Know Your H2O
Most of us don’t think twice as we turn on the faucet to grab a glass of water, or use the hose to water our gardens. We take for granted that the water will be flowing and that it will be clean and safe to drink. Those simple acts are made possible by an incredible chain of events and water infrastructure that can link an entire state with the ocean, and highlights some of the key environmental issues of our time. Clean drinking water is one of the most rare and precious resources on the earth, yet we typically use it with little regard. Following a drop of our water: from origin, through its use, to disposal - reveals an expensive, and often wasteful journey that makes it clear we could be using water more wisely. Fortunately, we can alter this pattern by using the classic mantra: reduce, reuse and recycle to fundamentally reduce our water consumption and to solve ocean pollution issues at the same time.
The Cycle of Insanity - The Real Story of Water
Order the Cycle of Insanity DVD
Download the Cycle of Insanity script here
Learn more about the issues discussed in The Cycle of Insanity
- Water Imports - Southern California
- Water Shortage/Peak Water
- Agriculture - Water Use
- Agriculture - Pollution
- Wetland Destruction
- Impervious Surface
- Groundwater Depletion
- Seawater Intrusion
- Urban Runoff
- Wastewater (Sewer Systems and Wastewater Treatment)
- Wastewater Recycling
- Water Agency Fragmentation
- Desalination
- Residential Water Conservation
- Disposal of Pharmaceuticals
- Ocean Friendly Gardens
- Greywater (1) and (2)
- Low Impact Development and Green Streets
- Stormwater Capture (1) and (2)
- Sea Level Rise - Impacts on Water Supplies and Water Infrastructure
April 26 2013
The Potential of Stormwater
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development Water Recycling
It’s a basic idea: When it rains, we need to be able to capture that water, store it and then use it later. Today, about half the water from rain that could be used to replenish groundwater basins and increase local water supplies ends up turning into polluted stormwater runoff.
April 12 2013
Major green infrastructure project is completed in New York
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development
In an area where combined sewer system overflows are a leading contributor to water quality problems, the City of New York has turned to green infrastructure as a cost-effective solution to multiple problems.
April 08 2013
California’s Landmark Law Under Attack
Beach Access Blue Water Task Force Coastal Preservation Know Your H20 Ocean Ecosystems Water Quality
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is one of California’s most important laws—not only because it helps protect our environment and “quality of life”, but CEQA also promotes democratic participation in the decision-making process—giving citizens a say in what happens in their local communities. Unfortunately over the past few years, developers and polluting industries have been attempting to weaken CEQA through legislation. If special interests succeed in weakening CEQA, California’s natural resources could suffer from unchecked development, and the public will lose its ability to require developers to address environmental impacts.
March 29 2013
Sewage Treatment: Moving Off the Coast?
Know Your H20 Wastewater Water Recycling
A combination of required replacement of outdated sewage treatment facilities, climate change adaptation (sea level rise), and integrated water management strategies may be evolving towards movement of sewage treatment facilities away from the coast, as well as water re-use and improved water quality discharge.
March 19 2013
EPA articulates the multiple benefits of green infrastructure
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development
Green infrastructure is a cost-effective and resilient approach to our water infrastructure needs that provides many community benefits. As of 2008, the total reported water infrastructure needs for the United States included $63.6 billion for combined sewer overflow control and $42.3 billion for stormwater management. Since only 22% of regulated MS4s are included in this estimate, the need for stormwater management is likely much greater. As communities develop and climate patterns shift, these needs can only be expected to grow. While single-purpose gray stormwater infrastructure is largely designed to move urban stormwater away from the built environment, green infrastructure reduces and treats stormwater at its source while delivering many other environmental, social, and economic benefits. These benefits not only promote urban livability, but also add to the bottom line. Source EPA: http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/gi_why.cfm#WaterQuality
March 12 2013
Desalination a drop in the bucket?
Surfrider advocates for holistic water supply management through the exhaustion of multi-benefit water supply solutions before implementation of more energy intensive options such as desalination. Many cities in California are beginning to realize desalination is not the answer!
March 08 2013
Desalination verses Conservation: Who wins?
In a recent Southern California article, Surfrider's Joe Geever highlights the multiple benefits of increased water conservation verses the multiple negative impacts of ocean desalination.
November 21 2012
Direct Potable Reuse is Happening In Texas
Know Your H20 Wastewater Water Recycling
In what could be the first wave (first set?) of such projects in the United States, the cities of Brownwood and Big Spring in west Texas are constructing Direct Potable Reuse systems to turn wastewater into high quality drinking water,
August 17 2012
Surfrider Joins Congressman Waxman to Release Report on Congress’s Coastal Voting Record
Know Your H20 Wastewater Ocean Ecosystems Water Quality
Congressman Waxman is one of the most influential members of congress and has rightly earned his reputation as being a mover and shaker. He likes to investigate and uncover issues (just Google his name). So when Surfrider was invited to participate in a press conference with the Congressman to release a report highlighting Congress’s poor coastal voting record, we jumped at the opportunity.
August 10 2012
New Report Validates Know Your H2O
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development Water Recycling
An international team of researchers from University of California Irvine, University of Melbourne, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other institutions just published a report which will appear in a special Aug. 10 issue of the journal Science. The report, Taking the “Waste” Out of “Wastewater” for Human Water Security and Ecosystem Sustainability, concludes that changing human behavior and redoubling use of alternatives are critical to breaking the cycle of a ceaseless quest for new water that generates pollution and decimates wildlife, rivers and ecosystems. This is what Surfrider has termed the 'Cycle of Insanity'.
July 20 2012
Spending cuts problems with old and failing sewers and storm systems
A funding bill has just been released from a House Committee that proposes drastic cuts to the State Clean Water Revolving Funds. What this means is less money going out to the states to fix broken sewers, maintaining stormwater systems and installing new, green ways of managing runoff.
April 10 2012
Restoring Clean Water and Natural Ecosystems in Ventura, CA
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development Ocean Friendly Gardens Water Quality
For the past two decades the Ventura Chapter has been working on integrated solutions to the problems that face our ocean, waves, and beaches. Learn more about the many programs and campaigns they are leading to protect and restore water quality, water supply and watershed function in the Ventura River watershed.
March 06 2012
The Clean Water Program
Blue Water Task Force Know Your H20 Ocean Friendly Gardens Water Quality
The Clean Water Program has grown into a suite of complementary programs, campaigns and tools that Chapters and activists can use to help solve water pollution problems and to educate communities about the many benefits of responsible land and water management.
March 01 2012
No Surprise - San Diego’s Recycled Water is Better Than Imported Water
The City of San Diego’s Water Purification Demonstration Project has been on-line since last summer, and based on a report issued February 1, the purified water met all drinking water standards, which included testing for more than 300 compounds. In fact, it did even better than that. The City also tested for 91 Chemicals of Emerging Concern —compounds found in personal care products and endocrine disruptors that might be found in wastewater, but are not currently regulated as drinking water pollutants by state or federal law. Of the 91 compounds, only two were detected in the ultra-purified water. By comparison, 13 of those 91 compounds (including the two found in the ultra-purified water) were detected in the imported water that makes up the bulk of San Diego's drinking water.
January 27 2012
Leatherback Sea Turtles Get Protection Along West Coast
Coastal Preservation Know Your H20 Desalination Ocean Ecosystems Rise Above Plastics
Regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean on the West Coast as critical habitat for endangered leatherback sea turtles, protecting them from ocean-related development projects and pollution.
January 24 2012
Sewer Mining - Weird Term but an Idea That Makes Sense
Know Your H20 Wastewater Water Recycling
In the area around Sydney, Australia, several private organizations have found a new dependable source of water for irrigation and other non-potable uses - the sewer. The idea is to tap into sewer lines, treat the water to make it suitable for irrigation, and thereby save drinking water for - drinking.
January 12 2012
Don’t Waste Water: Recycle Wastewater
Know Your H20 Wastewater Water Recycling
The National Research Council has just released a report that clarifies what we already knew, using marginally more energy in the treatment process can purify our wastewater so that it’s safe to drink, and do it at a fraction of the cost of ocean desalination or importing freshwater long distances.
December 23 2011
Surfrider Foundation Briefs the Appellate Court for Marine Life Protection
Know Your H20 Desalination Legal
On December 28, 2011, Surfrider Foundation filed an appellate brief articulating our opposition to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board’s approval of the Carlsbad Desalination Plant without proper analyses of the appropriate site, design, and technology that would minimize harm to coastal resources. Additionally, the project approval allowed for after-the-fact mitigation of marine life mortality instead of before-the-fact minimization of such harm, as called for by the state’s water protection law, the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act.
December 19 2011
Santa Monica, CA: Ocean Park Boulevard Green Street Project
Know Your H20 Low Impact Development
The Ocean Park community and City of Santa Monica celebrate the groundbreaking of the Ocean Park Boulevard Green Street Project. A community member expresses perfectly the long term vision that the KYH2O program is trying to grow in coastal communities.
December 09 2011
Know Your H2O Principles in Statement to Congress
Water expert Dr. Peter Gleick testified before Congress recently and presented nine targeted recommendations for fundamental change in federal water policy. Several of these recommendations, in particular numbers 1, 2 and 6, are consistent with the themes of our Know Your H2O program as expressed in our Cycle of Insanity video.