California Investing Now to Forestall Climate Change’s Worst Water Impacts
by Felicia Marcus (Stanford University)
This case study is drawn from the larger report Managing Water for Economic Resilience: De-risking Is Not Enough, published April 2024.
Key Messages
The development of the Southwestern United States has been based upon the development of public works infrastructure that captures, stores, and brings water hundreds of miles to agricultural and urban centers. That development has yielded enormous economic value, often at the cost of the ecosystems of origin, in both agricultural output and a vibrant social and economically prosperous urban sector. That development has happened through a sense of optimism about water supplies that has been greater than the geophysical record would suggest. Nonetheless, the region has thrived and parts of it have a history of greater and greater efficiency, recycling, and conservation to stretch increasingly scarce urban water sources.
The people and economies of the Southwest US are at greater risk due to climate change, which will make the variability of the region even more unpredictable and likely result in more frequent and drier dry times punctuated by extreme wet events.
Urban and agricultural areas can adapt and have been adapting through greater implementation of efficiency measures. These include conservation, recycling, stormwater capture, and desalination (in some cases) in the urban sector, and efficiency, managed aquifer recharge, and sustainable groundwater management in the agricultural sector. The State of California, in particular, has placed great emphasis and investment on preparing for a more climate-impacted future as have some urban areas in other states, such as the Las Vegas, Nevada area.
The scale and pace of adaptation must accelerate to meet the challenge, with a need for greater investment now to prevent greater economic pain later. Greater investment in economic analysis of the cost of future disruption needs to be integrated into current public policy discourse to convey the urgency of and potential for adaptation prior to disasters.
There is an urgent need for better economic assessment of and support for multiple benefit projects that can include nature-based solutions (NBS). NBS can be more resilient in the face of climate change and multiple benefit projects are more likely to gain public approval for the investments necessary for them to come to fruition.
Introduction and Context
What’s at stake in the West given climate change’s impact on water resources? Everything.
The story of the development of the western United States, and particularly the Southwest, is the story of water development. The western United States has more variable hydrology than the eastern US, with a generally Mediterranean climate as well as desert climate. It is considerably drier than the eastern United States, with the dividing line being seen as roughly the 100th meridian. California’s weather is even more variable even than the rest of the West. For California, “The wettest year on record is 1983, which produced 71.9 MAF of runoff; the driest year on record, 1977, produced only 5.6 MAF” (Maven’s Notebook, 2013).
Because of its relative dryness and variability, the large-scale settlement of the West required the use of storage and conveyance projects to both store water across multiple seasons or years, and to convey it broadly across the region. European settlement of the West and subsequent population growth therefore necessitated massive infrastructure projects that capture, store, and move water long distances to metropolitan and agricultural areas.
Even in the relatively drier western United States, some places such as California and the Rocky Mountain states have mountains that accumulate heavy snowpack. Snowpack is the Southwest’s greatest single storage resource, far bigger in scale than built infrastructure. That snowpack holds precipitation in a form of storage, which then melts out during the spring and summer to replenish reservoirs, rivers and streams, and groundwater basins at a pace that is more able to be absorbed than in winter deluges. With a very slight temperature rise Celsius, snow melts earlier, or falls as rain in the first instance, leading to greater flooding in the spring, and far less snowpack remaining to replenish the built reservoirs, natural water courses, and refill groundwater basins (Whyte, 2017).
Estimates of climate change’s impact on water resources during the next two to three decades range from a 10 percent reduction in total water available by 2040 in California (CNRA, 2022) to 20 percent or more reduction by mid-century (Udall & Overpeck, 2017). Those averages, however, mask the impact of the variability of each year, with years of drought bringing far greater reduction and pain, and years of extreme flooding expected to bring perhaps less frequent, but even greater destruction to people, property, and the environment.
With increased temperatures, we also see less precipitation, whether rain or snow, reaching the ground as it evaporates while falling. And, even when it falls, it can be absorbed into the drier ground or foliage, not reach the ground before turning to gas, or even evaporate back out into the atmosphere (Fassnacht, 2021). We are already seeing dramatic differences in the amount of runoff reaching reservoirs from the same amount of precipitation, with California experiencing a 740 MCM shortfall in 2021 from what was expected from past experience (Abatzoglou et al., 2021).
Groundwater is an abundant resource in some places, non-existent or unreachable in others, and is an imperiled resource in many places, as users — primarily agricultural users — have pumped groundwater to make up for years of surface water shortage without cutting back on production, or have increased production. This “overdraft,” estimated to be an average of 2.47 MCM per year in California’s Central Valley, has led to land sinkage, infrastructure crumbling, and a loss of storage space for the future (WEF, n.d.). Even more concerning, it represents current populations and economies pursuing economic gain to the detriment of future generations.
Why Does This Matter?
Whole economies and communities developed based upon flawed expectations of what the built infrastructure and natural environment would provide. That expectation was based more upon hopes and dreams at times than upon a clear-eyed view of the historical or geophysical record. For example, in the Colorado River Basin, in the late nineteenth century, explorer John Wesley Powell was sent to explore the river basin and report on prospects for development. He wrote that the hydrological variability would be dramatic and that future large-scale development expectations, particularly for agriculture, should be scaled back. His advice was not taken. Projects were built and massive agricultural and urban development have ensued, quite successfully for well over 100 years. However, the 40 million people in seven states, two nations, and 30 tribal indigenous groups that rely on the river and its tributaries watched in horror recently as the system came near the point where its reservoirs could no longer generate hydroelectricity or water after 23 years of increasing aridification and drought. The federal government threatened historic cutbacks. The potential economic impact of disruption of this vast amount of water has captured headlines. Estimates of economic reliance on the Colorado River have reached US$ 1.4 trillion at risk of disruption (Oshrin, 2015). While avoided by an abundant year of precipitation and snow in the winter of 2022–2023, the region is embarking on negotiations for a new operations regime in 2026 when the current agreements are due to end (James & Smith, 2023).
Similarly, Central Valley agriculture and the economic and social boom of Southern California were based upon projects built in the middle of the last century that captured rain, and then melting snowpack, and conveyed it from the Sierra Nevada mountains to agricultural and urban areas hundreds of miles away; for Central Valley agriculture, that means the Western Sierras, while for Southern California, it is a mix of Eastern and Western Sierras and the Colorado River.
The economic impact of disruption of this vast amount of water is considerable. For example, an economic assessment of the 2015 drought found a US$ 2.7 billion impact for agriculture, but acknowledged that the impact varied considerably by region (Howitt et al., 2017). For context, the average agricultural income as of 2019 was approximately US$ 50 billion (CDFA, 2020).
The City of Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has recently commissioned a “resilience study” being conducted by researchers at the University of Texas and Oxford University (formerly at UCLA) to estimate the true economic cost of disruption of imported water supplies upon which the city relies currently for the lion’s share of its water use. This assessment will give a more realistic comparative estimate to illustrate the value of the billions of dollars that the city plans to spend to recycle 100 percent of the wastewater now being discharged to the Pacific Ocean from its Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant. This comparison is more relevant to the city’s real-world situation than comparing the cost of recycled water to the current or even future estimated cost of imported water (which is the usual comparison used). It doesn’t take a Nobel-prize winning scientist to understand that if the water isn’t there, the economic cost to the community is vastly higher than the relative cost differential of imported water vs. recycled water, stormwater capture, or desalination.
This is why, as described in more detail below, the City of Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are both in the process of planning, piloting, and developing what will be the two largest potable water reuse projects in the world, eclipsing even the current largest recycled water facility operated by the Orange County Water District. Price tags for each project singly range into the multiple billion dollars. The County of Los Angeles and its 89 cities have also risen to the challenge through public passage of a US$ 300 million/year measure to construct multi-benefit projects for flood control, water supply, water quality, and urban greening to deal with both climate and water challenges.
Fortunately, in much of the western US rimmed with mountains, there will still be years with snowpack, albeit fewer and many with less bounty. Estimates are for what has been termed “weather whiplash,” with more frequent and drier dries punctuated with dramatic wet periods, such as what California is experiencing in the winter of 2023–2024. This is good compared to those areas of the world that will simply get drier. However, capturing that water, when not in the form of snow, will be impossible at the scale and magnitude in which it will arrive. That said, as described below, with investment and application of new technologies and organized capture, more of it can be captured and stored underground to better help withstand the coming dries.
California as a Case Study in Taking the Long View
California is the fifth largest economy in the world (CBS, 2018), known for its frequent leadership in environmental pollutant regulation. While many think about California’s climate leadership in terms of regulations to reduce climate change-inducing emissions and its decades’ long leadership in energy efficiency and promoting clean energy, California has also made the shift towards thinking about climate adaptation, particularly with regards to water. What follows are some of the big, and often expensive, policy investments that the state is taking to forestall even greater economic pain in the future.
During the administration of Governor Jerry Brown (2011–2019), the administration developed an “all-of-the above” California Water Action Plan (CNRA, 2014) motivated specifically to deal with the impacts that climate change would have on California’s water system and to invest and focus on measures that would protect the state against the ravages to come. The Water Action Plan included a suite of ten measures, with “Conservation as a California Way of Life” first and foremost as the most cost-effective and timely tool to reduce the state’s vulnerability. The plan also included a call to invest in more regional resilience through efforts like stormwater capture and water recycling and desalination in the appropriate circumstances. Other big policy objectives included managing groundwater so as to be able to use the state’s groundwater basins to store water more effectively to offset the loss of projected snowpack, delivering safe drinking water to all Californians to make good on the state’s “Human Right to Water” statute, preparing for floods and droughts, protecting the state’s ecosystems, and other measures. The plan was used to develop state funding propositions put before the voters which were successful in yielding US$ 12 billion for an array of programs (Rosser & Chappelle, 2021). The plan also led to significant actions to move forward on the “all-of-the-above” strategy it laid out.
The subsequent administration, that of Governor Gavin Newsom, adopted and built upon the strategy to continue and accelerate efforts to adapt through a “Water Resilience Portfolio” and other subsequent policy statements (CNRA, 2020). With a robust economy, the Newsom Administration was able to include many more billions of dollars in general funding for water adaptation efforts in 2020 and 2021, and the state legislature is currently considering another multi-billion bond measure for the 2024 ballot which will include water elements. Some of the many programs that came out of these administrations’ efforts are described below along with locally driven adaptation by communities that recognize the need to invest now to preserve their tomorrow.
Conservation and Efficiency: Emergency Response to Ongoing “Way of Life”
During the historic California drought of 2013–17, the administration accelerated its call to make “conservation a California way of life” through mandating unprecedented urban water conservation rules requiring an average of 25 percent reductions in water use. The public rose to the occasion, saving 24 percent in short order through a combination of behavioral change, letting lawns go brown, and when affordable, changing out their water-thirsty lawns for more water tolerant landscaping. The water agency targets (tiered according to the magnitude of per capita water use) were accompanied by mandatory use restrictions, such as not using hoses to clean sidewalks and driveways, bans on fountains without recirculation pumps, bans on watering highway medians, and other measures.
Local water agencies, such as the wholesale Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan), put out hundreds of millions of dollars in lawn and appliance transition rebates which were augmented by local water retailers. The purpose of the rebates was not a dollar per gallon or per acre foot calculation in the short term, but was to accomplish a paradigm shift that would lead to savings in the long run as the work “inspired” action (see, for example, Metropolitan, 2022). Other state legislative and regulatory efforts started and have continued even after the emergency regulations were rescinded, including outdoor landscaping standards for new developments, water efficiency regulations for all urban water suppliers that will be based upon an average per capita indoor use plus a climate calibrated outdoor budget across their service area, and rules for a standard amount of leakage allowed in a system.
This emergency and long-term state and local action came on a foundation of decades of conservation and efficiency improvements that have allowed communities in Southern California to grow considerably while using 38 percent less potable water per capita since 1990 (Metropolitan, 2022), proving that one can decouple water use from economic growth through efficiency and other measures.
Water Recycling and Stormwater Capture Take Off
The Los Angeles region’s imported supplies are threatened by disruption of several kinds, including climate change, earthquakes or other physical disruption, and increasing environmental regulation to protect the ecosystems from which their water is diverted. Of these three, climate change poses the most substantial risk, as both the Sierra system (the State Water Project) and the Colorado River system are projected to see increasingly frequent and drier dry years. This challenge is exacerbated by climate change, as even modest temperature rise results in precipitation that does more falling as rain rather than snow, depriving both systems of their single largest source of storage over multiple years. As a result, in addition to the world leading recycled water/groundwater recharge work of the nearby Orange County Water District (130 million gallons per day (MGD)), the Los Angeles region’s utilities are accelerating their plans to both capture stormwater and vastly expand their water recycling capacity. The two will each become in turn the largest recycled water projects in the world.
The City of Los Angeles (City of LA) is home to 4 million people and is served by its Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) that provides water and power to the City’s residents and by the Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Sanitation (LASan) which operates the City’s wastewater programs. Metropolitan provides wholesale water supplies to Southern California’s 19 million residents. The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts (LACSD) provide wastewater services to 24 districts serving the 10 million residents of Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles County Public Works Department services the 10 million residents as well, providing flood control, groundwater recharge, and other services. They are also in charge of managing the County’s stormwater management permits.
The City of LA’s two-part reuse program, “Operation NEXT” and “Hyperion 2035,” relies on the close cooperation between LASan and LADWP. LASan’s role is to upgrade the treatment provided at the Hyperion plant to produce recycled water for indirect and/or direct potable reuse applications. Their part of the Hyperion 2035 program has commenced with the design of a 1.5 MGD pilot facility demonstrating the suitability of membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet disinfection, and advanced oxidation. Currently, the program’s goal is to produce up to 230 MGD of advanced treated water suitable for groundwater replenishment. Following treatment at the plant, LADWP (Operation NEXT) will take over responsibility for conveying the water for aquifer storage and higher levels of treatment (LADWP, n.d.) with the aim of eventually treating water to direct potable reuse standards at the City’s drinking water treatment facilities.
Just as ambitious, Metropolitan and LACSD’s Pure Water Project is anticipated to provide an additional 150 MGD of recycled water for groundwater recharge (via both spreading and injection), industrial reuse, and eventually direct potable reuse. The recycled water will come from Metropolitan’s partner agency, LACSD, which has operated its Joint Water Pollution Control Plant for nearly a century. To produce water suitable for potable reuse, LACSD will add advanced treatment and disinfection for 150 MGD of effluent that Metropolitan would then convey to four large groundwater basins throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties (Metropolitan, 2021). Like Operation NEXT, future plans call for conveyance and more advanced treatment for integration directly into Metropolitan’s considerable drinking water treatment and storage systems.
The two projects are also evaluating how they can link together across the greater region to produce a virtual water grid across over 60 miles to achieve greater resilience. In addition, the Metropolitan/LACSD Pure Water project has agreements as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada and Arizona to exchange access to Metropolitan’s Colorado River supplies for financial participation in the recycled water project. Metropolitan has also invested heavily in other infrastructure projects, including totalling over $2 billion in two large scale projects to provide offstream storage and the ability to move water between its Colorado River and Sierra supplies. Together the projects can store more water, improve water quality, and serve more customers: Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir (Metropolitan, 2019) and the Inland Feeder Line (Metropolitan, 2007).
In addition to years of conservation and the expansion of water recycling, the region has also grown its stormwater capture vision and capacity. The City passed a measure that raised US$ 500 million and has constructed many inspiring multi-benefit stormwater treatment and capture projects that have also generated valuable green spaces through a combination of parkland, wetlands restoration or creation, and retrofit of neighborhoods with cisterns, berms, swales, etc. (Planning Report, 2018). Building upon this success, Los Angeles County developed and passed a US$ 300 million/year funding measure to implement a massive effort to build multi-benefit projects to increase urban greening, protect water quality in the area’s receiving waters, provide flood control, and capture stormwater for water supply replenishment. These measures were able to gain agency and voter support because of their multi-benefit promise of delivering on water security while also providing water quality and urban greening projects and some additional flood control.
The State of California has played a role in helping to encourage both the expansion of water recycling and of stormwater capture as part of its Water Action Plan work through funding (billions in grants and low-interest loans) and through regulatory measures that encourage certainty in water recycling standards and incentivize multi-benefit approaches to stormwater capture and treatment through nature-based solutions (NBS) (Marcus et al., 2020; Rosenblum et al., 2022). Over the next two decades, the region will transform underground as it builds out its water recycling system, while above ground the region will transform visibly with multi-benefit greening projects that will also enhance the region’s water security and demonstrate the power of NBS.
Groundwater Management: SGMA, MAR, and Land Repurposing
The largest policy change to come from the Water Action Plan was the 2014 passage of the state’s historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) (Leahy, 2015). Because of the looming loss of snowpack, and therefore the loss of California’s single largest source of storage (30 percent on average), then-Governor Brown recognized that the only thing large enough to compensate for that loss of storage was the state’s long-overdrafted aquifers. Overdrafting had led to massive subsidence, causing infrastructure to crumble and valuable storage space to be lost, in addition to threatening the future viability of farming in many regions. The only way to stop the overdrafting and reverse the processes of subsidence and depletion was to develop a management scheme. SGMA requires local coalitions of overlying landowners and public officials to develop plans, through a combination of demand management and focused recharge efforts during the wet season, that will get each basin to a sustainable level over a 20-year timeframe. The 20-year timeframe was chosen to allow for a less economically and socially jarring transition to meet the expected consequences of climate change. Estimates are that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley (out of five million acres) will go out of production during this time in order to assure a long-term future for farming in the region (Hanak et al., 2019).
SGMA has spawned a massive effort on the part of localities to develop plans to measure, allocate, and restore depleted aquifers. The planning efforts are ongoing. Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSA) have been formed. Plans have been submitted and assessed, often found lacking and in many cases fixed. Others have been referred for enforcement action. A combination of technological advances and state support have been applied to find ways to recharge basins more efficiently and effectively to promote what is known as Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) (CDWR, n.d.). To aid in that transition, the state is employing advanced technology to map the underground of a vast area of the Central Valley of California to help local agencies find the best places to recharge basins and the best places to retrieve the water (Simon, 2023). The state has also put out millions of dollars in grants to local agencies to help with planning and implementation of projects and has a special “land repurposing” program to help fund collaborative projects to help transition farmland to lower water use purposes, such as solar development, lower water use crops, or groundwater recharge basins, some of which are also being adapted for ecological restoration (Moore, 2022; CDoC, 2023). The costs to farmers and the state to make this shift are enormous but are being taken to avoid the painful alternative of massive fallowing during the disastrous future to come if they do not begin to act now. To paraphrase the CEO of Driscoll’s, Miles Reiter, at the signing ceremony for SGMA: This will be the hardest thing many of us ever do, but it is necessary if we want our children and grandchildren to be able to farm.
The Bigger, Longer Lifts: Nature-based Solutions
California has also taken a longer term view of water security and sustainability by accelerating efforts to incorporate NBS into its climate, biodiversity, public security, and water agendas because of the multiple benefits that those efforts deliver. Efforts include billions of dollars from the state’s California Climate Investments fund (funded by proceeds from the state’s “cap-and-trade” climate regulatory program) and general fund to implement ecologically-based forest restoration. The effort is designed to reduce the risk of outsized conflagrations due to the overgrowth of forests. These unnaturally dense forests differ dramatically from California’s historical forests, where trees were spaced apart and wildfires due to lightning strikes commonly raced through the low grassland leaving the larger trees unscathed. Through well-intended but overzealous wildfire suppression and corporate forest products companies’ attempts to maximize production, the current status of many California forests leads to a density of underbrush (known as fuel ladders) which causes hotter fires to rage higher and consume larger trees that would ordinarily survive. These conflagrations send massive carbon plumes into the atmosphere, and send sediment and other contaminants downstream. Properly thinning forests can reduce the risk to life and limb, reduce carbon emissions and protect the larger trees that sequester more carbon, and can yield water benefits of reducing contaminants, while allowing for greater snowpack deposition and duration on the ground. When combined with meadow restoration, forest restoration can also create fire buffers, wildlife refugia, and some slowing of the flow downstream to make up for the snowpack lost to temperature rise (Marcus, 2022). The state has also invested millions into meadow restoration and healthy soils agricultural practices, and has incorporated such practices into its climate reduction plans and other plans (Marcus, 2022).
Also at the state level, there are growing efforts to integrate more natural solutions into water planning, again for multiple benefits, but particularly for flood protection. For example, the state’s Central Valley Flood Protection Plan promotes the use of floodplain setbacks rather than higher levee walls to allow flood force to dissipate through spreading across land, which also can give ecological benefits and recharge groundwater basins (Powell, 2023). The Dos Rios project implemented by River Partners provides an example of the type of project that is gaining state support and investment (recontouring land at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers to allow for greater inundation and dissipation of flows to benefit ecological restoration and lessen flood risk downstream). The project received US$ 15 million in state funding, and has recently been designated as an official state park (Bartlett, 2022).
NBS are also gaining traction and significant investment in urban settings. In addition to the Los Angeles County Stormwater example mentioned above (US$ 300 million for multi-benefit stormwater projects for flood control, green space, groundwater recharge, and water quality improvements), the San Francisco Bay Area has embarked upon a truly breathtaking endeavor (both from an engineering and economic perspective) to employ NBS to adapt to climate change. Two-thirds of the estimated cost of sea-level rise in California is expected in San Francisco Bay, which is a heavily urbanized area surrounding one of the most picturesque estuaries on the US West Coast. To combat this challenge, the nine counties and 100 cities around the bay came together to pass a US$ 500 million measure to use horizontal levees to deal with sea level rise rather than have a war of piecemeal seawalls which would lead to greater wave force on each other (Meadows, 2021). The Bay Area decided to spend billions over the coming decades to save many more billions in the future (MTC, ABAG, & BCDC, 2023a). This approach also has the multiple benefit value of providing greenspace and ecological value in addition to buffering sea-level rise (MTC, ABAG, & BCDC, 2023a; MTC, ABAG, & BCDC, 2023b).
To prepare and adapt to climate change using NBS will take an attitude of multiple benefit thinking on the part of policy-makers. To assist them, there is a tremendous need for multi-benefit guidance for evaluating the cost-benefits of working across single silos. The Pacific Institute’s CEO Water Mandate is doing important work with The Nature Conservancy and private sector partners to develop tools for better recognizing the true benefits of projects that can provide benefits for both climate mitigation and adaptation including water resources and other benefits (CEO Water Mandate, n.d.; Shiao et al., 2020). They have also developed a standardized method to account for “stacked water and carbon benefits and identify wider co-benefits of NBS for watersheds” (Brill, 2022). Current stages of work look to consider benefit forecasting (i.e., how different benefits accrue proportionately over time and across spatial scales across multiple habitat and intervention types) and benefit valuation (i.e., cost-benefit and return on investment estimates) (Brill, 2022).
Conclusion
Adaptation requires long-term thinking, planning, and implementation. California and other western states are acting to prepare for a future of greater extremes, such as more frequent and drier drought periods punctuated by extreme precipitation that is more likely to fall as rain rather than snow. Greater dry spells, greater flooding potential, and the loss of valuable snowpack as a timing delay for water flow from mountaintop to rivers and streams, agricultural lands, and groundwater basins are all expected.
Adaptation actions are taking many forms, a few of which are described above, to deal with the crises to come based upon common sense and an awareness that action must be taken on multiple fronts. The momentum is there, but an accelerated pace is needed to meet the moment. A variety of economic tools and perspectives are needed to help policy-makers and the public make the investments now that are needed to forestall even greater costs, let alone greater impacts, to come if action is delayed. Action now will be expensive, but less expensive than doing nothing and having to recover from disasters that could have been prevented. Making the case for these investments, which cross traditional silos of geography, organizational institutions, and disciplines is complex. Better guidelines and approaches to valuing costs and benefits will help policy-makers and the public choose to act and choose investments wisely.
Some recommendations and lessons:
The scale and pace of climate adaptation in the water arena must accelerate to meet the challenge, with a need for greater investment now to prevent greater economic disruption later.
Greater investment in economic analysis of the cost of future economic harm due to disruption of water systems, such as those dependent upon imported water or subject to natural disasters, needs to be integrated into current public policy discourse to convey the urgency of the need to invest now to prevent disastrous and avoidable economic consequences down the road.
Tools for basic economic assessment of and support for multiple benefit projects are needed, especially for those like urban stormwater capture projects that can include NBS. NBS can be more resilient in the face of climate change, and multiple benefit projects such as those utilizing NBS are more likely to gain public approval for the investments necessary for them to come to fruition.
Sharing an overall picture of the varied measures needed for a sustainable water management system helps to move people to support action on a variety of measures, as a broader public can see their needs being met.
Bold vision, coupled with data and a willingness to make the case to a variety of stakeholders are essential to support the big projects and changes necessary to meet the climate challenge (e.g., groundwater management, conservation, large scale measures like recycled water and stormwater capture projects, forest restoration, and floodplain management).
The public will act and support funding or their own efforts to conserve, for example, if information is shared with them transparently and consistently (e.g., supporting bond measures, rising to the occasion, and conserving water).
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