You are now in California and the U.S. category.

 Los Angeles-based nonprofit TreePeople made headlines last year with a plan to retrofit half a dozen pilot homes with tanks and rain gardens. Today, all the rainwater capture systems have been installed and they highlight how homeowners can be part of the solution to some of California’s water problems. As the organization prepares insights on how the pilot program can be expanded, Water Deeply spoke to TreePeople’s senior policy director, Deborah Weinstein Bloome.

With a few inches of much-needed rain having fallen over the weekend around the Bay Area, it’s yet to be seen whether the region will see a return this winter — or the next, or the next — to sustaining precipitation levels. And indeed, climate change and human water use spread the risk of catastrophic drought over much of the world. Who can save us? Possibly Google.

 

What image does the term “water infrastructure” conjure up for you? Likely something engineered, such as a pipe carrying water, a reservoir storing drinking water or a treatment plant purifying wastewater. But the definition should actually be broadened to include natural water infrastructure that was moving and treating water long before pipelines and anaerobic digesters even existed. California has started down this “new” (old) way of thinking – and it’s welcome news.

 

The last in a series of “October surprise” storms drenched the Bay Area on Sunday, filling reservoirs, downing power lines, and causing flash flood warnings in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Though the water was welcome to much of the parched region, the deluge brought more trials and misery to the hardy folk who survived the devastating Loma fire earlier this month. Boulders crashed, creeks raged, trees toppled and rain seeped into damaged homes.The weather is expected to clear up Monday and grow warmer throughout the week.

 

California is poised to become an early adopter of the direct reuse of purified wastewater as a source of drinking water. The State Water Board recently released a report for public comment that indicates it is feasible to regulate direct potable reuse to produce safe and reliable drinking water (comments are due by noon on October 25, 2016). We talked to David Sedlak—one of the 12 experts who worked on the report and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network—about this potential new water source.