Archinect - News

California unveils water security strategy to prevent 10% loss in supply by 2040

2022-08-16T11:20:00-04:00

California Governor Gavin Newsom has unveiled a new plan to enable the state to secure its water supply in the face of a hotter, drier climate. The strategy is in response to a prediction that California’s existing water supply could diminish by up to 10% by 2040, the equivalent of losing more than the full volume of the state’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake.

The strategy, contained in a 16-page document, includes four pillars. New storage space for up to 4 million acre-feet of water will be created, allowing the state to collect water during storms to store and use during drier periods. The state will also aim to recycle and reuse at least 800,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2030, water that is currently discharged to the ocean.

Meanwhile, 500,000 acre-feet of water will be unlocked by permanently eliminating water waste and using water more efficiently, while new water will also be made available by capturing stormwater, as well as desalinating ocean water and salty water in ...

Watch a meditative and breathtaking aerial survey of the L.A. River

2017-01-05T14:26:00-05:00

Only one thing is certain now that Frank Gehry has undertaken the plan to revitalize the LA River: in the future, it will be different.

Check out Archinect's extensive coverage of the LA River Redevelopment, including interviews with major players like Mia Lehrer via the Next Up series...

This elegant aerial video by Chang Kim captures the current state of the concrete-channeled river, offering not only a meditative journey over freeway overpasses, opportunistic scrub brush and litter-choked rivulets, but a lush historic record of what this city's main water artery was, whatever it may eventually become. With a spare piano soundtrack composed by Nils Frahm, the video comes in at just under five minutes:

Will Gehry's L.A. River plan result in water savings?

2016-08-04T12:53:00-04:00

For decades, the concrete-lined L.A. River has been more famous for being a bone-dry iconic conduit for films like Terminator 2 than a major watery artery, but that may change: in a talk with Christopher Hawthorne on Monday, Frank Gehry mentioned that his design may just save the city significant amounts of cash when it comes to buying water. Per the Hollywood Reporter:

The river, which was bound in concrete beginning in the late 1930s after a series of damaging floods, is also frequently blamed for wasting water, one of Los Angeles’ most embattled resources. Because the river’s concrete binding was designed to channel floodwaters swiftly into the ocean and away from properties on the banks, the city now loses more than 28.6 billion gallons of water a year, according to River L.A., a nonprofit working with Gehry’s firm and funded in part by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

“We think we can save the city one-third of what it now pays for imported water,” Gehry said in conversati...

One CEO's plan to supply water to drought-stricken CA cities, and obviously profit from it

2016-01-20T15:14:00-05:00

Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814bn gallons of water from under the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2bn doing so...In addition to environmental concerns, others object to a private company being able to make billions from water. Slater says they do not understand the law, which in California states no entity can own water but they can buy, sell and trade the right to use it.

America: The land where nothing is free, indeed.

h/t New Republic

How is water used in California?

2015-08-25T12:12:00-04:00

No California resident can claim ignorance of the current drought conditions: things are bad, and they'll probably stay that way for a while. Governor Jerry Brown called for statewide water restrictions earlier this year, and news coverage of dwindling supplies, dry rivers and sinking farmland have flooded the local and national media for months. While the drought is on every Californian’s mind in some way, it can still be hard to imagine the sheer physical extent of our water: where it comes from, and how exactly we use it. Making drought conditions tangible can be difficult for anyone, in or out of California.

In the final week of Archinect’s open call for submissions to our Dry Futures competition, we’ve compiled some helpful stats and figures for better understanding water use in California. These are basic numbers, intended to be used as a framing context for how water flows through the state. But first, let’s clarify some water-based terminology, courtesy of the US Geological S...