Water Conservation For California

California is in a drought, we have to do better with conserving water.
A Water Conservation Vision

Water sources:

Precipitation in the form of rain and snow is the only renewable source of water.
Water imports from the Colorado River system. This is precipitation that we have been able to acquire from out of the state and they are also experiencing the drought.
Groundwater is a limited resource and also the best reservoir. We should manage groundwater resources wisely.
Product water is the water included in products such as imported beverages or water used in the manufacture of imported products.

Water loses:

Evaporation from open water storage and water conveyance structures, and from irrigation (we can improve upon this)
Transpiration from plants (can't change this)
Discharge to ocean (what a waste: we can improve water collection of freshwater and recycling of wastewater)
Product water is the water included in products such as imported beverages or water used in the manufacture of imported products. (this is the sign of a healthy economy; hopefully we don't have to curtail this)

We will examine here some ideas on water collection of fresh water and recycling of wastewater. Ideas useful for Cities and homeowners will be examined.

Water Collection

Water collection and storage is essential for the large population of California.

Nature does this in two ways:

Snow at higher elevations holds water into the summer.

And natural recharge of groundwater holds water until we pump it, with a small amount released in springs.

Unfortunately, this is not enough. We supplement it with reservoirs to capture stream flow and store it through the year. In a drought, we find that we don't capture enough in our reservoirs and our reservoirs are getting low. In the cities we can do a lot more than we currently are to capture, conserve, and recycle water.

Water capture City scale:

Stormwater to Groundwater (In City)
The Sun Valley Park Multiuse Project is a wonderful idea that was implemented poorly. This system was designed to capture stormwater from local streets, clean it, and infiltrate it into the groundwater. It was to prevent street flooding and increase groundwater resources. It was poorly implemented because of the desire to reduce maintenance on the main treatment system. Now the main need for maintenance is in multiple, harder to clean, street catchment basins. These have not been cleaned in the four years of operation. The main filter (which gets very little garbage) may get occasional pumping. It was at least pumped in February 2009.
These are expensive projects. We need more less expensive projects, balanced with some of these expensive projects.

Water Recycling

This is the used of reclaimed wastewater for irrigation, utility uses, and groundwater recharge. We need more of this. Ideally, no wastewater would be discharged to the ocean.