Freshwater

Finding answers to the world’s pressing water supply and access challenges requires crossing disciplines and exploring a wide range of approaches. Stanford researchers are working together on sustainable solutions ranging from a low-cost water pump chlorinator to a high-tech, multi-million-dollar wastewater resource recovery center. They also are looking at water supply issues from a law and public policy standpoint, providing guidance to decision-makers through knowledge-based tools such as an interactive website illustrating California’s major groundwater challenges and potential solutions. To advance these and other innovative freshwater solutions, Woods supports the Global Freshwater Initiative, which develops strategies to promote the long-term viability of freshwater supplies; the Water, Health & Development Program, which identifies ways to improve and increase the sustainability of water supply and sanitation service delivery; and the Water in the West Program, which addresses multiple dimensions of realistic, integrated solutions to the American West’s water challenges. Read on for examples of work Woods-affiliated researchers are doing to ensure adequate supply and access to safe water for billions of people.

In The News

Water Use Rises as Fracking Expands

Senior Fellow Robert Jackson (Environmental Earth System Science) states that the USGS research is more comprehensive than other studies, and...
July 1, 2015 - By Bobby Magill and Climate Central, Scientific American

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California's Quirky Water Rights System is Showing its Age

Woods Co-Director and Senior Fellow Buzz Thompson states that California's system is not set up for allocating water during periods of shortage.
June 25, 2015 - By Debra Kahn, E&E News (subscription needed)

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A Weather Scientist Explains the Drought in the West

Stanford doctoral student Daniel Swain (Environmental Earth System Science), a 2013 Rising Environmental Leadership Program fellow, provides an ...
June 19, 2015 - By Daniel Swain, Outside Magazine

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What’s Blamed for California’s Drought? Basically Everything

Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy at Water in the West, states that in reality, we need to be smarter in the way we use water, as...
June 18, 2015 - By Fenit Nirappil, Associated Press

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