Three Drop - Re-thinking One Water
How do we make One Water projects more resilient to all the challenges we know are coming?
Friends of Confluence West -
How do we make One Water projects more resilient to all the challenges we know are coming?
Here’s what we’re looking at –
1. We need to stop planning around where organizational boundaries end and start planning around where the water goes.
2. California's water system does not begin at a reservoir, groundwater basin, treatment plant, or conveyance facility. It begins in landscapes.
3. Headwaters function as infrastructure, but natural infrastructure continues throughout the entire water pathway, not only at its source.
4. The natural environment is both infrastructure and a water user; it provides services to the water system and has its own operating requirements.
One Water will become a management model only when planning, regulation, governance, financing, data, and investment can work across the boundaries that divide the physical system.
Here’s what we’re doing this Fall - Please take a look at this summary:
Starting the conversation (that’s where all of you come in!) Comments, please, on this PPT.
Incorporating feedback, issuing a report that will go into more detail on the ‘why’, ‘how’, and what’s next.
Next up this Winter:
Incorporating the work ACWA is doing on this, present a regulatory framework for what is needed to get there.
Webinar on all of the above.
Many, many more conversations.
The evolution of water management has given rise to what we increasingly call One Water: the idea that water should be managed as an interconnected resource rather than through separate institutional and infrastructure silos. Yet California's transition remains incomplete. We’ve gotten better at connecting managed water resources in plans and projects, but not at consistently understanding or managing the full system of physical, ecological, operational, human, institutional, and economic forces that shape outcomes.
We’re very much looking forward to your comments and ideas! All appreciated. Give us a call or email.
For the West,
Kimery & Lisa
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PS - Confluence West fans will note a new web page on our site: Getting Ready - We have an opportunity to inform the next federal Administration, as well as the incoming administrations of Western states. Confluence West and our colleagues are developing inclusive policy options for Western water and forest management, public health and climate change, and social and environmental justice. Let’s get ready! Please join us with your comments, ideas, and funding support!
In the terrific news department, Confluence West and Blue Bridge Strategies, LLC (Lisa Haney) are teaming up on a couple of projects. Many of you know Lisa from her work at the Orange County Water District and as the lead on the district’s pioneering groundwater recharge and other sustainability projects.
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Many excellent NGOs, water utilities, tribes, Nations, communities, and public agencies are working to protect rivers and forests in the American West from the (sometimes overwhelming) challenges posed by climate change. We are proud to partner with many of them.
Why support and work with Confluence West? Since 2007, we've learned that long-term, equitable solutions require dedicated and talented people from every sector, issue area, perspective, expertise, and culture to bring their part of the elephant, their truth, to the table.
We build and lead projects that connect diverse decision-makers who, in turn, create science- and evidence-based campaigns. Check out our work! Or, email Kimery.