 Funding Innovative, Multi-Use Water Projects
A new report by a team of researchers from Water in the West offers a framework to fund water projects based on lessons learned from the energy sector. "Our sophisticated water system is slowly reaching the end of its lifetime and is in need of renewed investment due to population growth, urbanization, climate change impacts, environmental degradation, aging infrastructure, and ever-increasing operation and maintenance costs," said report co-author Newsha Ajami, the director of urban water policy at Water in the West. "Tackling these modern challenges calls for new thinking and innovative, multipurpose infrastructure solutions." The new report also calls for significant investment, which is harder than ever to come by when traditional federal and state government funds are limited. In their report, Ajami and her co-authors identify financing tools and techniques from the electricity sector with potential to bridge the financing gap to next-generation water systems. More ...
 Desalination and California's Water Future: Experts Meet to Discuss Knowledge Gaps and Ways Forward
In light of California's ongoing drought and growing water needs, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, through Water in the West and the Center for Ocean Solutions, collaborated with The Nature Conservancy and the Monterey Bay Aquarium to facilitate an "uncommon dialogue" on the potential impacts of ocean desalination on coastal and marine ecosystems. Over the course of two days, leading experts from academia, non-governmental organizations, private industry and government agencies gathered in Monterey to exchange information and promote open discussion about the best available science, technology and policy related to desalination. More ...
Photo Credit: NBC News
 Welcoming New Members of Our Team
We are excited to welcome three talented new postdoctoral scholars to Water in the West: Esther Conrad, Ben Bryant, and Sibyl Diver. Since arriving in September of 2015, Esther, who is also with Stanford Law School’s Gould Center for Conflict Resolution, has jumped right into two timely studies: one examining groundwater adjudications and other local groundwater management arrangements in California, and another looking at factors that influence collective learning among stakeholders involved in forming new governance structures under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
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