Water Resources

From sessions on climate action and solid waste to ocean acidification and green infrastructure, the 2017 Maine Sustainability & Water Conference on Thursday, March 30 at the Augusta Civic Center will feature an expanded agenda on urgent topics affecting Maine, New England, the country, and the globe.

“Keep navigable waters clean.” It sounds straightforward, but in practice it’s anything but. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has struggled with that task, after the Clean Water Act in 1972 gave them the authority to regulate “navigable waters.” But “navigable” doesn’t cover small streams and wetlands, and water in those areas has a habit of flowing downhill into other, larger bodies of water. Whether the EPA could regulate all that water before it reached someplace navigable was never clear.

Environmental regulations save our country money, provide jobs, and ensure the health of all animals, plants and the humans who see clean air, water and soil as an American right. The EPA needs a leader who will defend that right, write Dianne Kopec and Fellow Aram Calhoun.

The 2016 White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and State of California Water Data Challenge announced FlowWest’s Sustainable Floodplain Habitat Finder application as the winner of the data challenge. The data challenge was a first of its kind collaboration between the White House CEQ and three California state agencies; Natural Resources Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Government Operations Agency.

The passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014 has launched an unprecedented, locally driven process to form hundreds of new public agencies that will play a critical role in managing the state’s groundwater resources for decades to come. Under this landmark legislation, new Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) must be formed in high- and medium-priority groundwater basins before June 30, 2017 in order to avoid state intervention.

Article abstract:

Watershed investment programs offer promising pathways to securing safe drinking water. But what does it take to establish and grow a successful watershed investment program? Program investors and practitioners are looking for guidance and ideas on how to build a program that works for their own context.

Many of the tribes that have been most successful in getting their voice heard in resource protection have used education, says Elizabeth Hoover, a Brown University assistant professor and researcher of environmental health and justice in native communities. “If you don’t have people in your community with those science degrees, they [state and federal agencies] don’t see you as qualified,” she says.

In 1982, the Hydrology Section of AGU was granted access to a portion of the income of the Robert E. Horton Fund for Hydrologic Research. This permitted the initiation of the Horton Research Grant for Ph.D. students, with a purpose to promote excellence through encouragement of the next generation of professionals in the hydrological sciences. The first Horton Research Grant was awarded in 1983. Each year the grant has been awarded to up to three students during their candidacy for a Ph.D. degree in hydrology, water resources, or a closely related field.