Dear Friends of Water UCI,
This has been a busy year for Water UCI. We recently established a Leadership Board to help build and financially grow Water UCI’s capabilities in research, teaching, and public outreach and have been engaged with them remotely during the pandemic. Among other things, we have:
- Partnered with four local water agencies to create an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center whose initial task will be to examine problems related to emerging contaminants and their risks to our region’s water supplies.
- Hosted colloquia and workshops on Covid-19 and Water, California’s Water Resilience Portfolio and other topics featuring leaders in the water and environmental field.
- Continued to grow our Middle School Challenge and Water UCI Fellowship program by forging new educational partnerships.
- Updated the Water UCI website to provide clear and abundant information about Water UCI programs and opportunities.
Before discussing the range of our future plans, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the current struggle for racial justice facing our global community and especially, people of color in our region. Water UCI is committed to efforts to transform our criminal justice system, public agencies and entire society, into humane, equitable, and just systems of governance and authority.
While “water issues” might not be the priority ranking highest in our minds when we think about questions of justice and equality, they are, nonetheless, of absolutely critical importance to the health and well-being of every part of our communities. And, we seek to do our part to ensure these issues get the attention they deserve.
This is reflected in our plans for the coming year. Water UCI plans to hold several forums in the 2020/2021 academic year. All are or will be available on the Water UCI YouTube page.
- One forum will feature a panel discussion focusing on environmental justice via the human right to clean water. It will discuss possible solutions for providing a safe and affordable water supply to everyone, especially in marginalized and under-represented communities of color.
- Two additional forums were held this year aimed at fostering discussion on two timely and important topics. One examined the problem posed by a group of emerging contaminants of concern in Orange County and throughout the U.S. – Perfluorinated compounds (PFAS), while another focused on the impacts of water market trading on water use and water equity.
- Water UCI also held colloquia exploring the links between Coronavirus and our water systems, the likely priorities for the Biden administration in regard to water policy and regulation, and providing an overview of the California Water Portfolio featuring Nancy Vogel, Director of the Governor’s Water Portfolio Program.
Each of these forums featured or will feature academic, government, industry, and civil society leaders to discuss the implications of these problems, as well as various proposed solutions that will address issues of equity as well as technical feasibility.
- This year, Water UCI has enabled several Social Ecology students to undertake a number of field study opportunities ranging from public education about contaminants of concern and what’s being done to manage them, to better use of social media to provide a forum for water problems, and threats to the integrity, privacy, and security of so-called “smart” water systems that amass large amounts of data and rely on automation for their operation.
- Water UCI plans to expand its Middle School Challenge program to more schools throughout Orange County, and this year developed an online curriculum that can be applied remotely, as needed. In 2020, Water UCI partnered with Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD) and Orange County Water District (OCWD) to provide an immersive education program that included field trips to learn about OCWD’s Groundwater Replenishment System and MNWD’s water treatment systems.
- Our collaboration with regional water agencies will be furthered through a new partnership with OCWD, MNWD, Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD), and Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD) to develop an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. Partnering with UCI Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Adeyemi Adeleye, we will complete an evaluation of the sources of PFAS found in wastewater treatment systems in Orange County by partnering with nine water agencies in Orange County and the Inland Empire.
- We have applied for funding from the National Science Foundation to grow the capacity of the Industry-University Cooperative effort over a five-year period in order to conduct research on additional topics of interest to our local water agencies.
- Water UCI’s new Leadership Board includes members from local water agencies, as well as non-governmental organizations and private industry, and is tasked with helping to grow Water UCI in a sustainable and deliberate manner by focusing on the strengths of our university, and our engaged and active local community (https://water.uci.edu/leadership-board/).
- We will continue to expand our initial foray into exploring implementation of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act by building on the findings of our joint-2019 European Union – California workshop on comparative policy lessons with respect to managing this complex, multi-jurisdictional resource. We completed a survey of various water agencies across the state whose views on implementation of this Act can help enhance prospects for achieving its ambitious goal of groundwater resilience.
- A study of the impacts of wildfires on water quality in Napa County, California was recently completed by five graduates of UCI’s Master of Public Policy program, overseen by Water UCI’s Their recommendations regarding optimal treatment technologies, inter-agency collaboration in averting future water quality degradation from fire, and funding options to ensure adequate resources to respond to this threat offer important insights into an issue likely to be of long-term significance to our increasingly climate-challenged region.
- An article entitled “Coronavirus spotlights the link between clean water and health” was published in The Conversation, and highlights some of the environmental justice issues we intend to focus on moving forward. See:
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-spotlights-the-link-between-clean-water-and-health-132731
All these plans underscore Water UCI’s commitment to providing needed research, collaboration and education on the most pressing water issues facing our community.
In closing, our commitment to you, our Water UCI friends, is to continue to provide relevant and timely information about water issues that are informed by academic research, industry experience and current and evolving regulation, and national and state policy. In the year ahead, we hope to maintain two-way communication and, in that spirit, we extend our invitation to you to reach out to us with your ideas, opportunities for collaboration, and suggestions for improving the scope, programs, and research and outreach activities of Water UCI.
Sincerely,
David Feldman
Director, Water UCI