

Supplementary Figure 3 from Lo and Famiglietti, 2013. It shows in percent (%) the simulated increases in summer precipitation, evapotranspiration and runoff that result from Central Valley irrigation, compared to a simulation with no irrigation. All units are cubic kilometers and are averages over the summer (June, July and August). The change in averaged evapotranspiration for the Central Valley is shown by the blue arrow labeled  △ET_CV; the pink arrows △ET_SWUS, △P_SWUS, and △R_SWUS are the changes in averaged evapotranspiration, precipitation, and runoff across the 4-state SW U. S. region respectively; the four blue arrows around the boundaries of the 3-D box are the changes in water vapor transport into and out of the SW U. S. The change in averaged runoff to the Colorado River is ∆R_CRB. 

Will we in the United States begin to view water vapor as worthy of such investment to minimize its export?  If so, what are the implications for the downwind regions?  Will downwind neighbors clamor over water vapor rights as downstream neighbors now do with surface waters?  Will water policy need to address vapor transport as an emerging issue?

Human Impacts and the Water Cycle

A more subtle implication is this.  Clearly, humanity has been controlling the terrestrial component of the water cycle for millennia, through our global network of reservoirs, conveyances, groundwater pumping, irrigation, etc. But the consequences to the rest of the water cycle have received much less attention.

In some cases, the impacts are local: it’s no secret that Phoenix is more humid because of its reservoirs, and that the additional humidity provides a powerful amount of regional greenhouse warming.  Anecdotally, Central Valley farmers have been talking about greater levels of humidity for decades.

More irrigated rice fields, Sacramento River Valley, Sutter County, CA. Photo by Tom Myers

In other cases, we have not even considered the remote impacts, because, well, they are remote.  More importantly though, it’s also because the science has not yet led us to consider them.  Hopefully, ours and similar studies will change that.  When water management is practiced at the massive scales that it is today, there are without question, consequences for regional and global climate.

It stands to reason then that there are many other such anthropogenic water cycle loops in operation around the world, either closed (with the water returning to the source region) or open (with the water headed to a different destination).  We just haven’t identified them or tried to quantify how much water goes where.  It’s a complicated bit of accounting, but, it needs to be done.

Which brings me to my final point.  Society is struggling to cope with sustainable food and energy production in the face of global warming and water cycle change.  The only way to truly minimize our footprint is to build the knowledge base that will allow us to anticipate the full consequences of large-scale water management practices.

We haven’t tried to fully control the water cycle, and I am not suggesting that we can or that we should try. However, our work suggests that we are unintentionally exerting some control over the strength of the monsoon, Colorado River flows, and the return of the water back to California. Before we decide on and implement future large-scale water management options, we must begin to work towards a full understanding of the scope of their local and remote consequences, to all of the land, atmospheric and oceanic branches of the water cycle.

Peixoto and Kettani were hardly mad scientists. They were without a doubt way ahead of their time.  Likewise, it is not mad science to consider the full implications of individual environmental management practices.  It is responsible, modern science, and effective management and policy cannot be developed without it.  There are many knobs, dials and levers that can be adjusted in our Earth system.  Right now, most of them are being operated independently.

Likewise, impacts to the quality and quantity of water in a region are experienced equally.  When there’s a flood or a drought, we’re all affected. When groundwater supplies are being depleted, many wells go dry, not just one. If a local water supply is contaminated, everyone is subject to its ill effects. In short, with water, we have far more reasons to agree than to disagree.

Although I’ve been described as glum (“delightfully glum” actually, which I’m rather proud of), I was pleased to see, first hand, bipartisan support for drought spending in the United States.  Last week I testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).  Many Congress members, both Republicans and Democrats, came, stayed, listened intently, and asked good questions.  Sure, a few barbs were traded. But, after all, it is Congress. I left feeling sooo much less glum than usual.

OK, I agree.  A drought hearing in the middle of a major, widespread drought is truly setting the bar quite low as an indicator of the potential for bipartisan collaboration.  The hearing was minimally confrontational, and both sides agreed that NIDIS support should be continued and increased over the next few years.

However, while in town, I spoke with a number of Republican and Democratic Congress members and staffers, and aside from the occasional awkward exchange, I was struck by their apparent willingness to cooperate on a broader range of water issues:  from the application of advanced technologies for monitoring and prediction, to the emerging threats to food, energy and national security.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not that naïve. I recognize that we’ll always fight over the details. Water rights are contentious. We have numerous waste issues that are difficult to resolve. We don’t agree on climate change, or at least that humans may be to blame.  But because water is one of our nation’s most important resources, and  because it is a shared resource, there is clearly a foundation for cross-aisle collaboration already in place.

On the day following my testimony, I was extremely pleased to see U. S. Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) announce the formation of a bipartisan Senate Water Caucus to encourage dialogue on critical issues of water supply, water quality, and sustainable water resources management.  Senators Pryor and Moran recognize that the only way to make timely and significant progress is to focus on the common ground — the shared desire to ensure access to clean water for all.

Admittedly motivated by the vast scope of the current drought, the caucus will engage experts from the public and private sectors to explore emerging technologies, funding mechanisms, better coordination of local, state and federal infrastructure projects, and will even consider much needed policy changes, all in the name of ensuring the health of America’s water future.

Perhaps my goggles are tinted water-color blue, but I see a tremendous opportunity for the caucus to make important progress on fundamental issues that we have simply taken for granted for too long in our country.  I’m betting that shared goals can be found in some of these areas:

• We need to stop using our waterways and our groundwaters as our national dumping grounds. There is simply no excuse for putting human health at risk in the name of economic growth. Period. It’s time to move on from that phase of our nation’s history.  Without any doubt, we now understand how hydrology works, so that denial of our widespread impacts is no longer a viable option. We also have the technology to do much, much better in the future.

• Let’s figure out how much groundwater we have in our nation’s aquifers, including both its volume and potability.  In many aquifers, we just don’t know.  Let’s determine how much water we actually need, for domestic, industrial, power, and for agricultural needs, and importantly, for the preservation and health of the environment.   Let’s explore how both of these will change, with conservation, enhanced efficiencies and population growth on the demand side, and with increasing temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and declining snowpacks on the supply side.

• Let’s vastly improve our decision support system for water issues so that we can tackle them using a technologically-advanced framework.   Our nation’s computer modeling assets for water resources can be far more realistic than they are at present.  As above, the technology and understanding are there. But bipartisan commitment is essential in order to get it done.  Only then can our researchers and water agencies provide sound, science-based, truly best available options for our elected officials and water managers to consider.

Read the sign: what to expect without bipartisan support. (l-r) Kathy Eiler, UC Irvine, Congresswoman Grace Napolitiano (D-CA, 38th District), Jay Famigletti (UC Irvine), Sasha Richey (UC Irvine), Neeta Bijoor (UC Irvine), and David Wegner (U. S. House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment)

Water knows no political boundaries, and on several of these common sense steps forward, I am optimistic that like-minded members of Congress can transcend the their parties’ boundaries as well.

In the U.S., push is finally coming to shove with water.  There is now a compelling need to erode the continental divide to foster much needed cross-party cooperation.   Water issues can emerge as a shining example of successful bipartisan collaboration, while propelling our nation to the global forefront of advanced water monitoring, prediction and management.  It’s time to show the world how water can unite in our country, and that together, we are all taking America’s water future quite seriously.

The unwashed truth about my closet. I rarely wash my jeans. Nor should you. Photo by Jay Famiglietti.

A few years ago, my wife Cathy suggested that I consider incorporating advice in my climate change lectures on the little things that we can do each day to combat global warming.  Although I tend to deliver most of my doom and gloom messages with a smile, the scope of the environmental issues that we face typically leaves students feeling pretty overwhelmed.  And me too by the way.

Cathy was spot on. Once I started incorporating these discussions into my classes, students became energized. They felt empowered. They wanted to learn more. They were ready to act!  Go get’em young people! You’re our great hope for the future!

Fast forward to 2012.  My research has become increasingly more focused on defining the global water crisis.  I’m delivering countless academic and public lectures on what we’re finding.  And I’ve done numerous Q & A sessions after screenings of the water documentary Last Call at the Oasis.

What’s the most frequent question that I’m asked?  Just as my wife had anticipated, nearly everyone wants to know what little things they can do at home or at work to have an impact on this huge problem.

That and how we got Jack Black to appear in Last Call.

Well, here’s my take on it. I’ll start with an important disclaimer that probably applies to all of us, so it really frames my primary recommendation well.

I’m not perfect. My family is not perfect.  We should convert our yard to native landscaping, but we haven’t yet. It’s tough to break the bottled water habit with my kids, and their showers are too long.  Like everyone else, we are creatures of habit.

Hence my core recommendation. Think big. Act small.

Thinking big.  By thinking big, I mean that in order to make a dent in your home water use, you should focus on the biggest offenders.  For example, if you were working on your home budget, you would concentrate on your biggest expenditures and make cuts there – dining out too frequently for example, rather than changing to a generic brand of peanut butter.

For many homeowners, watering the yard accounts for over 50% of domestic water use.  Home landscape irrigation is likely the number one low hanging fruit for saving water. You can always use less, and you’ll save money.  If you don’t have a weather-smart sprinkler system (we don’t), keep an eye on the sky, and always turn off the sprinklers if rain is in the forecast. If you can afford to make the change, consider converting to a native landscape.

After the yard, the biggest uses of water in the home are toilets, laundry, showers, faucets, and leaks.  High efficiency (low flow) plumbing fixtures and appliances (front-loading washers for example) should be staples of the modern home when affordable.

Acting small. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, so I recommend taking one small step at a time. Keep it tractable and sustainable.  For example, it’s tough to keep going with a 1,000-calorie per day diet. It’s much easier to cut out a Coke at lunch.

Pick one thing to do in your home. Take a minute or two off the length of your shower.  If you own your home and have a yard, cut back on the outdoor watering.  Over the long term you can call the plumber to get those leaks fixed, or think about purchasing those more efficient fixtures and appliances.

5 Other Things I Do To Save Water.  Domestic partners everywhere will hate me for these suggestions, all of which I embrace with gusto at home.  While they all fall under the category of lifestyle changes that are consistent with a water limited lifestyle, they also conveniently justify a more ‘relaxed’ approach to grooming and hygiene.  In other words, they make me feel good about being lazy.

1)   Skip a shower or bath on weekends.  You can still clean up and smell good (though you should probably check with my family). Just, take a day off. Go for it.

2)   Ditch washing the car. What a waste.  And if you are one of those people that hoses off their driveways, please, save the water and find a better use of your time.

3)   Did you know that those expensive designer jeans that we all wear now are not meant to be washed?  Like ever?  I just hang them back up in the closet after each wearing.  Of course you need to spot clean, and honestly, I do throw them in the wash…eventually.

That's me, right now, and it's Sunday. See what I mean? No wonder my family never wants to go out on Saturday nights any more. Well, it's all in the name of saving water. Photo by Cathy Famiglietti

4)   I’m down to shaving once a week, on Monday mornings. I have a beard trimmer, and I live near LA, so it’s all good. But between this and the shower thing, you should see me on Sundays.  Alternatively, you could buy a rechargeable razor, or better yet, grow a beard.

Here’s the set-up. A critical problem that we face in the U.S. is that as a country, we lack the vision and leadership to clearly articulate our fundamental water issues, and to implement a comprehensive plan to tackle them. As usual, my focus is on water quantity for large regions such as nations and continents, which is my area of expertise.

I’m talking about big picture issues here – the forest, not the trees – because many of our local, state, and federal agencies are doing a superb job with their targeted missions.  The USGS, NASA, NOAA, DOE, the National Weather Service, the Army Corps, the Bureau of Reclamation, etc., are all doing great things with the limited resources that they have.

But we need to step up and recognize that there’s a lot that we don’t know about water availability, and even more that we can’t predict. The general public and our elected officials need to know the issues so that we can make the investments that we need today, in order to propose technologically advanced, science-based management and solution strategies for tomorrow. The forest is in trouble, and the trees are already dying off.  It’s time to act.

To illustrate my point, here are a few of what I’ve been calling the ‘unfortunate realities’ of modern hydrology. I’ve been elaborating on these this year in a series of lectures, called the Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lectureship, sponsored by the Geological Society of America.  The lecture tour has provided a rare opportunity to visit with colleagues in the U.S. and abroad, and to construct a holistic picture of the water landscape of the 21st century.

Unfortunate Reality #1. We don’t know how much fresh water we have on land. Not stored as groundwater, or surface water, as soil moisture, or as snow.

How much snow do we have in the Rocky Mountains right now? We have a guess, but we can’t really measure it. So…we don’t know.

How much groundwater is stored beneath California’s Central Valley, and how much of it is potable?  Well, we don’t really know that either.

Believe it. It’s true. And not just in the U.S., but all over the world.  Many estimates, for example, of national groundwater supplies, are simply guesses based on ad hoc assumptions.  Others are reports of water storage in man-made reservoirs.

If you have any notion of how we can address sustainable water management as a nation, without knowing how much water is actually there, please let me know.

Unfortunate Reality #2. Our knowledge of Earth’s water environment at the surface and shallow subsurface remains appallingly insufficient. We know very little about the topography that we can’t see beneath the water surface, for example, the bathymetry of hundreds of thousands of river channels, floodplains, and lakes.

Nor do we have any idea how deep our soils are, at least at larger regional, national, and global scales. While two-dimensional maps of global hydrogeology are now available, the third dimension, as well as basic aquifer parameters, remain a mystery for large areas like nations and continents.

Two-dimensional map of global hydrogeology from WHYMAP, http://whymap.org

Why is this important? Well for one, we need the information to quantify how much water we have.  Second, we need to include its digital description in our computer models so that we can better predict floods, drought and water availability in the future.

How, for example, can we predict global change impacts on groundwater resources, if we can’t realistically represent the characteristics of the soil and groundwater reservoirs in our computer models?  The answer is of course, that we cannot.

Unfortunate Reality #3. Our nation’s hydrologic modeling assets — the computer models that we use to understand and forecast water availability, flooding, and drought —  are simply not up to the task of addressing our most pressing societal issues of food, energy, water, and national security. We are behind where we need to be, and we are falling behind other nations.

Don’t get me wrong: we are making slow, steady progress. Our computer models are running at higher resolution, with greater fidelity, and are providing unprecedented insights into issues of water quality and quantity.  But the list of what these tools can’t, yet need to do, is long, and current levels of investment won’t get us there any time soon.

If you thought that we had state-of-the-art, comprehensive computer models that could seamlessly ingest satellite observations and measurements on the ground to help monitor and forecast snowpack, river flows, soil water and groundwater levels; or that could accurately reproduce the realities of water landscape that are emerging from satellite programs like the GRACE mission…well, we don’t.

Groundwater depletion in India from GRACE. Image courtesy of NASA/UCI/JPL. After Rodell et al., 2009, Nature.

Let’s face facts. We can’t really manage water sustainably now, nor can we predict water availability in the future, without dealing with these issues first.   It is absolutely essential that we determine how much water we have, as snow, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater;  how much water we need, for humans and for the environment; and how these quantities will change with time, as climate and population changes, and as we adapt to a resource-limited future.  We need to move forward with core observations and models that can utilize them to answer these questions, to advance prediction and to help prepare for the future.

How can we accomplish this?  Since we lack a national water czar, policy, or agency in the U.S., much of what I’m writing about here has fallen through the cracks for too long.  There’s no one there to take ownership.

Consequently, vision and leadership are sorely needed.  We need champions.  Our elected officials must embrace this sustainable water challenge through awareness, commitment, and focus.

Research leadership, from our funding agencies through communities of investigators, must also take responsibility for making it happen.  Communication of key results and research needs to elected officials and to the general public, though atypical for this group, is becoming increasingly important to heighten awareness

There’s a grand challenge on the table.  We must aggressively tackle the frontiers of:

1) Exploration and mapping of Earth’s shallow crustal water environment, including its freshwater bathymetry, soils, hydrogeology, its water quantity and quality, and synthesis of available information.

2) Advanced digital water data and information system capabilities for archiving and disseminating these data, with open, easy access to all information.  New policies for sharing environmental data across political boundaries are also required.

3) Development of next-generation computer models that readily exploit this new information, as well as capabilities to evolve with rapid advances in computer power and the structure of the internet.

4) Clear pathways to transfer newly developed tools, observations and research results to water managers and practitioners, environmental decision makers, and a plan for communication to the public.

National research programs, like NSF’s EarthCube, and innovative activities led by hydrology’s university consortium, CUASHI, are all part of what could be a national strategy for accelerating the development of advanced monitoring and prediction capabilities for water availability.  Meanwhile, individual teams of principle investigators are making important strides towards synthesizing available information on continental and global-scale water availability.

Estimated groundwater storage in Africa as a) depth in mm, with recharge as solid lines for comparison; and b) volume by country with error bars. From MacDonald et al., 2012, Environmental Research Letters..

However, we cannot escape the reality that our national investment in arguably our most fundamental resource lags embarrassingly far behind similar investments in other disciplines (weather and climate prediction; space exploration) or resources (energy and minerals).  We must plan for major, new investments in the tools and resources — namely models, observations, and data products and information systems — to enable the critical understanding and solution strategies that society demands, and that the research community is capable of delivering.

Finally, communication and public education are essential to achieve broad awareness and consensus.  People care deeply about water.  The environment requires it to maintain its health and function.  Both will be best served only when our critical water issues are elevated to the level of everyday understanding.  Only then can we make a complete commitment to a sustainable water future for America.

Over the last two and a half years, my students and I have had the good fortune to be involved in the production of Last Call at the Oasis, Participant Media’s/ATO Picture‘s new documentary on the global water crisis, and how it is already taking root in the United States.  It turns out that Last Call includes its own share of superheroes, and over these last couple of years, I’ve come to know some of them and their stories.  Now that you’ve gotten The Avengers out of your system (and you know that it’s left you looking for more), let me share some of the realities of the lives of Last Call’s water warriors with you.

Lynn Henning: the ‘white-haired witch’ from Michigan.  Lynn is holding the feet of the CAFOs to the fire by showing that disposing of hundreds of millions of tons of cow manure by spreading it inches deep over our nation’s croplands, where it immediately contaminates the surface and groundwaters that we drink, well, is not the brightest idea.  She’s sacrificed her health by routinely exposing herself to toxic runoff while making her volunteer measurements of water quality, and while she and her family are subjected to violent intimidation and retribution. That’s one damn good witch in my book.

Tyrone Hayes: the jovial Berkeley professor and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. Tyrone is taking on big agriculture by demonstrating that one of the most commonly used herbicides in the United States, Atrazine, is actually changing male frogs into females.  Connect the dots with me.  What do you think this is doing to us, or to our kids, or to our babies?  Big chemical corporations like Syngenta don’t want you to know, and they are actively trying to discredit Tyrone. But he keeps smiling, teaching his students, doing his research and carrying on the good fight.

Pat Mulroy:  the tiny water manager from Las Vegas with the larger-than-life personality.  Her passion and commitment to bringing water to her city of two million residents is only overshadowed by the difficulties of the task that she faces every single day. Small in size, but huge in drive and spirit, you may disagree with some of her ideas, but, honestly, I would never want her job.

There are many more stories like these in the film – from the farmers of the world, who grow our produce and grains and who raise our dairy cows in the face of dwindling water supplies; to ‘Iron Man’ Erin Brockovich, who refuses to take no for an answer, and is still at it after all these years.

Like all good superheroes, these people inspire me, and they will inspire you too. It doesn’t mean that we’re safe, because, these folks are, after all, mere mortals. And as Brockovich states succinctly in the movie, ‘Superman is not coming.’

The truth is, we’re all Underdog here folks.  We have many, many water issues to deal with. Make no mistake about that. And that includes the United States.  But, as director Jessica Yu recently emailed, ‘that boulder’s going uphill dammit!’  But only if we all work together.  Kind of like the Avengers.

Last Call at the Oasis was produced by Participant Media/ATO Pictures, and is currently playing in New York City and Los Angeles. It opens today in San Francisco, Berkeley, Irvine, Las Vegas and Washington, DC.  Last Call was inspired by The Ripple Effect by Alex Prud’homme.