The Looming U.S. Water Data Infrastructure Disaster
Improving data infrastructure could help U.S. states respond more quickly to natural disasters. Here are the first steps to take.
We think about Hurricane Harvey as a natural disaster — after all, it was flooding from Harvey that displaced more than 30,000 people in 2017, inflicting $125 billion in damage.
But should we also be thinking about the next Harvey as a potential data infrastructure disaster — one from which dozens of states should be learning lessons and for which they should be preparing?
I think so. Indeed, Harvey serves as a cautionary tale for even those rare states that, like Texas, have excellent water infrastructure and water data. Because if those data can’t be summoned in a time frame relevant to split-second decision making — and if they aren’t coordinated across the state’s groundwater and surface water resources, as well as across geographies and stakeholders — they won’t help save lives and property in big disasters such as Harvey.
Why Data Infrastructure is a State Problem (Not a Federal One)
But right now, very few U.S. states have any water data infrastructure to speak of, and no U.S. state has a data infrastructure that provides insights to decision makers at time scales that make a difference for both safety and storage. Nor does any state have a data infrastructure that coordinates and integrates data across geographies and from surface to ground water.
As a result, we’re hamstrung in our search for decision-ready, science-based solutions for the increased flooding and the deeper, longer droughts we are already experiencing as a result of climate change.
Our data systems for water just aren’t fluid enough to help us make decisions about, say, seamlessly balancing — or improving — safety and flood control with storage for later use.
— John Sabo
Our national data infrastructure disaster for water starts with the fact that very few states even have organized data about their water resources. Those that do — such as Texas — too often have those data buried in antiquated software, requiring too much precious time for extraction and application. And the data are usually updated on a time scale much longer than needed — real time.
As a result, our data systems for water just aren’t fluid enough to help us make decisions about, say, seamlessly balancing — or improving — safety and flood control with storage for later use.
The solution to these issues is often touted as a federal one — “one water agency, one water data.” But I think that the solution can’t and won’t happen at the federal level — because water is a local issue and federal data would stifle innovation in data wrangling to meet local and state needs.
Fortunately, Texas and California give us two good models from which to draw up plans for what water data infrastructures need to address at the state level. The opportunity is at the state level.
Texas: The Opportunities to Go from Good to Great
It’s important to note off the bat: Texas leads the nation and is decades ahead of other states in the realm of integration of data with state water law and regulation. Texas has a water resources mashup that integrates hydrologic data with surface water rights in every basin; this mashup is an integral part of its water data infrastructure and water resources management strategy. The mashup is called the Water Availability Model (WAM), and there is a WAM for every coastal basin in the state.
But Texas is also a proving ground for water data infrastructure in many ways. Texas has catastrophic flooding from storms such as Harvey, of course — but it also has droughts and seasonal water shortages. These two are equally potent challenges in themselves, but their solutions need to be integrated and data driven to be maximally effective. The Texas state legislature paved the way for the creation of a statewide “Flood Plan,” the counterpart to the State Water Plan (for supply). These plans need to coupled, and water data infrastructure is the foundation for this marriage.
Segue to the Golden State. An interesting approach being piloted in California is the rejiggering of operations for multipurpose dams so that they offer the same flood protection but better storage potential. In the Feather River basin, the Army Corps of Engineers in California is working on FIRO (Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations). The goal is to be smarter about retention of floodwater from atmospheric rivers, California’s precipitation equivalent of hurricanes.
Texas has catastrophic flooding from storms such as Harvey, of course — but it also has droughts and seasonal water shortages. These two are equally potent challenges in themselves, but their solutions need to be integrated and data driven to be maximally effective.
— John Sabo
But rejiggering (or “reoperations”) requires real-time data collection and integration into operations algorithms. It’s kind of like calling an audible at the line of scrimmage; for those of you who aren’t Bears or Longhorns fans, this means operations are adjusted real-time, leaving more water in reservoirs after floods, without increasing flood intensity or challenging dam safety. This play could be an important third-down call in the Texas water management playbook: it would be clearly beneficial to have a safe system that stores more water from floods of increasing magnitude for use in drought periods of increasing duration.
To make something like FIRO work in Texas requires integration of data streams and models from within the tall silos of flood control (on hourly scales) and water resources (monthly to multiannual). In order to accomplish this integration, Texas should consider taking several initial steps:
- First, the state should strive to build the statewide Flood Plan as a full data and model complement to the existing State Water Plan. Floods are first and foremost a public safety issue, but they are also an enormous opportunity for storage for later use. Building the Flood Plan as a full data and model complement to the State Water Plan would enable scenario planning for innovations like FIRO.
- Second, Texas has a unique legal opportunity to cross the aisle and trade water between surface and groundwater domains. While one needs to be wary of robbing Peter (aquifers) to pay Paul (downstream surface water users), alluvial aquifers are a potentially cost-effective natural infrastructure that could buffer the human infrastructure components in ag and oil and gas from highs and lows AND deliver e-flows in times of zero flows.
- Third, Texas can build alluvial wetlands (and associated off-channel and below-ground strorage) to reduce flood peaks and grease the skids for FIRO. Integration of built and natural infrastructure is a focal area of the US Army Corps Engineering With Nature (EWN) program. But that integration needs critical funding to pilot revolutionary water management techniques like FIRO and green infrastructure.
California: More Effective Groundwater Management is the Driver
California also has the opportunity to benefit from an integrated state-level data system, though the drivers here are not flooding, but groundwater management. California’s state government is placing pressure on local and regional water users to more effectively manage their aquifers and groundwater.
In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to ensure better local management of the state’s groundwater. To comply, counties, irrigation districts and municipalities are required to set targets to slow or stop the declines of their aquifers.
Hitting these targets will not only require harnessing existing groundwater data and models, but also an integration of the state’s existing surface water models with these groundwater management tools. Here, California should look to the Longhorn playbook.
California also has the opportunity to benefit from an integrated state-level data system, though the drivers here are not flooding, but groundwater management.
— John Sabo
As mentioned earlier, Texas has WAM — a surface water mashup of hydrology and water rights. The state also has GAM — Groundwater Availability Models. WAM and GAM are galaxies apart in Texas — a gap that needs to be addressed in order to increase flexibility in storage of flood water and efficacy of FIRO. These models are not integrated because the domains of groundwater and surface water are largely perpendicular — geographically — in Texas. East-West aquifers transect largely North-South watersheds.
In California’s Central and Salinas Valleys, the situation is not so perpendicular. Integration is much more doable — but this task and its product needs to be owned by a single agency and made the tool of regulation for SGMA.
Conjunctive ground- and surface-water science would open up the possibility for science-based assessment of innovations like flood-managed aquifer recharge (Flood MAR), where winter floods are redirected to fallow farm lands to passively recharge aquifers for irrigation later in the dry season.
Next Step: Integrated Data Infrastructure for Multistate Water Management
Texas and California are unique in that each has its own basins held within their states (the coastal basins in Texas and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Basin in California). The low-hanging fruit is in these basins that flow in a single state. In fact, the data accessibility and coordination I’m describing should become standard practice across all U.S. states across the Sunbelt where there are unique state basins that support growing cities, industry and agriculture. There are always going to be seasonal shortage and flood issues in the Sun Belt. Hurricanes (and their potential for flooding) happen in the Sun Belt first. Drought and water shortages routinely hit the Sunbelt.
But the United States has a number of basins that will require multistate and international data coordination — the Columbia, Colorado, Rio Grande and the big Kahuna, the Mississippi. These rivers are transboundary and we know from non-US basins that data is a tool for diplomacy and sustainability. Rivers like the Red-Arkansas and the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint need data diplomacy in the same way that the Mekong and Nile do, even though they don’t cross international borders.
But first: we need to take data infrastructure more seriously as the essential tool to ensure water abundance rather than scarcity in the decades to come.
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