Monday, January 11, 2016

How can we help with the World’s most urgent water problems?


Dr. Alberto Montanari is the editor of Water Resources Research, the “water” journal of the American Geophysical Union. In a recent REDIT Forum he was asked the following question:


And here is his response:


In short, continuous monitoring is a fundamental requirement for addressing water problems. This reminds me of one of our earliest projects, circa 2007, where we developed a comprehensive groundwater basin monitoring system for the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA), in California. We named our system SHIP (Sonoma Hydrologic Information System). SHIP allows SCWA personnel as well as others from the local water districts, well owners and volunteers to enter groundwater levels into a shared, web-based platform (check for EIMS here http://info.webh2o.net/)

SHIP had a nice 2-years run, data were collected, shared, plotted, stored, etc. See for example the map below. It shows the Sonoma Creek Groundwater Basin, the groundwater level contour map (in blue) and flow directions (in red arrows).



But there was a problem.. the water law did not require well owners to post data. And they were reluctant to post it. Posting data could disclose how much water is being pumped at a certain area, and could be used as a basis for enforcement of some kind.  The State of California made a bold move in that direction, when it initiated, in 2009, the California Statewide Groundwater Elevation Monitoring (CASGEM) program that mandates some monitoring. Our SHIP is ready to sail and to support this effort in California and everywhere.


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