Study Estimates the Costs of Sea Level Rise on Housing
The upside of lacking a coastline is that Arizona homeowners are not personally affected by sea level rise, but Zillow, the real estate website that allows you to look up comparative home values, has identified rising sea levels and associated flooding as a threat nearly as costly as the 2008 housing bust. Zillow mapped projected sea levels for the year 2100 and the currently existing houses that would be inundated. The numbers run into millions of homes and billions of dollars. They used National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maps along with their own real estate data to arrive at their conclusions. The almost 1.9 million U.S. homes at risk—that’s about 2 percent of the total—are worth $882 billion. Some states like Florida and Hawaii will lose a significant percentage of their housing to the sea: 12.5 percent and 9 percent, respectively. The Zillow report points out that 2100 is a long way off and policy and homebuyer choices are likely to either mitigate or exacerbate the problem or both.
Tucson Water Makes a Splash in Water Reuse
Tucson has embraced water reuse as part of its water portfolio and is gaining recognition for its efforts. Water reuse organizations honored Tucson Water for its leadership in resource recovery, watershed protection, culture change, and community partnering. The Water Environment Federation, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation, and WateReuse jointly recognized Tucson water as winner of their “Utility of the Future Today” program. A forward-looking water reuse project, in which Tucson Water participated, also took a prize from the WaterReuse organization for “Project of the Year”. The six-month pilot test evaluated alternative non-RO-based potable reuse treatment, including short-term soil aquifer treatment, nanofil ration, ozone, biological activated carbon filtration, and granular activated carbon adsorption. The innovative and sustainable potable reuse treatment scheme was successful in producing highly purified water.
New Program Will Help Tucson’s Low- Income Families Harvest Rainwater
The City of Tucson has approved a first-of-its-kind program that will make it possible for low-income families to participate in its rainwater harvesting program. A water conservation tool, rainwater harvesting also is used to support new trees. Increasing shade from trees can reduce electric bills as well as reduce the impacts of the urban heat island. The program will provide grants and loans for low-income families to install rainwater collection systems. A system with a medium-size tank can cost $2,000 or more. People are already lining up for the program. The Sonoran Environmental Research Institute (SERI) is tasked with immediate launch of a one-year pilot program, which will provide $150,000 within the current fiscal year. The City has set aside $300,000 for the program, with the goal of helping 100 families harvest rainwater at their homes. The program is slated to be extended for an additional three years.
ASU and Smithsonian Team on Water Management Exhibition
WaterSim America, a new interactive computer simulation created by Arizona State University and the Smithsonian Institution, will be touring Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Idaho, and Wyoming this year. Designed for the general public, the exhibition shows the complexity of state level water management, especially in the face of drought and climate change. ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC), which works with water leaders to support informed decision-making, and the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street, which brings exhibitions to small towns across the United States, conceived this project, part of the Smithsonian’s “Water/Ways” exhibition, as a way to educate people about what can be done to effect positive change in the management of their water. Researchers at DCDC modified the Center’s WaterSim program to work with water issues on a state level. Each state has its own model in the WaterSim America simulation. The model can be asked to show what would be the impact of a certain water management policy, population growth scenario, or drought condition. When water demands and supply fall out of balance, users try to bring them back into balance through policy choices. Users learn through interaction about how physical and social factors could affect their state’s water future.
NSF Funds NAU Project for Food- Energy-Water System Map
Food, energy, and water are connected in complex ways, and understanding these connections has become a priority for policy development. The National Science Foundation has awarded Benjamin Ruddell, an associate professor in NAU’s new School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems a $3 million grant to create and exploit the first detailed mapping of the Food, Energy, and Water System (FEWS) of the United States. The project ,“Mesoscale Data Fusion to Map and Model the U.S. Food, Energy and Water (FEW) System,” brings together an interdisciplinary team to integrate multiple system components, such as regional trade, river basins and aquifers, irrigation districts, crop belts, states, tribes, counties and cities, power grids, and climate, for a comprehensive view of their dynamic interactions. The map and its associated data will be used to examine FEWS network trade-offs between performance and sustainability, vulnerability to stresses and shocks, and the role of cities. A publicly accessible web site will enable visualization of how local actions propagate throughout the food, energy, and water system. This work builds on the U.S. National Water-Economy Project, which mapped the U.S. hydro-economic network, in support of efforts by municipalities and corporations to improve their sustainability and resilience with respect to water.