Graduation Year

2018

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Second Department

Organizational Studies

Reader 1

Susan Phillips

Reader 2

Brinda Sarathy

Terms of Use & License Information

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Rights Information

© 2018 Benjamin J Rigby

Abstract

As California contends with climate change and more extreme cycles of drought and deluge, water management agencies and conservation groups are looking towards solutions to the decreasing reliability of imported water supplies. Stormwater has historically been perceived as a threat to development but when captured properly, it presents a resource that can augment local water supplies. Solutions to water supply issues in California have traditionally employed technical and centrally controlled methods for importing water, but there is a growing understanding that parcel-level capture through vegetated swales presents an opportunity for reducing the impact that development has on California’s hydrology. Vegetated swales mimic nature’s effectiveness in reducing runoff speeds, removing pollutants and increasing groundwater supplies. No less a piece of California’s water infrastructure than canals and dams, these swales bring water infrastructure into the context of the California landscape. My report for the Chino Basin Water Conservation District analyzes the feasibility of installing vegetated swales in the Chino Basin region.

Comments

This senior project contains two sections within the PDF provided. The project itself is A Feasibility Report on Parcel-Level Vegetated Swale Installation in the Chino Basin, and it was prepared for the Chino Basin Water Conservation District. This is included in Appendix A and begins on page 38 of the PDF. Pages 1-38 situate the project within the context of California's historical approaches to water management and the challenges it faces with a changing climate.

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