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Grassroots Cactivism, by Ali Chen California is entering the fourth year of an epic drought. Urban households have reduced water usage by 25%. However, legislation does not apply to farmers, while 80% of the state's water usage goes towards agricultural production. A large percentage of that... View full entry
Recharge City, by Barry LehrmanRecharge City evaluates pragmatic options for recharging the groundwater in Los Angeles County by recycling the 502 million gallons of water that is dumped by Hyperion Treatment Plant and the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant into the Pacific each day. This is... View full entry
What if the Valley could have multiple wells placed around the city in contingent locations for maximum water replenishment back into the Aquifer?Liquifying Aquifers, by Lujac DesautelThe story of water in the San Fernando Valley is the by-product of the American frontier to the West and the... View full entry
Every drop countsLiquid Bank, by Juan SaezLiquid Bank confronts California’s drought from both a local and global perspective. The project addresses the relationship between domestic water consumption and the global water crisis with the development of water related infrastructure in emerging... View full entry
San Diego may be known as "America's Finest City," but — at least this week — it's also the epicenter of the desalination and water reuse movement. [...]
The area had one of the first desalination plants — opened in Point Loma in 1961 — and will soon see a $1-billion facility open in Carlsbad. [...]
a sustainable water future depends on two things: "political leadership and public engagement, whether it's desalination or reuse."
— latimes.com
Desalination is just one large-scale technology for treating potable water, but it's attracted recent attention in places like Santa Barbara and San Diego as the California cities ramp up their water-conservation efforts and learn how to market the large upfront costs of desalination as long-term... View full entry
Got an inventive design idea on how to address the historic drought that's parching up California? Send your submissions to Archinect's Dry Futures competition! Architects and non-architects worldwide are welcome to send entries that are imaginative, pragmatic, idealist, or even dystopic. The... View full entry
Peter Zellner comes to Archinect's Dry Futures jury with a diverse architectural background, having worked for large, infrastructurally-minded firms like AECOM, while previously designing smaller-scale art spaces under his own firm, ZELLNERPLUS. In September of 2015, Peter will launch ZNc... View full entry
Geoff Manaugh is a design and architecture writer, contributing to publications such as Dwell, New Scientist and The New Yorker, as well as authoring several books and the long-running design and architecture site, BLDGBLOG.Manaugh’s perspective on the drought focuses on the ripe opportunities... View full entry
Got a sketchy blueprint for a greywater purifier lying around? An unfinished section drawing for the next drought-friendly Californian front yard? Some e-commerce market for exchanging water rights? Designs for a better reservoir? Gussy up those plans and submit them to Archinect's Dry Futures... View full entry
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... View full entry
Ian Quate and Colleen Tuite are the co-founders of “nomadic landscape architecture studio” GRNASFCK, based in New York City. The two began collaborating as graduate students at RISD in 2011, bringing Quate’s knowledge of botany and landscape architecture together with Tuite’s art practice... View full entry
The drought is more of a climatological phenomenon, but it’s important to recognize that we need to sustain available groundwater to help us get through these periods of very little rain and snow.” — Jay Famiglietti
As the senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jay Famiglietti has been studying groundwater depletion globally since 1995. With his team at JPL, Famiglietti has tracked freshwater availability using satellites and developed computer models to better understand how supplies... View full entry
I want to see the relationship between architecture and other infrastructure and landscape architecture strengthened, so that we’re building good infrastructure that relates well to the landscape and is sustainable.” — Charles Anderson
Charles Anderson FSLA is the president/principal of WERK, a landscape architecture firm based in what he calls “the heart of LA in a lot of ways, at least for the strange people,” Venice Beach. Living and working next to the Pacific, Anderson has seen firsthand the power and presence of the... View full entry
There’s no such thing as the drought being over. There are only going to be cycles and our cycles, most models tell us, are only going to continue to be extreme. Wet will be wetter and dry will by drier." — Hadley Arnold
Peter and Hadley Arnold are the founding co-directors of the Arid Lands Institute, a design-centered research platform devoted to making drylands "water-smart" the world over. Based in Los Angeles out of Woodbury University, ALI uses the American West as a case study for developing adaptive... View full entry
Should the current drought extend for another two or three years, most California cities and much of the state's agriculture would be able to manage, but the toll on small rural communities dependent on well-water and on wetlands and wildlife could be extensive.
That was the assessment of a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California, released late Tuesday.
...the report cautions that “it would not be prudent to count on El Nino to end the drought.”
— LA Times
The report is titled "What if the drought continues?" Apparently, this is quite possible. If the drought extends 2 or 3 years, the report notes, agriculture and urban areas should be able to scrape by. But, like with other ecological crises, the worst will be experienced by lower-income, rural... View full entry
