In 2022, the total rainfall in the contiguous United States was more than an inch lower than average, with some parts of the country experiencing significant drought conditions. A shrinking Colorado River, which supplies seven states in the Southwest with water, has led to dangerously low water levels in the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs. Parts of the Mississippi River are at their lowest water levels in a decade. About 58 percent of the country is now in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor Report.
“The vast majority of the continental United States is in drought, and if you looked at the same statistics a year ago, it was much different,” says Meredith Clement, One Water Community of Practice Leader and a principal at Kennedy Jenks. “The rapidity of this drought and the areal extent of it is quite stunning, honestly.”
Such conditions are nothing new for residents of the Southwest, which is experiencing the driest 22-year period in 1,200 years, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change. Engineers in that region have been working for decades to implement solutions and workarounds to keep the water flowing to cities such as Phoenix, San Diego, and Las Vegas.
“Our engineers design the capital projects that create the infrastructure to treat and move our water,” says Tish Berge, assistant general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority and a registered professional engineer. “Once that’s built, they operate the treatment plants and distribution systems, and they maintain these systems through our asset management program.”
For the past 30 years, the San Diego County Water Authority has been working with its 24 member agencies on ways to improve water conservation, diversify water supply, and increase the local supply through potable reuse and desalination.
“Our story shows that it’s possible to survive and thrive during challenging times,” Berge says.
But keeping the water running in the Southwest requires leadership, community commitment, and a major investment in both conservation and infrastructure, she adds.
The Southwest is benefiting now from projects begun by forward-thinking engineers and municipal planners decades ago. Today’s engineers must take a similarly long-term view, especially as the pace of climate change and extreme weather events continues to accelerate.
“We need to be planning decades ahead,” Berge says. “We are in unchartered territory, and water managers everywhere need to be creating sustainable visions for future generations.”
The Southwest is experiencing the worst 22-year drought in 1,200 years.
Such foresight, with an eye on climate change, has influenced the way that engineers—and their municipal partners—think about water projects.
“We are being asked by regulators and by our communities to plan and illustrate our plans in a much more transparent way,” says Dawn Taffler, client director and vice president at Kennedy Jenks. “In California, there’s an alphabet soup of required plans, from urban water management plans to integrated regional management plans and risk resiliency plans. They’re all looking at how to be more reliable to deliver and treat water in a changing climate.”
The role of water-focused engineers has also evolved to blend new technologies with the growing threat of climate change. They’re more often dealing with multiple agencies, multiple municipalities, and new and different stakeholders for projects.
“We are now working with multiple agencies, sometimes eight to 10 agencies, and broader geographies and other entities,” Clement says. “Whereas in the past, we used to have one project for one client, and that was it.”
“In the Southwest, the groundwater table is hundreds of feet deep, and increasing in depth every year. And they’re all tapping into the same aquifer. It’s like they have one big cup, and they just keep putting more straws into it.”
KEVIN MACKINNONSENIOR TECHNICAL LEADERWATER RESOURCESWESTON & SAMPSON ENGINEERS
For example, multiple municipalities in the Southwest might work together to fund a project that banks water during wet years to retrieve during a dry year, says Patrick Huston, co-chair, ACEC Water, Energy, and Environment Committee, and vice president of Kennedy Jenks in San Diego. Or a potable reuse project might require looping in a wastewater agency that hadn’t traditionally been involved in such projects.
“There are many more stakeholders that are getting involved in projects today because the necessary solutions are no longer simple,” Huston says. “You’re not just getting more water from a stream, because there is no more water in the stream.”
Today’s water-focused engineers must have better communication skills and the ability to work through the sometimes bureaucratic and political agencies to find a solution that will benefit all parties.
“We have to get the agencies into a room to help us understand the needs of the region and to understand the feasibility of the potential water supplies,” Clement says. “Everyone needs to work together to get the water supply to where it is needed and allow it to move from region to region.”
Engineers are now helping communities figure out how to diversify the water options they have through a range of solutions, including potable reuse and looking beyond the surface groundwater that may not be as reliable in the future.
40 million people in seven states rely on the Colorado River for drinking water.
Last year, Kennedy Jenks helped complete a $125 million water replenishment project, working with public and private stakeholders to build a facility that can treat municipal wastewater, agricultural irrigation return flow, agricultural produce wash wastewater, and urban storm water runoff to create a new 3,500-acre-foot source of clean water.
The firm also worked on a separate project in San Diego County that will use surface water augmentation to provide 30 percent of the East county’s potable water needs. That project has been under development for a decade.
“The residents there now have a reliable water supply and a more predictable water cost,” Huston says. “It has been a real journey to get some of these projects through the regulators, the permitting, and the departments of health. But I think it paves the way for other projects to follow. If one of these took 15 years, maybe the next one takes 10 or eight. We are creating a path to get them done.”
Engineers are also increasingly taking a more holistic view of solutions to current and future water supply issues.
“The challenges are moving beyond what you can do with a pen and paper and design to finding engineering solutions that make economic sense in the near- and the long-term, and that are socially equitable, consider the environment, and balance environmental needs,” Taffler says. “Agencies that previously may have been thinking about things in terms of the cheapest cost are now realizing the additional benefits and the reasons to push projects forward. That has been a real game changer, and it impacts all type of projects.”
“We need to be planning decades ahead. We are in unchartered territory, and water managers everywhere need to be creating sustainable visions for future generations.”
TISH BERGEASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGERSAN DIEGO COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY
While the solutions that work in the Southwest may not translate directly to other parts of the country, which have different challenges, engineers across the U.S. are witnessing increased interest from stakeholders in water solutions.
Many clients and municipalities in the Northeast, for example, are interested in forecasts as to when a drought year or a water-scarcity year might hit, as well as when they might see a water-surplus year, says Kevin MacKinnon, senior technical leader, water resources at Weston & Sampson Engineers in Reading, Massachusetts.
“The vast majority of the continental United States is in drought, and if you looked at the same statistics a year ago, it was much different. The rapidity of this drought and the areal extent of it is quite stunning, honestly.”
MEREDITH CLEMENTONE WATER COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE LEADER AND PRINCIPALKENNEDY JENKS
About 58 percent of the contiguous U.S. is now in drought.
In response to such demands, Weston & Sampson has developed a new tool that helps its clients understand their safe yield in any given year. The tool makes predictions using nearly 300 publicly available or client-specific hydrometeorological data sets, such as groundwater levels, snowpack, stream flow, precipitation, and temperature data.
“That’s helpful to communities and water suppliers, to give them an understanding of whether they might be headed into a drought,” he says. “It also allows us to recommend some aquifer management techniques they can use to preserve some of the storage for the summer low-precipitation, high-demand season.”
The firm also works with clients to help them determine the safe yield of their wells and if there are solutions that could improve efficiencies of those wells. Municipalities in the Northeast have an advantage over those in the Southwest when it comes to water because not only does it rain more, but the rain recharges aquifers much more quickly.
“There are many more stakeholders that are getting involved in projects today because the necessary solutions are no longer simple. You’re not just getting more water from a stream, because there is no more water in the stream.”
PATRICK HUSTONACEC WATER, ENERGY, AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEEVICE PRESIDENTKENNEDY JENKS
“In the Southwest, the groundwater table is hundreds of feet deep, and increasing in depth every year,” MacKinnon says. “And they’re all tapping into the same aquifer. It’s like they have one big cup, and they just keep putting more straws into it.”
In the Northeast, on the other hand, the geology is such that most communities are tapping into discrete aquifers that are not interconnected. So the focus there is on other issues.
“The biggest problem in this area is typically storage, and that will become an increasing issue as we move forward and climate change impacts the way we receive precipitation and recharge,” MacKinnon says. “As storms become more intense, we may be receiving greater volumes of annual precipitation, but it’s coming with greater intensity in shorter periods of time. So it’s more likely to run off into streams and rivers and out to the ocean without effectively recharging the groundwater systems.”
Beth Braverman is a business writer based in New York.