This California's Water Supply Strategy is a strategic policy framework issued by the State of California to address the impacts of climate change on water resources. It focuses on ensuring long-term water security in the face of hotter temperatures, prolonged droughts, declining runoff, and increasing water scarcity. The strategy aims to modernise California's water system and generate enough additional water and storage capacity to compensate for climate-driven losses. Therefore, the Strategy outlines priority actions to improve drought resilience, secure water supplies for communities and agriculture, protect ecosystems, and modernise water management. The Strategy is based on four strategic pillars: 1) development of new water supplies through recycling and desalination; 2) expanding water storage capacity through capture and saving of more stormwater, above ground and below ground; 3) reducing demand and use of water in cities and on farms; 4) improving all water management actions with better data, forecasting, conveyance, and administration of water rights. The Strategy details the following key goals and targets: increasing water storage space through expanded surface and groundwater storage, expanding reservoirs and rehabilitating dams to regain lost storage capacity; expanding water recycling and reuse and making better use of treated wastewater, with direct potable reuse projects; increasing desalination and promoting environmentally appropriate desalination projects based on technological innovation; improving groundwater replenishment; reducing urban water demand and improving water efficiency standards; reducing landscape irrigation; supporting a more drought-resilient agricultural sector while implementing sustainable agricultural water uses with targeted conservation measures and crop management. The Strategy also provides for achieving environmental and social objectives including: protection of fish and wildlife habitats; restoration of rivers and wetlands; improving groundwater sustainability; ensuring access to safe drinking water; supporting disadvantaged and drought-affected communities.
États-Unis d'Amérique · 2022-08-01