NEWS | IDEAL Project
Water UCI has received a $1 million grant from the University of California Office of the President through the Budget Act of 2023 for a new initiative — the Inclusive, Diverse, Equitable and Able Leaders (IDEAL) for Water Program. Inclusion, smart planning and public acceptance of innovative reclamation and conservation projects are essential for California to create a critically necessary “new paradigm in water management” to meet current and future needs, said Water UCI Director, Dave Feldman at a 2023 Water Policy Forum on campus in announcing the grant.
The 2023 Water Policy Forum also included Min presenting a symbolic check of $1 million to UC Irvine for IDEAL School of Social Ecology Dean Jon Gould and Feldman accepted the check from Min, who had championed the IDEAL grant from the University of California Office of the President through the Budget Act of 2023. “UC Irvine and the School of Social Ecology are dedicated to not only studying social problems but also helping to solve them,” Gould said.”
A number of activities are being planned during 2024 in support of IDEAL, in clouding a stakeholder workshop in May — stay tuned for more!
Recent Events & Videos
Project Overview: Our goal is to develop a framework of best practices for mitigating water pollutants that pose serious risks to human health and environmental quality in China, other developing economies, and the U.S by drawing on comparable experiences and lessons. Initial framework development via one year of funding will focus on the problem of managing disinfection byproducts. We will expand the framework – if funded over two additional years – by codifying best practices for managing regional collaboration and water transfers to ensure water quality and secure water supply. The initial problem we will examine is regulation of disinfection byproducts. These chemicals are present in U.S. and Chinese drinking water supplies and are carcinogenic at low concentrations. They are produced during the water treatment process via reactions between disinfectants and anthropogenic pollutants derived from industry, agriculture, and consumer products. This is a ubiquitous, difficult to manage issue that requires changes in how we manage rural landscapes, cities and the regulatory process itself. Our proposed solution, a handbook of best practices, will be developed through examining lessons from adaptive water governance: practices that emerge when rules, regulations, and laws are developed through broad stakeholder participation and cooperation between governments and formal non-governmental entities. We will glean these lessons through extensive literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, and workshops comprised of carefully-vetted case study participants in China and the U.S.
A Message From the Director
Freshwater is our planet’s most precious and vulnerable resource. While essential for life itself, challenges to its provision are too often overlooked. People across our planet, and here in California, face daily difficulty finding safe, clean, potable water. More than 40% of the world’s population lives in regions where clean water is increasingly scarce, while every day, nearly 1,000 children die from preventable water-borne and sanitation-related diseases. Freshwater is also a human security concern. Growing demands for food and energy, climate change-induced drought, and the fact that more than 260 river basins, home to over three billion people, are shared between two or more countries are all factors that lead to potentially worrisome conflicts. [Read More]
Our Mission Statement
Water UCI mobilizes seamless collaboration across the university to conduct research, provide educational and outreach programs, foster workforce development, and advance policy solutions to critical water problems facing the state, nation, and world.
Water UCI, located in the School of Social Ecology, serves to connect the water industry, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and K-12 schools with the vast resources of UCI and the UC system to implement solutions and keep the public informed.
Discover Water UCI
Water UCI is an interdisciplinary center in the School of Social Ecology that facilitates seamless collaboration across schools, departments, and existing research centers around questions of fundamental and applied water science, technology, management, and policy.
Watch this video to find out how UCI is making a difference.