In 2018, L.A. county voters passed Measure W, a tax on impermeable pavement to help fund stormwater capture projects across the region. The Safe Clean Water Program is made up of multiple committees that review and approve funding for those projects.
Four years later, the project has helped significantly in clearing a backlog of city and county projects to improve local water quality and infrastructure, distributing more than a billion dollars to primarily fund such projects, according to a new report from environmental non-profit L.A. Waterkeeper.
More Water, But Specific Metrics Needed
Those new projects are expected to help the county increase its ability to capture stormwater by about 50,000 acre-feet every year (depending on the weather of course), on top of the average of about 250,000 acre-feet it currently captures. That adds up to enough water to serve more than a million people for a year.
But the math to count those water supply benefits needs some work, according to the report.
“There is uncertainty as to whether these claimed benefits will be fully achieved,” the report states. “There is no methodology…to easily determine how different projects may interact with one another or ensure that captured water is not double counted.”
What’s In An Acre-Foot?
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One acre-foot is about the amount of water it would take to fill a football field a foot deep. The city of L.A. uses about 500,000 acre-feet of water every year.
Still, these projects have been relatively small in scale, said Mark Gold, a UCLA professor and long-time water expert who now serves on a committee with the…
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