Session 5 | Tuesday, November 9 | 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM EST

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Water Wars: What Are they Good For? Western US Topics

Moderator: Lisa Beutler

Presenters:

• Mike Antos, Senior Associate | Watershed Social Scientist at Stantec Consulting, & Visiting Scholar [Anthropology], University of California, Irvine
• Timothy Quinn, Affiliate, Stanford University Water in the West Program, and Executive Officer, San Joaquin Valley Water Collaborative Action Program
• Felicia Marcus, William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow, Stanford University, & Former Chair, California State Water Resources Control Board
• Dale Kasler, McClatchy News

A week doesn’t go by without someone saying there are water wars underway or about to kick off. In the West the phrase brings to mind images early skirmishes of miners wielding shovels or gun slingers riding the range. In the East the image has evolved to lawyers climbing the steps to the Supreme Court. How we manage and govern water is critically important to people, the environment, and the economy. During this session we consider the utility of framing our disagreements at war. Must there always be victors and the vanquished? What is the impact of mobilizing for war when the reality of a wicked water problem requires the messiness of working together?

During these sessions we will explore these questions and consider options for new ways of approaching the hard work of water management. Session One will explore the historic and current context of Western disputes and the evolving approaches to address them.

Best Management Practices, Conservation, Economics, and Concerns in Agriculture

Moderator: Swamy Pati

Presenters:

• Daniel Dourte and Amy Bainbridge, The Balmoral Group, "Model FARMS Economic Study"
A quantitative assessment was completed to determine the costs and benefits of projects for reducing groundwater use and reducing nitrogen leaching in the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD). This effort was completed in coordination with The Facilitating Agricultural Resource Management Systems (FARMS) Program, an agricultural best management practice (BMP) cost-share reimbursement program of SWFWMD. The projects evaluated in the study were representative of projects cost-shared by the FARMS program. The project included agricultural BMPs to reduce groundwater use for irrigation, including specific BMPs related to freeze-protection irrigation offsets, and it included several BMPs evaluated to quantify expected nitrogen leaching reductions on representative production systems. Costs for BMPs were developed from industry sources and from District project data, and benefits for groundwater offsets or nitrogen leaching reductions were developed from model results, literature values, or District historical data. A scenario selection tool was developed for District users to produce results for the scenario(s) of interest, including the additive costs and benefits of multiple BMPs, where applicable. This project is intended to guide the District in the future implementation of agricultural BMPs as it applies to cost benefit and cost-share funding.


• Jadey Ryan, Washington State Department of Agriculture, "Aquatic Risk Assessment of Binary and Ternary Mixtures of Organophosphate Insecticides in Washington State Surface Waters"
Ecological risk assessments often do not consider potential additive, synergistic, or antagonistic effects from mixtures of chemicals and instead typically base risk on a single chemical. In the last decade, more tools and models have been developed to consider the interactive effects of chemicals within a mixture when conducting risk assessments. Therefore, this study uses actual environmental concentrations measured in 2018 and 2019 from the Washington State Department of Agriculture’s Surface Water Monitoring Program. Aquatic risk from exposure was assessed from chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion (as individual chemicals and as binary and ternary mixtures) using the concentration addition model. These pesticides were selected because they have a common mechanism of toxicity, are frequently detected in surface waters in Washington, and were recently evaluated in a biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service. All detected concentrations of chlorpyrifos and malathion, assessed as individual chemicals, exceeded the predicted no effect concentration, indicating potential for adverse effects on aquatic life. Further, risk quotients for all binary and ternary mixtures were greater than one, also indicative of potential for adverse effects on aquatic life. In all samples containing a mixture, the maximum cumulative ratio suggested that a single insecticide contributed >50% of the overall toxicity of each mixture. Based on the individual and mixture risk quotients, chlorpyrifos and malathion were the primary drivers of the toxicity of each mixture.     

Modeling for Management, Regulation, Water Quality, and Water Supply

Moderator: Roger Copp

Presenters:

• Paul Craig, DSI, LLC, "Modeling Unlimited Algal Groups in the Pearl Lake, Minnesota using EFDC+"
Modeling multiple algal groups in a waterbody may be necessary to represent the detailed algal dynamics in a waterbody. Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code (EFDC) is a popular software for modeling three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamics and water quality in the receiving waters. However, the number of algal species that can be modeled using EFDC are limited to three phytoplankton (diatoms, green algae, and cyanobacteria) and a macroalgae. DSI updated the water quality module of DSI version of EFDC (EFDC+) and added the capability to model unlimited algal groups. We tested this new capability by developing the water quality model of the Pearl Lake in Minnesota and comparing its results to the observed data and the simulated results from the CE-QUAL-W2 model of the Pearl Lake developed by Smith and et al, (2017). The enhanced EFDC+ water quality model successfully predicted water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and algal concentration with four general groups (diatoms, green algae, cyanobacteria, and haptophyte).


• Sandra Fox, Stephen Jennewein, Nathaniel Mouzon, Andrew Sutherland, and Fatih Gordu, St Johns River Water Management District, "ESRI’s Arc Hydro Hydroperiod Tool and MFLs Determination in the St Johns River Water Management District"
Water management involves the balancing of multiple demands on this precious resource. The Minimum Flows and Levels (MFLs) program of the St Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD, in northeast Florida) is tasked with establishing the limits at which further water withdrawals would be significantly harmful to the water resources or ecology of an area. Recently, this SJRWMD MFLs program has made extensive use of a geospatial modeling tool dubbed the “Hydroperiod Tool” (HT). Originally this tool was designed to be a “relatively simple tool to model changes in inundation over time and under different hydrologic scenarios” for various surface water resources. The HT has been used to evaluate the area of inundation, changes to habitats with specific depth ranges, and changes in depths important for various recreational uses in both lakes and wetlands. The tool is simple in that it makes use of common geospatial data (digital elevation models – DEMs, and stage values) and routine functions in ArcMap (interpolation, raster math, raster reclassification, etc.). The DEMs used as input for the MFLs program are primarily based on LiDAR-derived elevations, corrected for vegetation as needed, and enhanced with bathymetry data taken from a variety of sources. HT makes use of the geoprocessing power of ArcMap, iterating through multiple time steps and allowing for rapid comparisons of area or depth at various elevations on resources such as lakes and wetlands. The HT began in ESRI’s Model Builder ca 2002 and was developed by a team of academic, private sector and governmental water resources professionals as part of the South Florida Water Management District’s “Arc Hydro Enhanced Database” project. The tool went through an upgrade and is now part of ESRI’s Arc Hydro install in both desktop and ArcGIS Pro. Output from the HT was an integral part of the SJRWMD’s development of a recent MFLs for Lake Butler, which will be featured in the presentation.


• Tarlan Razzaghi and Ali Diba, DCSE, Inc., "Modeling Residential Landscape Area for Efficient Outdoor Irrigation and Water Budget Tool"
2018 Water Conservation Legislation, AB 1668 and SB 606 “Making Conservation A Way of Life”, establishes guidelines for efficient water use and a framework for the implementation and oversight of the new standards, which must be in place by 2022. Urban water suppliers will be required to stay within annual water budgets, based on these standards, for their service areas. Therefore, to support water use efficiency, and to ensure future water supply reliability for Southern California residents, agencies are required to estimate efficient outdoor irrigation and validate their areas of irrigable lands. To this effort, we have used remote sensing and advanced AI technology to provide landscape area estimates of Single Family Residential and Multi-Family Residential parcels within boundary of water districts. To model and classify the landcover across the area of a water agency, we used four-band NAIP imagery at 60 cm pixel resolution. The unique region-specific machine learning model, using Support Vector Machine classifier, were trained and built to detect and classify eight different land cover classes in each region. Later, these classes were reclassified into the three main categories of Irrigable_ Irrigated, Irrigable_ Not Irrigated, and Not-Irrigable areas to comply with DWR’s scheme for landscape measurement. Our developed AI-based technique included a comprehensive collection of training samples throughout the project area, segmentation of the imagery, and detailed post-processing procedures to ensure a robust classification results and model performance. Accuracy of the classification was assessed by generating the Confusion Matrix statistics. Independent set of accuracy assessment (validation) sample points for all the classes and within each group of agencies were collected and compared with the classification results. The results showed an overall accuracy of 93-96%. 

Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Drought

Moderator: Greg Guthrie

Presenters:

• Greg Guthrie, Geological Survey of Alabama, "Spectral and Trend Analysis to Evaluate Relationships Between Groundwater Level and Precipitation for Drought Assessment"
Groundwater data are commonly incorporated in drought assessments by state and federal organizations during dry seasons. Unlike surface water data, groundwater data derived from wells may have a delayed response, or lag time, to precipitation events due to the time required for recharge waters to migrate into the saturated zone. This lag time may limit usefulness of the data in the decision-making process. The Geological Survey of Alabama-Groundwater Assessment Program uses data from eight wells in its Real-Time monitoring network to inform the state’s Drought Monitoring and Impact Group. The wells are less than 150 feet deep, vary in aquifer type, have up to 10 years of continuous data, and are positioned in unconfined to semi-confined aquifers that are most susceptible to natural stressors such as drought. Hydrographs associated with these wells are complex, seemingly noisy, and difficult to interpret due to diurnal, seasonal, and decadal periodicity. Water level (WL) data from these wells and precipitation (PPT) data from nearby stations have been evaluated using spectral analysis by discrete Fourier transform and Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess to establish the lag time for groundwater in the wells to respond to precipitation events. The technique resolves the data into seasonal, trend, and random (residuals) components. An algorithm was used to cross correlate the data. Cross correlation diagrams indicate that peak correlation coefficients occur when both WL and PPT curves are shifted by a specific time period. The shift represents the lag time between the two trends. Lag time is not consistent between wells, ranging from several tens of days to hundreds of days, and the differences may reflect different environmental and hydrological properties of the wells, such as elevation, confining conditions, distance from recharge area, permeability, hydraulic conductivity, etc. Machine learning and statistical techniques using PPT data have been used to model groundwater levels from the wells though the lag time. The ability to predict WL will maintain the relevancy of using groundwater data from the wells in the drought assessment process.

Innovative Water Resources Projects Through Alternative Delivery Methods

Moderator: Ernie Cox

Presenters:

• Jennifer Jurado, Broward County, FL; and Mike Carballa, Pasco County, FL
The need to mitigate flooding, provide drinking water, recharge aquifers, combat saltwater intrusion, adapt to sea-level rise, and create more resilient systems has brought about the concept of green infrastructure – creating facilities that work in tandem with our environment to protect, restore and enhance lakes, rivers, streams, estuaries, and aquifers. Certain factors, including algae blooms, sea-level rise, and water shortages, have catalyzed the need for multi-use green infrastructure projects that solve many challenges. However, traditional design, bid, build processes, and single-use projects can be slow and costly. Alternative delivery methods, like public-private partnerships coupled with innovative multi-use projects, can effectively meet multiple challenges on time and adapt to changing needs while creating additional public value, when tailored to each circumstance. This panel will discuss two case studies - the C-51 Reservoir and the 4G Ranch Beneficial Reuse Project - and address four important concepts: collaborative public-private approaches to alternative delivery, harnessing innovation in design and implementation, conservation as a mindset in project development, and the importance of multi-use, multi-purpose projects. These case studies are illustrative and the lessons learned can be adapted to other projects.