Download Water Supply and Energy Management II

American Water Resources Association 2016 SPRING SPECIALTY CONFERENCE Water – Energy ‐ Environment April 25‐27, 2016 Anchorage, AK Wednesday, April 27 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM SESSION 13: Water Supply and Energy Management II ‐ Monitoring, Availability, and Governance USGS Water Availability and Use Science Program ‐ Melinda Dalton, U.S. Geological Survey Water Availability and Use Science Program, Norcross, GA A key part of achieving the US Department of the Interior's (DOI) sustainability goals is informing the public and decision makers about the status and changes over time of the Nation's water resources. To achieve these goals the USGS has implemented a National Water Census (NWC) to provide a more accurate picture of the quantity of the Nation's water resources and improve forecasting of water availability for future economic, energy production, and environmental uses. In 2016, to streamline water sustainability activities, the USGS realigned all water availability and use oriented research, including the NWC, within a new Program ‐ the Water Availability and Use Science Program (WAUSP). WAUSP supports producing a current, comprehensive scientific assessment of the factors that influence water availability by developing nationally consistent datasets on the status and trends of major water budget components (precipitation, streamflow, groundwater, and evapotranspiration), as well as human water use; improving the current understanding of flow requirements for ecological purposes; and evaluating water‐resource conditions in selected river basins, or Focus Area Studies, where competition for water is a local concern. Water availability and sustainability activities, including those related to the water‐food‐energy nexus, are the main focus of the WAUSP. In addition to supporting research to improve the hydrologic components of the water budget, WAUSP has supported the development of new methods and techniques to improve estimation of human water use, including: developing a heat budget‐based model to improve estimates of thermoelectric water use, evaluating direct and indirect water use associated with unconventional oil and gas production in a pilot study for the Williston Basin, and developing methods to estimate irrigation consumptive uses at both the local and regional scale in collaboration with Focus Area Studies. The WAUSP collaborates with DOI Climate Science Centers and others, to evaluate drought impacts and how these may effect water availability in the future. Finally, the WAUSP coordinates the new Water Use Data and Research program, which provides assistance to State water resource agencies to improve water use data collection and estimation activities. Adaptive Water Governance and the Water‐Energy Nexus ‐ Robin Kundis Craig, University of Utah Law, Salt Lake City, UT Changing climate, water resource availability, and demands on water resources argue for the increased use of adaptive water governance‐‐that is, governance institutions for water resources that can more nimbly respond to changing water availability and demands for that water than have existed in the past. In many watersheds, from the Klamath River Basin to the Everglades, human‐created infrastructure and the working of the Endangered Species Act have dominated existing governance mechanisms, challenging stakeholders to develop more flexible approaches to water governance. However, in the West in particular, other challenges to dealing with climate change and more variable water availability are also becoming important. Specifically, attempts to employ adaptive water governance must increasingly navigate the legal barriers to increased flexibility embodies in the law of prior appropriation for water rights and in federal energy policy. This paper builds off of three years of work and research by the Adaptive Water Governance grant group of scholars, which worked out of the Socio‐ Ecological Synthesis Center in Annapolis, MD, with NSF funding. The AWG group has developed sets of definitions, principles, characteristics, and case studies for adaptive water governance in American river basins. In particular, our work to date has identified the socio‐legal conditions necessary for adaptive governance to emerge and has applied that evaluative framework to water resource management throughout the United States and in Australia. This paper builds on that work by extending the investigation of adaptive water governance to the water‐energy nexus in a climate change era. My talk will discuss: (1) changing conditions in Alaska and the rest of the United States that make adaptive water governance increasingly desirable; (2) the socio‐legal predicates that facilitate the emergence of adaptive water governance in water basins; (3) how the water demands of energy and the energy demands of water can fit into an adaptive governance regime, especially in light of potential climate change‐induced reconfigurations of both energy and water supplies; and (4) potential impediments to adaptive water governance, especially in terms of prior appropriation and federal energy policy. Water and Energy Nexus: Case Study of Potential Water Availability Effects of Mexico's Energy Reform in the Rio Grande/Bravo Basin ‐ Carlos Galdeano, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (co‐authors: S.Sandoval‐Solis, M.A. Cook, R. L. Teasley, M.E. Webber) Mexico's Energy Reform is expected to intensify activities in the energy sector from the development of resources to electricity generation, which would have a significant impact on the water sector. This study quantifies potential water availability effects of Mexico's energy reform in south Texas and northern Mexico using the Rio Grande/Bravo transboundary basin as a case study. The main hypothesis of this study is that changing the existing energy production facilities from traditional coal steam cycle to natural gas combined cycle may increase water availability for current (e.g. cities and irrigation districts) and new users (e.g. hydraulic fracturing companies). The methodology employed to test the hypothesis includes: (1) coupling a water allocation model with a water demand calculator that considers energy fuel source and power plant technology, (2) comparing the current water availability with alternative water management strategies that quantify the effects of changing energy fuel sources and power plant technologies, and (3) performing a cost‐ benefit analysis on the current and alternative water management strategies. For the scenarios analyzed, preliminary results suggest that water availability would increase for current and new users, however, this available volume is small compared to the overall basin's water demand. The China Mega‐City Water Fund ‐ Andrew Fang, Kieser & Associats, Kalamazoo, MI and Hao Li, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China (co‐authors: A. Fang, M. Kieser, T. Zimnicki) Water scarcity poses significant threats to China's population and growing economy. Current water availability per capita in China is 1/4 of the world average with more pronounced shortages in megacities with population greater than 10 million. Beijing, the capital city with a population of nearly 22 million but only 1/30 of the world average water availability continues to grow its population by 250,000 annually. Along with increased demand, a warmer regional climate has led to a decline in annual precipitation. As part of the effort to improve Beijing's water supply security, the Chinese Central Government and the Beijing Municipal Government have given high priority to the protection of the watershed of the Miyun Reservoir, the main surface drinking water source for the city. Recent programs have implemented large‐scale investment projects to improve water resources in the region, most notably through crop conversion and afforestation. These government initiatives have generally focused on large‐
scale, high capital cost projects. Due to the size and structure of national and municipal governments, these programs often lack the flexibility necessary to execute small‐scale, highly cost‐effective water resource improvement projects. In addition, these large‐scale projects generally lack quantitative analysis using scientific verification methods, leading to less‐than‐
precise understanding of project effectiveness and consequently reducing project investment returns. A water fund typically accepts funding from private and public organizations that have a vested interest for improving water resources of a particular region, providing businesses and individuals a channel to participate directly in the protection of their water sources. Built on the concept of "user pays for ecosystem services", a water fund promotes the social norm of shared responsibility of natural resources for water users in addition to corporate sustainability. In August 2015, the Partnership for Mega‐city Watershed Protection, Beijing Forestry Society, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Forest Trends, and the Soil and Water Conservation Society of China together launched the China Megacity Water Fund (CMWF or the Water Fund). As a complement to large‐scale government projects, the CMWF will work directly with local governments and land users in water source areas to develop cost‐effective water protection measures that integrate local stakeholder viewpoints. A primary focus for the CMWF is on identifying projects that deliver the most benefit for the lowest cost, i.e., the most favorable cost‐benefit ratio. Each potential project will be evaluated for its relevant benefit, either water quantity or quality, using specific metrics and quantification methods. This presentation will give an overview of the CMWF, introduce its operation model, and detail the cost‐ effectiveness analysis of two interventions: forest thinning and riparian buffers, which are being introduced and experimented in the Miyun Reservoir watershed.