underutilized resource (Li, 2007a, 2007b). The value of stormwater, however, comes from the ability to measure the volumes of stormwater flows and make them comparable to other forms of water sources, such as imported water from MWD (Robertson, 2012). In this section I focus on the calculative practices and inscription devices, legal mechanisms, and residential programs that are enrolled to develop stormwater as a “new” resource.
3.5.1. Calculating and inscribing stormwater metabolisms
Mass balance approaches, typical of industrial ecology, work as a governance tool by enabling the flows of stormwater to be measured and calculated. This provides decision-makers with the data and inscriptions needed to communicate the volume of stormwater available for capture and to maintain environmental flows. The data and inscriptions, however, also work to justify
interventions that discursively redefine stormwater as a resource and materially re-work the physical infrastructure of the city in order attain more sustainable forms of water resource governance. Establishing interventions to improve the circulation of stormwater, however, requires elements to be translated (Latour, 1987), offering new interpretations of stormwater as well as new social and material relationships that shape the flow of stormwater. Efforts to increase stormwater capture in Los Angeles will help illustrate this process.
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The interim report of LADWP’s Stormwater Capture Master Plan, which is part the City of Los Angeles’s IRP, calculates the metabolic inflows and outflows of stormwater within Los Angeles in order to inscribe stormwater’s underutilization (Geosyntec, 2014). As Figure 12 shows, the average annual inflows of stormwater are 831,400 AF. The bulk of this incoming flow into Los Angeles leaves as surface discharge (44%) or evapotranspiration (45%). The remaining 365,000 AF, however, represents the potential for where increased stormwater capture lies. As one LADWP official noted, “we needed to know what kind of flows were available for capture, we can’t capture every drop because if we did that, that would mean during any rain event the flow in the LA River would be zero or would be at the baseline limits, but we want to
Figure 12. Flow distribution of average annual inflows and outflows of stormwater in the City of Los Angeles
between 1987 and 2011. This figure is adapted from original in order to convert to grayscale. Source: Stormwater Capture Plan Interim Report (Geosyntec, 2014).
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capture as much as we can” (interview, June 2014). It is clearly not feasible or desirable to capture all existing runoff, but these calculations enable officials to see stormwater as an underutilized resource and focus their efforts.
This is further reinforced by total capture scenarios that display the average annual capture for existing, conservative, and aggressive conditions. These are further broken down into categories by aquifer and between distributed capture and centralized capture. The aggressive scenario predicts an additional 141,800 AF capture in centralized facilities and 51,700 AF in distributed BMPs. Under this scenario, 21% of stormwater inflows would be discharged as surface runoff and 33% would be captured. The Stormwater Capture Master Plan proceeds to quantify the lifecycle costs of each scenario, thus assigning a dollar value to the volume of stormwater captured based on program type. This is a business case approach to managing stormwater that reflects broader trends of market environmentalism in the water sector (Bakker, 2014). As described by one city official, “We do a cost-benefit analysis, rate of return, first payback, cost acre-foot, and do a business case. Every project goes through that analysis. Even if they are little bit above the MWD rates we see in the long term a payoff because MWD rates will increase at about 5% a year” (group interview, April 2015). The distributed stormwater capture projects identified by the Stormwater Capture Master Plan, however, remain largely in excess of the full-cost per AF of imported water and this has directed decision-making towards centralized facilities for capture in Los Angeles (Geosyntec, 2014).
More broadly, these calculations, measurements, and inscription devices have material effects, which influence the ways stormwater circulates as a metabolism through Los Angeles. They operate by organizing the circulation stormwater by marking divisions between beneficial and harmful circulations, and by maximizing beneficial flows while diminishing harmful ones.
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(Foucault, 2007, p. 18). Figure 13, for example, shows the long term (by 2099) potential average annual capture volume for each scenario broken down by aquifer and between distributed
capture and centralized capture. Visually, the image brings attention to the vast potential of stormwater capture. Roughly, 193,500 AF of “underutilized” stormwater exists for capture under an aggressive scenario. Given Los Angeles’s average water supply between 2006 and 2010 was 621,700 AF per year, stormwater represents a potential to improve the “beneficial circulation” of local water supplies, increasing future water reliability while reducing dependence on purchased water from MWD. The inscriptions of stormwater, however, also draw attention to the
differences between the ability of distributed systems versus centralized facilities to capture volumes of stormwater. This leads officials to evaluate stormwater capture projects primarily in terms of their ability to maximize the circulation of stormwater into their supply portfolios, or in terms of costs per AF of water. As one state water manager noted, “in the end water agencies will pay for the big [centralized] captures and will use the little [distributed] captures largely in a PR sense” (interview, July 2014). The desired outcome is to rework the circulation of stormwater away from local water bodies towards centralized facilities where large volumes of stormwater can be utilized as a supply source while simultaneously appealing to the desires of the
population. This allows officials to diminish harmful flows by simultaneously addressing water resource constraints and environmental concerns, along with climate change, through attempts to secure the volumes of water necessary for continued economic growth (Cousins and Newell, 2015; Hodson and Marvin, 2009).
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While these bureaucratic calculations offer ways of seeing and classifying, they also hinder alternative visions and ways of seeing. Those tasked with analyzing how stormwater flows through Los Angeles are working to identify the proper ways of governing stormwater—in in the public interest and with concerns for equity and justice—but they are also reframing stormwater governance as a matter of technique (Li, 2007a). Consequently, questions posed on the proper manner of dealing with stormwater become matters of expertise and avoid tricky political-economic questions regarding different values and uses of water. Reducing pollutant loads, improving water quality, and implementing distributed community based projects become relegated as ancillary benefits through programs directed at capturing and securing large volumes of stormwater. However, to fully realize the potential volume of stormwater flows, legal and bureaucratic mechanisms need to be reworked and citizens encouraged to contribute to the stormwater efforts offered by local and state agencies. I turn to the former next.
Figure 13. Average annual stormwater capture volume under existing, aggressive, and conservative scenarios. This
figure is adapted from original in order to convert to grayscale. Source: Stormwater Capture Master Plan Interim Report (Geosyntec, 2014).
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3.5.2. Enrolling the law
Redefining stormwater as a resource requires the enrollment of legal and bureaucratic
mechanisms to direct who is liable for managing stormwater and establishing the types of actions that can be taken to capture the flows of stormwater and shape its value. For example, Los
Angeles County Flood Control District et al. v NRDC et al. (2013) has received a lot of attention for directing responsibility for high levels of pollution in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers. The case, initiated by NRDC, Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and other environmental groups sought to hold LACFCD liable for discharges of pollutants that exceeded provisions under the CWA. In Los Angeles, stormwater is channeled through a MS4, and between 2002 and 2008 the monitoring stations set up along the Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River to test levels of pollutants to meet the standards of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
(NPDES) permit detected discharges from the MS4 system that contributed to an exceedance of water quality standards. In order to discharge pollutants, the person or entity seeking to make a discharge must comply with the NPDES, which establishes permits that set limits on the type and quantity of pollutants allowable. In January 2013 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Los Angeles County's favor on what constitutes a discharge of pollutants, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, in part, and sided with the NRDC. The decision forces Los Angeles County and the LACFCD to address pollution in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers.
While the law is enrolled to direct liability, it is also enrolled to redefine stormwater. This discursive transformation scopes the possibilities of material form, such as infrastructure, and the organization of material flows, such as volumes of stormwater. In this way, social and material relations shape and are shaped by how water flows through the waterscape (Bakker, 2003a;