California Water Crisis Solution, Research Paper Example

There has been little rain, and now snow in California for some time now, and this has resulted in a water crisis, where government officials have ordered a mandatory 25% reduction in residential water use statewide. Research suggests this may be a short term fix for the issue that may not be effective. The following will propose an appropriate “revolutionary solution” for this problem that might be more feasible and effective in solving the California water crisis.

In their book “The Solution Revolution,” Eggers and Macmillan (2013), reveal how Social Enterprises are teaming up with business and the government to solve some of society’s toughest problems. One of the distinct problems the authors identify that result in further enhancing policy issues can be seen with institutional disorganization and inadequacy in efficient information management. This issue was specifically identified with California institutions, and the way it handled the 9/11 attacks. The authors note that the attacks resulted in “California removing information on dams and aqueducts from its site” (Eggers and Macmillan, 2013). The authors point out that California had to take this precaution due to the fact that the Fed was saying terrorist were using these sites to gather information to form attacks, but what it revealed was a fundamental inefficiency within site security in managing sites servicing water related issues in California and the inadequacy of the site’s security.

In Cockerill and Armstrong’s (2015) article on California’s water crisis and the process of sustainable water management, the authors note that long-term solutions are undermined by contemporary methods of sustainable water management. They argue that despite the fact academia and popular media outlets push for sustainable water management, history shows human efforts to resolve water issues in the past have resulted in creating more problems like reduced water supply and more flooding. The authors note that, “humans dammed rivers to solve problems related to energy and irrigation, thereby reducing ecosystem resiliency. Humans established a water-based sewerage system to solve problems of aesthetics and health and as a result increased water consumption and created a dependency on massive infrastructure” (Cockerill & Armstrong, 2015). They attribute the fact that these short term solutions rarely work to the fact they expand negative conditions making them more pronounced as opposed to alleviating them. The authors argue that addressing water problems requires a cognitive shift to recognize the concept of ‘wicked problems’ and to subsequently change discourse about water to resist the idea of solutions.

Proposed Solution

My proposed solution for the water crisis is for California to incorporate the mass production of tower farms throughout California to replace standards within current farm operations. I base this solution on the success of Niels Thorlaksson of Tower Gardens in Santa Barbara, as he notes in a recent Wellness Plus article, “Tower Garden vertical food farming technology,which uses 90 percent less water on 90 percent land, provides that chemical-free solution for feeding Americans, today and into the future” (Daly, 2014). Tower Garden farms utilize significantly less water and land to grow food, which allows for more water to be utilized by California residence and it creates a sustainable water management system that can last going forward. I believe through strategic policy changes that mandate all farmers in California implement tower garden farms as their primary method of farming, over time California can function on significantly less water, which will alleviate the region of negative impacts caused by the water crisis.

References

Cockerill, K., & Armstrong, M. (2015). Sustainable Water Management Defies Long-term Solutions. In Sustainable Water Use and Management (pp. 245-264). Springer International Publishing.

Daly, M. (2014). California Farmer Finds Solution To The State’s Water Crisis.

Eggers, W. D., & Macmillan, P. (2013). The Solution Revolution: How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems. Harvard Business Review Press.

Laituri, M. (2014). Water Deficits. In Global Environmental Change (pp. 363-367). Springer Netherlands.