use planning works in the region .
There ’ s a few things to know about new housing developments . Yes , there are new housing developments , and we need to make sure there are water supplies to meet those new demands . New housing developments tend to be … much more efficient in terms of water use than existing homes . I live in a house built in 1951 . We ’ ve done a lot here to improve our irrigation systems , make sure we ’ re on drip irrigation , upgrade our showerheads , upgrade the toilets , make sure we have water-efficient appliances and we ’ re reducing our water use . That ’ s much more of a challenge in older homes than it is in newer homes ; people are walking into them and there ’ s already low-flow toilets , there ’ s already showerheads that are efficient , there ’ s already drip irrigation . The landscaping isn ’ t acres of grass ; it ’ s low-use water plants and landscaping .
The other piece of that is as a region , we ’ re still growing , but the demand numbers are actually coming down . There ’ s some really interesting work that ’ s been done by ... the Sacramento Area Council of Governments , the regional planning authority , they did something called the Blueprint around 2000 and looked at buildout capacity of the region . ... They ’ re realizing that the buildout numbers and the rate of growth and development in this region is slowing . I think that ’ s OK . We need to continue to provide affordable housing . We need to make sure our water supplies are meeting our demand and we need to make sure we ’ re increasing residential water-use efficiency .
In August and September , the Water Forum is doing a habitat restoration project on the Lower American River by Ancil Hoffman Park . What ’ s the significance of that project ? This habitat program restores fish spawning gravel beds , and helps improve juvenile fish rearing habitat on the Lower American River . When fish are spawning in the fall , you can go out and see the little tails and their little fins and they look really busy in the gravel . Well , we are placing more gravel in the river to support the creation of these salmon nests where they lay the eggs , the eggs are fertilized and that ’ s their nest . This is our 10th habitat restoration project . In the past , the Lower American River has been a prime area for salmon and steelhead spawning . That area has degraded over time , whether it ’ s resulting from mining activities , dams ( or ) just encroachment on a very wild and scenic river . We ’ re looking to restore that .
You ’ ve talked about Water Forum 2.0 a little bit . Did you want to talk more about that ? This is one of my favorite things to talk about . … We ’ re focusing on habitat enhancement and habitat management . The Water Forum has a long history of doing habitat restoration work in the river . We ’ re going to continue that ( and ) continue to look at other opportunities … to support salmon species . … We ’ re continuing to improve our science program and our monitoring modeling work that really goes into some of the decisions about flows and operations and temperature management — all the stuff that ’ s super important this year in the drought .
A really important topic for the Water Forum : 20 years ago , topics of groundwater and surface water were kind of separate . When the Water Forum Agreement was put into place in 2000 , it identified groundwater sustainability as being really critical to the region ’ s reliability . In fact , the Sacramento Groundwater Authority , which resulted from the Water Forum negotiations , really served as a model for this region , prior to SGMA being put in place , the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act ( of 2014 ). Unlike other regions of the state , our region ’ s groundwater supplies are sustainable thanks to 20 years of careful management . That ’ s our backdrop for this year and going forward even more so . I think we ’ re in a really good position here to rely on groundwater supplies . In Water Forum 2.0 , we know we need to do more . We ’ re looking at climate change in a really detailed way .
The Regional Water Authority is planning already to expand its ability to manage groundwater and surface water , according to availability , through something called a groundwater bank . The long-term vision is to support the groundwater bank that would be able to provide flexibility to this region . There ’ s some of this in place already , but it ’ s a way to coordinate how we manage water and water supply , whether it ’ s coming from a river or it ’ s coming from underground aquifers .
You think about the Sierra and imagine in January when they ’ re covered in snow , and you look a little bit downhill from that and imagine there ’ s this huge sort of stretch of land ... that ’ s really this aquifer that can hold groundwater . The Regional Water Authority has plans in place to expand the system of wells that allow us to pump groundwater in dry years , and that ’ s just a much larger , more vast bank of water than imagining Folsom Reservoir , which is really sort of a dot on the map , compared to that snowpack and that aquifer . It ’ s a way of managing in the 21st century , and if climate change is showing us anything , it ’ s showing us that the things we ’ ve done in the past are not going to work going into the future . We need to be smarter , we need to be more thoughtful , we need to be managing based on how ecosystems work , not how pipes and plumbing works .
We ’ re really hoping to outline what those actions are , what top-priority projects are , and what the region has to support in order to reach sustainability and create reliability for this region going forward . The ( other ) component of Water Forum 2.0 is stewardship . … We ’ re thinking hard about what we want our legacy to continue to be moving forward , how do we want to be stewards of the Lower American River and Folsom .
Edited for length and clarity .
Sena Christian is interim editor of Comstock ’ s . Online at www . senachristian . com and on Twitter @ SenaCChristian .
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