California Wastewater Needs Assessment

CIWR is part of a collaborative team that will develop a first-of-its-kind assessment of water-related sanitation needs in California. Led by UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation, the project will collect information and develop criteria to create a statewide framework to prioritize funding for sanitation systems in California especially in disadvantaged, severely disadvantaged, and vulnerable communities.

Project Lead: Greg Pierce, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.
Project Team: UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, Office of Water Programs at Sacramento State, CIWR @ UC ANR, University of Massachusetts Amherst
CIWR Project Team: Sam Sandoval Solis (ANR PI), Erik Porse, Rachel Shellabarger, Riley Currey.

Project Support: California State Water Resources Control Board

Artes: Urban Water Systems Analysis in Los Angeles

In California's Mediterranean climate, cities must develop infrastructure and programs to manage seasonal and annual changes in precipitation. While many urban areas in California built huge infrastructure systems to import distant sources of water, cities also rely on local sources of water such as groundwater and stormwater capture, and water reuse. These offer ways to increase the portion of demand met by local sources.

The model simulates flows through all of these systems across hundreds of agencies to evaluate when and how changes in expectations for imported water availability affect supply and operations throughout LA County.

Artes was developed at UCLA's California Center for Sustainable Communities as part of projects to understand future water management in Southern California. The model has used been in 11 peer-reviewed studies.

The data and code associated with Artes are publicly-available. From 2016-2022, data and code were published on Github. Starting in 2022, the model is available through Hydroshare.

A Storymap published by UCLA's California Center for Sustainable Communities provides context on current water management in LA County and opportunities for transitioning to future regimes less reliant on imported water.

Porse, E. (2022). Artes: Modeling Water Resources Management in Los Angeles, HydroShare, https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.c2a8bb7e07b3409995c90a86120b2a9f

In collaboration with UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation, CIWR developed a research and policy agenda to support water quality improvements through better wildfire management.

To address the recent emergence of wildfire-caused drinking water contamination, the researched asked a group of interdisciplinary and cross-sector participants to provide input and review on a research and policy agenda for how California can more proactively address the ways in which wildfire is increasingly putting water supply systems at risk. Workshop sessions were focused on four different research and policy issues and related questions at the intersection of wildfire events and water supply provision. The report summarizes findings from the outreach and sessions.

Project Team: CIWR and UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation