Everyone needs water, but many Americans are struggling to pay the rising costs of water services. The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions’ Water Policy Program has developed a water affordability dashboard that allows users to assess affordability across different water utilities using flexible, self-selected parameters.
Without consistent, standardized, and easily accessible water data, the true state of water resources is not accurately represented. As a result, data users may make faulty assumptions and ill-informed decisions. Poor decisions can be catastrophic, especially as water resources become both increasingly scarce and in high demand. IoW is developing a solution.
Nearly 70 years after Steinbeck wrote East of Eden, his words still ring true. With satellite images showing receding reservoirs contoured with pale bathtub rings of dry earth, drab mountain peaks where white snowpack melted away months ago, and so much smoke, the dry years have again put a terror across California.
What exactly is a water data hub? What should it be? With no roadmap or guidebook to follow, how do you design a hub? What sort of catalyst is needed to really get the ball rolling and build momentum? In Texas, the answer to the last question is steady effort over a number of years followed by a massive hurricane.
As we work to create an internet of water – a world with more accessible, discoverable, and interoperable water data – we like to highlight the organizations who are contributing to this vision and explore the benefits they provide to water management and other sectors. The Groundwater Protection Council has been improving groundwater and energy data since 1983 and leverages that data to enable environmental protection and increased water availability. The resources they provide to state oil and gas agencies are essential to coordinating regional approaches in the energy-water nexus.
Freshwater harmful algal bloom (FHAB) season is here. In lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams across the country tiny microorganisms are reproducing in mass. Spurred on by the heat and high concentrations of nutrients, blue-green algae form a thick green scum on the surface of water bodies. This scum is not only foul-smelling, it’s also dangerous.