After a relatively wet winter, California, suspended the statewide 25 reductions in urban water use last week with a sharp change in policy. El Niño storms fell short in Southern California; however, it partly filled the reservoirs and snowpacks in the northern part of the state. The removal of regulations might give us a false sense of security, but the water crisis is far from over. In the western United States, nonrenewable groundwater has been pumped at unsustainable rates, emptying our hidden reservoirs.

Around the world, groundwater supplies half of our needs. These underground reservoirs are only visible when they flow from springs and wells. California’s five-year long drought depleted snow packs, rivers, and lakes. According to a report from Stanford University, the state relied on groundwater to meet 60 percent of the state’s water needs to compensate for the shrinking water supplies.

Some shallow aquifers recharge from surface water, but during the drought, the depth at which water is found drops below the surface, and water cannot easily recharge with rainfall and streamflow. In fact, some of these deeper aquifers contain water sealed up by geological changes millions of years ago. Once these “fossil” aquifers are gone, they are gone forever. And as they are depleted, potential environmental changes, including the sinking of the land, begin to scale up.

California’s well-drilling records, unlike other western states, are kept secret from the public, and there is no statewide policy limiting groundwater use. Property owners can consume as much water as they want from the underground they own. Even if Legislators regulate and limit groundwater use, the compliance plans wouldn’t be required until 2020 and the full restrictions wouldn’t come through until 2040.

It is a fact that Californians need to change their relationship with their declining water supplies, including managing and conserving groundwater reservoirs. Confidence might be restored with the new regulations, but there is still an imminent need to adapt to more arid times.

The implementation of policies and water efficient technologies— such as Falcon’s waterfree urinals and hybrid are crucial to support our sustainability efforts.

[CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WATER CONSERVATION TECHNOLOGIES]

Since the last major drought of the late 1980’s to the early 1990’s, most urban areas in California have invested in resources to boost water resilience and have adapted to cope with the dry weather. But in some rural areas, drinking water wells have gone dry, forcing environmental water managers to allocate fish, birds and other wildlife away from scarce water flows.

California has many options for meeting current and future demands. For example:

• the cost effective option for expansion of non-traditional sources —such as recycled wastewater and captured stormwater
• the use of water efficient technologies — waterfree urinals and the hybrid
• the sale or leasing of water, also known as water marketing
• increase the efficiency to transfer water to growing urban areas, and from lower-to higher revenue crops.

To improve supply reliability, in 2014 California enacted historic legislation to improve groundwater management, giving local agencies authority to implement sustainable practices and address contamination problems. Typically, groundwater supplies a third of all water; however, during dry years, this rate increases to compensate for the lack of rain. Without limits on pumping in normal and wet years, many basins use this resource unsustainably, ultimately preventing groundwater recovery.

An important indicator of overall ecosystem health is the populations of native fish. Because of costly water supply restrictions, wastewater and flood protection projects, their decline and protection have conflicted with other management goals. However, the state should create a more comprehensive and coordinated environmental approach to support California’s aquatic ecosystems and the life systems that depend on them.

The diversification of water supplies in some small communities has improved the ability to weather drought conditions, demonstrating that new plumbing codes, water conservation technologies — such as Falcon’s high performance water conservation technologies — rebates and better pricing incentives have all caused urban water efficiency to rise.

There is no doubt that California’s future is a dry one. As a result, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order on May 9th, in an effort to ensure a drought resilient state for decades to come.  Traditional water infrastructure —dams, aqueducts and groundwater wells — still provides great benefits to cities and industrial agriculture, but their escalating limitations are evident, in the form of ecological devastation and higher costs to consumers. Our growing population needs to rethink and imagine solutions that can sustainably address the needs of both human and natural ecosystems together.

Rivers, lakes, the atmosphere and groundwater represent only 1 percent of Earth’s fresh water. By 2030, half of the global population will be living in areas of high water stress. Our growing population and resource-intensive farming is projected to exceed water supply by 40%, putting that 1% under great threat.

According to the latest research conducted by SIWI, already almost 20% of the world’s population live in areas where water resources are approaching or has exceeded sustainable limits and more than 75% of river flows are withdrawn for agriculture, industry and domestic purposes. In the hospitality industry, water plays a determining part in everyday operations and service.

For many hotels, water accounts for 10% of utility bills, and by purchasing fresh water and then by disposing it as waste water, most hotels pay twice for it. Depending on their water efficiency strategies, hotels can reduce the amount of water consumed per guest per night by up to 50%. For example, hotel guests can make an immediate impact by have guests reuse their towels, saving thousands of gallons of water per day. Beyond the obvious cost savings, hotels have an equally compelling moral reason to save as water is a limited resource, and hotels have a responsibility to not use more than necessary, and reduce the risk of water pollution.

With climate change worsening and the number of eco-conscious guests growing, sustainable practices should be embraced in the hospitality industry to reduce environmental impact while enhancing the destination experience.

Some tips for hotels to reduce their water usage are:

Public Amenities

• Install waterfree Urinals and water-efficient Toilets

Guest Rooms

• Give guests the opportunity to request clean sheets and towels as needed.
• Install water-efficient toilets and showers

Kitchens

• Install water efficient fixtures and flow regulators to reduce waste

Outdoor Areas

• Use recycled water
• Plant native plants
• Use mulch

Swimming Pools

• Optimize and recycle backwash
• Use temperature regulation
• Perform proper maintenance

Laundry

• Use recycled water
• Maintain water temperature steadily. This can provide both heat energy savings and a dramatic drop in greenhouse emissions.

Did you know LADWP offers $500 in rebates per waterfree urinal? Learn more about it here

Last March, California officials announced that El Niño brought a greater snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range than there has been in years. Despite this years snowpack, there are plenty of worrying signs in the mountain range, which, according to the state Department of Water Resources, is a crucial natural water reservoir. Natural systems and humans depend on the accumulation of snow as a vital source of water in the Northern Hemisphere. After the snow melts, it flows into rivers and reservoirs, proving about 30 percent of water to Californians in warmer months.

By capturing water in solid form in cold months and releasing it over time, snow serves as a backup reservoir, and any changes can affect how much water is available for people, industry and agriculture.

The snowpack is measured by inserting special metal tubes in the snow and later calculating how much water would result if the snow is melted. For example, 30 inches of snow on March 30 could be equivalent to about 12 inches of water. Usually, dry and powdery snow holds about 10 to 12 percent moisture by volume, and later accumulation and compression can increase the moisture content to about 40 percent.

Monitoring stations that record moisture conditions of the snowpack throughout the mountain range are already showing the effects of warmer temperatures. Historically reliable snow zones, where snow accumulates until March or early April and then melts, now behave as lower elevation zones, where the snow goes through a cycle of accumulation and melting at a faster rate. As temperatures warm, the altitude at which water is now stored becomes higher in elevation. This change in elevation means that less terrain is covered in snow.

Because warmer air can hold more moisture, researchers are expecting an increase of liquid precipitation rather than solid form in some areas, which means less snowpack storage and faster uncaptured runoff.

Despite a more favorable and wet El Niño across the northern half of the state, El Niño did not bring any major storms in Southern California, and with California’s traditional rainy season quickly fading into a hot, dry summer, the snowfall decline could present important complications to the hydrology of an area already expecting “dry winters” from La Niña.

With the uncertainty of the weather and the exacerbated effects of global warming, California needs to invest in a more sustainable infrastructure through water saving technologies that will lead the nation’s transformation toward a more drought resilient future.

[CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WATER CONSERVATION TECHNOLOGIES]