Water scarcity poses a great risk to water quality, fish and wildlife, and economic vitality.
Growing cities, agricultural practices, and industrial processes are contributing to a looming water crisis. Organizations across industries are recognizing the need to minimize their water footprint. With our diversified water offset project portfolio, we can help businesses balance their impact.
What are water offsetting projects?
Water offsetting projects encourage the conservation of vital water resources by generating Water Restoration Certificates (WRCs). Each WRC represents 1,000 gallons of water that is registered and protected. By purchasing WRCs, companies can directly contribute to restoring the recreational and ecological vitality of freshwater ecosystems.
PROJECT METHODOLOGIES
Water Restoration Projects focus on responsible water management practices
We use a diverse collection of projects that enhance or restore the flow of water to their natural paths. These tactics replenish depleted groundwater supplies and restore dangerously dewatered sections of rivers, streams, and wetlands. The combination of these methodologies gives us the power to offset organizations’ water footprint.
Water Management Agreements
When rivers, streams, and wetlands reach critical depletion levels, water usage rights can be transferred to improve environmental conditions. Through investments in water management or leasing agreements, water can be legally designated to restore the flows of water to critical wetland areas or chronically depleted streams, benefiting local fish and wildlife and enhancing water quality.
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Water Restoration Projects provide funding to local organizations to pay for the costs associated with implementing water leasing, management, and forbearance agreements that secure new water to support environmental and recreation.
Irrigation Infrastructure Upgrades
Funding to support infrastructure modernization and water conservation is severely lacking. Current outdated systems of water transfer through agricultural and municipal irrigation systems can leak up to 80%, causing massive water waste. Funding upgrades to the latest technology and innovative solutions can lead to massive water waste reduction and conservation.
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Water Restoration Projects invest in new irrigation infrastructure that allows irrigators to conserve and divert less water from dewatered rivers, streams and aquifers. By funding irrigation system upgrades, projects leave significant amounts of “saved water” in the river to benefit fish, wildlife, recreation, and water quality. While projects of this type do not create “new water,” they play a central role in enhancing flows to critically dewatered streams.
Natural Hydrologic Restoration
Hydrology refers to the naturally occurring movement of rivers and groundwater. Due to human factors like landscape alteration and building practices, the natural flow of rainfall and water runoff no longer feed into these naturally occurring hydrology patterns. The disruption of this process leaves our rivers and groundwater deposits severely depleted. And this disruption harms more than just our water supply, it also negatively affects the habitats and migration of animals and breaks down the natural filtration processes, leading to quality and safety concerns.
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Water Restoration Projects restore physical conditions to facilitate natural flow conditions that recharge groundwater tables, replenish depleted rivers and springs, and restore natural flow conditions needed to support fish and wildlife and recreation.
Information Technology Systems
Advancements in information technology have given us the opportunity to conserve water through precision application, reduced runoff pollution, and greater controls over water management. These tools offer huge potential to exponentially slow our withdrawal of water from finite surface and groundwater sources, and help provide water and food security across the globe. Funding these state of the art water management solutions is critical as implementation is expensive and can be prohibitive to many farmers.
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Water Restoration Projects deploy hi-tech water sensing and management systems where it is possible to conserve water, reduce pollutants, and/or replenish river flows, groundwater, and habitat.
Certificate Tracking & Verification
Through Water Restoration Certificates we are able to allocate and verify water restored through our projects on behalf of our clients. These Certificates are tracked on the international IHS Markit Environmental Registry and are single use only, ensuring water usage is being proportionally offset. This allows us to assign individual credits and give ownership of the environmental attributes made possible through investments from each organization.
Middle Deschutes River
The Deschutes River Conservancy is working to restore over 115 cubic feet per second of flow to the Middle Deschutes River in central Oregon. Historically, most of the flow to the middle Deschutes River was diverted near the City of Bend to serve agricultural needs. Project funding allows the Conservancy to negotiate lease agreements with irrigators and keep these flows in the river, fostering a healthy ecosystem for people, plants, and wildlife.
