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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
Allison Arieff is the editorial director of SPUR, an urban planning advocacy non-profit based in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. Known in full as San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, SPUR is primarily focused on improving urban planning efforts and policy in the San Francisco Bay... View full entry
It is a region where America, the global superpower, looks more like a developing nation [...]. Indeed, the water crisis is becoming a humanitarian one -- because the absurd agricultural policy of many arid regions in California is being carried to extremes. More recklessly than elsewhere, wetlands in the state are being dried out to make irrigated agriculture possible.
Agriculture makes up 2 percent of California's GDP, and yet it consumes 80 percent of the state's water.
— spiegel.de
More on California's drought:Selling residents on a water park during a droughtWill California's drought turn the state into something like the Australian outback?Coating the LA reservoir in "shade balls" will save 300M gallons of waterCalifornia drought sucks San Jose's Guadalupe river... View full entry
Dublin is building a water park — in the middle of the worst drought in California’s modern history. [...]
“It just looks bad, frankly ... It looks like we are out there thinking, ‘Let’s just go out there and build a water park,’ when the rest of the state is suffering.” [...]
“Even if the drought weren’t to end,” said Lori Taylor, a spokeswoman for the city, “there will be a need for places where kids need to learn how to swim.”
— nytimes.com
More on California's drought:Will California's drought turn the state into something like the Australian outback?Coating the LA reservoir in "shade balls" will save 300M gallons of waterCalifornia drought sucks San Jose's Guadalupe river dryArchinect's "Dry Futures" competition featured by MSNBC... View full entry
California has water resources that Australia does not have...
Even assuming the forecasts of climate change in California are correct, it is not correct to say California’s climate is likely to become drier overall—more like Australia—so much as it is to say that our dry periods may be longer, and our wet periods may be “flashier” and more intense.
The policy prescriptions that flow from that, then, make a discussion about adopting “the Australian model” a complete non-sequitur.
— Natural Resource Report
For related coverage of the drought in California, check out these links:Coating the LA reservoir in "shade balls" will save 300M gallons of waterWill turning California farmland into residential development help save water?A portrait of Fairmead, California: where water goes to crops first, and... View full entry
[On August 10], the Los Angeles Shade Ball Cover Project rolled to a halt, rounding off years of work. With a shout of "shade balls away!" Los Angeles city officials overturned a row of sacks and sent 20,000 of the jet black objects cascading down into the Los Angeles Reservoir. [...]
Together, the ball shroud prevents damage from sunlight, dust, and errant birds, and keeps 300 million gallons of surface water from evaporating each year.
— atlasobscura.com
What's plastic, black, saves water and costs 36 cents each? Shade balls! The LA Mayor's Office's press release tells their origin story:Dr. Brian White, a now-retired LADWP biologist, was the first person to think of using shade balls for water quality. The idea came to him when he learned about... View full entry
The river that runs through America's 10th-largest city has dried up, shriveling a source of civic pride that had welcomed back trout, salmon, beavers and other wildlife after years of restoration efforts. Over the past two months, large sections of the Guadalupe have become miles of cracked, arid gray riverbed. Fish and other wildlife are either missing or dead, casualties of California's relentless drought. — mercurynews.com
The Guadalupe River had undergone a massive revitalization effort in 2005, when the Army Corps of Engineers and the Santa Clara Valley Water District spent $350 million on a huge park and garden by the river, as part of a larger flood control project. Despite this very recent improvement in the... View full entry
Despite recent successes in water conservancy and summer rainfall in the state, the California drought is still “probably worse than most people recognize,” according to Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and juror on Archinect’s Dry Futures... View full entry
The drought in California has gone on so long, and is so severe, that it's beginning to change the way people are designing residential communities — in unexpected ways, and unexpected places. [...]
There will also be a system for treating and sending wastewater back into the aquifer underneath the city. [...]
Not everyone is convinced it will use less water. Phil Desatoff is with a local water district that is suing Reedley over the development's environmental review.
— npr.org
Got some design solutions up your sleeve that could help alleviate California's ongoing historic drought? Check out Archinect's recently launched Dry Futures ideas competition, and submit your entry by September 1st. Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to... View full entry
The Golden State's nickname has taken on a grave new meaning. The agricultural and economic powerhouse of the country is in the midst of a historic drought pervading the whole U.S. Southwest, at once turning sprawling front lawns into golden-brown scratch pads and inciting Chinatown-style... View full entry
