Like many cities in semi-arid regions, Los Angeles relies on extensive, centralized redistribution projects for its water supply. Water is transported hundreds of kilometers to support agricultural and urban activities in southern California; however, allocations from remote sources have been declining due to drought, over-extractions, and competing water needs. Increasingly, local governments and water districts are relying on local water sources within the southern California coastal areas including local groundwater, rainwater capture, conservation measures, and recycled water sources. Yet, these resources are managed by a complex set of agencies and water districts with different structures, histories, and priorities, but which often access similar water resources. In addition, the jurisdictions of different water management institutions rarely correspond to watershed and other hydrologic boundaries, such that the connectivities of the socio-political system and the connectivities of the ecohydrologic system present a set of very complex networks for water management. This project will focus on understanding the coupled ecohydrologic and decision-making processes that determine the availability of local water resources in southern California, with the goal of addressing the questions 1) What is the current structure of local groundwater, wastewater, and stormwater management? 2) What are the ecohydrologic constraints on local groundwater and rainwater resources? 3) What is the regional water balance? 4) What are the overlaps and disconnects between the ecohydrologic and decision-making domains? 5) What are feasible targets for conservation given our understanding of biophysical, technological, political, and fiscal constraints? 6) How are these impacted by scenarios of future climate change? To address these issues, this project will draw on extensive existing datasets from previous research as well as public utility and agency data to: model the local water balance and groundwater flows; analyze the structure of local water management institutions; compare and contrast the ecohydrologic and political boundaries and constraints on local water resources; evaluate the vulnerabilities of the ecohydrologic and decision-making components of the local water system to climate, fiscal austerity and land use change; and utilize modeling and decision-making tools to evaluate proposed best practices.
This project addresses the most critical issues for water sustainability in the region, many of which involve decreasing southern California's reliance on imported water. To do this, the linkages and mismatches between the natural and human components of the water system must be analyzed. The project will directly evaluate the decision-making tools currently used by local agencies and NGOs to plan groundwater infiltration projects. It will also integrate research datasets with other public and published local information about water consumption and end uses, outdoor landscaping and species specific water use, and current information about best management practices (BMPs) for Los Angeles. These will be evaluated relative to institutional and political constraints such as resistance to maintaining existing infrastructure (due to costs) and funding new initiatives. There will be stakeholder involvement in direct meetings and in a publicly available data repository. Stakeholder partners will form a Technical Advisory Board to provide input on usable data products for local applications. In collaboration with students and a post-doctoral researcher, a central website for project datasets and results will be developed, and data services that are responsive to the needs of the Technical Advisory Board will be provided, including reports and synthetic analyses. The project will engage local students at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels as well as in K-12 teacher training activities at the participating institutions and outreach activities of local NGOs. Through a subcontract with the local grassroots organization Urban Semillas, the project will incorporate the results of the research into "Agua University," a program for underserved and minority high school students in Los Angeles. Finally, the project will partner with the non-profit organization TreePeople to enhance their outreach and education facility focused on water infiltration, conservation, and quality.
