Meanwhile, enzymes involved in GSH synthesis, regeneration and transport appeared to work in concert to maintain GSH homeostasis during acetaminophen transformation and detoxification. Detoxification by GSTs is known to play an important role in the biotransformations of a multitude of xenobiotics in plants . When emerging contaminants such as acetaminophen are introduced in agroecosystems, GSTmediated detoxification may serve the purpose to minimize their potential phytotoxicity to susceptible plants. On the other hand, however, the conjugation may effectively conserve the parent compound and its biological activity, if deconjugation occurs, e.g., in the human digestive tract. Conjugates back transformation to other biologically active compounds has been reported for benzotrizole , triclosan , and naproxen . Thus, understanding the toxicological consequence of Phase II conjugates of such emerging contaminants in agricultural plants may improve risk assessment of reuse practices of treated wastewater and biosolids. Moreover, non-food plants capable of such detoxification may be used for removing such trace contaminants, in settings such as storm water basins,vertical grow table wetlands and vegetative buffers.Southern California’s urbanization was accomplished through the technologically-aided harvesting of faraway water sources.
Currently, procuring additional freshwater sources using conventional water delivery infrastructure is expensive, environmentally damaging, and rarely attempted as there are no longer sufficient freshwater supplies within reach. Climate change models predict a long-term decline in Sierra Nevada snow pack, threatening current freshwater sources. In anticipation of this, Southern California utilities have begun shifting to a strategy of conservation and the development of local sources such as groundwater, desalination, or recycled water. Progressive water agencies have built advanced infrastructure projects like Orange County Water District’s Groundwater Replenishment System , the world’s largest and most technologically advanced indirect potable water reuse project. At the same time, the region has been mired in a prolonged multiyear economic downturn leading many observers to advocate economic development through nurturing environmentally sensitive “clean tech,” industries. This thesis investigates the Southern California water industry in general and, specifically, the regional innovation system that has generated major breakthroughs in water reuse technology and infrastructure. It seeks to understand how this technologically innovative system emerged and the prospects for the region’s future economic growth. Using an analytical framework derived from economic agglomeration scholarship, innovation systems literature, and an international case study analysis of the water technology innovation systems of Israel, Singapore, Netherlands, and Australia, this study employs qualitative interviews, industry analysis, and a case study of the GWRS project to investigate the regional water industry. It finds a strong local industry—often led by a forward looking state government—with auspicious growth prospects, but with significant local impediments.
The fact that Southern California has become a global leader in the development of water reuse technologies and infrastructure is notable because water reuse often evokes strong negative psychological reactions. Historically, “toilet to tap” campaigns against water reuse have been very successful, leading agencies and voters to reject reuse as a legitimate water source strategy. Nevertheless, the region has since become a global leader in water reuse. My case study analysis of GWRS found a set of unique circumstances starting with early salt-water intrusion on its wholly owned groundwater basin. As a result, the Orange County Sanitation District began to invest in the water reuse industry in 1976, focused on the GWRS’s groundbreaking predecessor, Water Factory 21. This early investment helped spur major private and public water reuse research and investment leading to a strong local industry in the region. Today the region is home to numerous water technology leaders—particularly in irrigation as well as the membrane technologies that are critical to water reuse and desalination. The region also has a large number of innovative start-ups, as well as many of the world’s leading water infrastructure engineering service firms. Compared to other regional world technology case studies, however, the local industry appears less motivated in banding together and marketing its regional expertise. Water delivery systems are comprised of multiple differing technological systems often with highly individualized components, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to scale or export products to different markets. Water infrastructure systems are also highly capital intensive, and managed by public utilities that are often risk—and publicity—adverse.
In the Southern California region, direct and indirect price subsidies, inefficient water pricing regimes, and water utilities dependent on volume pricing models for economic survival, all conspire to reduce investment in innovative water technologies. Furthermore, the region’s severe fragmentation of markets, customers, and particularly governmental administrative bodies—who often have conflicting missions—greatly complicates private sector decision-making, inhibits the development of return on investment calculations, and retards potential industry growth. Confusing legal institutions regarding ground water rights, pollution responsibilities, and flood water management further complicate the development of innovative solutions to water problems. Despite these multiple and significant impediments, there is a vibrant and innovative regional water industry which is a global leader in water reuse and recycling technologies. Historically, California has been a global leader in progressive water legislation and water related research, which has helped spur these industries. The state has continued this tradition but now often lags more progressive regions. The state should consider fundamentally reorganizing its water governance institutions in order to align incentives, reduce inter-agency competition, and manage limited regional water supplies more effectively. Water subsidies should be lessened and water agencies’ financial viability should be decoupled from volume of water sold. Integrated water management strategies with appropriate groundwater management rules should be implemented, and enforced, by appropriate administrative bodies. Such a reorganization would spur economic growth as the local innovation system adapts. Additionally,mobile vertical grow tables the regional industry should consider working more closely together in order to promote the industry as a force for economic development and maintain the region’s position as a global center of water innovation and technological development. For example, the region was once home to the one of the world’s dominate water technology corporate conglomerations, US Filter, now Siemens Water Technologies with national and international headquarters in Pennsylvania and Singapore respectively. Today Singapore, rather than Southern California is Siemens’s global research and development center. Other regions, even neighboring Northern California are rapidly growing their water technology expertise—occasionally at the expense of Southern California. More effective regional governance and better public/private cooperation would further strengthen the region’s already robust industry and accelerate the local creation of technological innovation. In January 2010 the board of the Metropolitan Water District , the regional agency that supplies over half the water to Southern California, commissioned a Blue Ribbon Committee of experts charged with rethinking the powerful agency’s fifty year business plan, Vision 2060. After a thorough analysis of Vision 2060, the committee made an additional recommendation that MWD should become a global leader in managing water in arid urban environments; furthermore, they should take a leadership role in fostering the economic development of the region through active promotion of innovative technologies.
The committee thought that Metropolitan “could help create an industry cluster of water technologies and management, of potential global significance in Southern California” The Blue Ribbon Committee’s recommendation is well-grounded in regional economic development theory. Economic geographers have long understood that local specialized demand conditions—in this case supplying water to a dry urban region—can spur local innovation in equipment and services. This local innovation can give the business that supply those products and services a competitive advantage over similar businesses from other regions . The businesses that supply those goods and services can use that competitive advantage to profitably export, and thereby grow the local economy. In fact, this is already happening in Southern California’s water industry where a globally significant industry cluster in water reuse technologies and the design and construction of reuse infrastructure is emerging. Furthermore this cluster is a thriving center of innovation, and potentially a vehicle for local economic development. Innovation is an invention of economic significance . Understanding how innovation occurs is absolutely critical to modern economic development. Today’s modern economic growth theories are premised on the idea that growth comes from increasing returns to knowledge. Yet these theories—and traditional neoclassical economic theory as a whole—say surprising little about the creation of knowledge in general, much less how knowledge becomes innovation . Innovation is almost always the result of learning, which occurs through proximity or via social networks. Therefore, innovation scholars have turned to studying propinquity and association as a—if not the—key source of innovation . Understanding how a region promotes—or hinders— innovation is one of the most important questions in regional economic policy today. Accordingly, this thesis seeks to understand how Southern California’s strength in water technology innovation developed, what sustains it, and what factors could transform the region into the BRC’s vision of a global center of water innovation. Arguably, California’s history has been forged through successful innovation in the water sector more than any other region in the modern world. In the twentieth century, California water agencies built the world’s most advanced system of waterworks. This system propelled the state’s growth into the nation’s most populous and prosperous state. Well before then however, California already had a very proud pedigree in water, with numerous technological inventions, engineering feats, and management innovations. The 1849 gold rush spurred the local invention of hydraulic sluicing that felled whole mountainsides in pursuit of yellow riches . This technological innovation enabled infrastructural projects such as the Los Angeles Aqueduct of the Panama Canal to be built, without which the world would be a very different place. The massive mining and lumber operations of the nineteenth century required equally massive water networks to transport goods to market; they are gone today but the legacy of those operations has likely contributed to why California is now home to four of the ten largest engineering firms in the world . When pioneering farmers flocked to the verdant but salty Central Valley of California they not only built wells and canals and water agencies to manage them, but also created new water rights legal systems to prevent disputes and enable effective allocation . California’s technical prowess in water technologies came in handy when oil was discovered and expertise in piping and pressure management was required to bring it forth, spurring the growth of a whole new local industry including the world’s first offshore oil platforms . When Hollywood followed the oil industry to Southern California and the population exploded— along with the real estate market—the state created innovative institutions like the Metropolitan Water District to ensure an ample water supply for regional growth. Growth came shortly as the aeronautics, defense industry, manufacturing, and communications industries, and more followed Hollywood. MWD is the powerful engineering and water distribution organization that built the massive Colorado River aqueduct and now supplies nearly two thirds of all water to the semiarid south coast . California’s economic growth has always followed the innovative water sector. But what is a “water sector”? The procuring of, treating, transporting, collecting, and discharging of water, all utilize different technologies that originate from several very different industries. Indeed our modern taxonomy of SIC codes does not have a unique SIC code for “water sector.” Instead there are a whole range of codes—water utilities, water systems , irrigation, various levels of pipe manufacturing, chemical treatments, and manufacturing—covering the multiple technologies involved in the “water sector.” . Additionally critical service providers, such as engineering consultants and contracting firms not only fall outside of water industry sectorial codes, but they also often work in other sectors as well. Many of the technological goods produced for the water industry, such as piping materials and chemical treatments also have significant overlap with external industries, such as the oil and gas industry or chemical engineering. The lack of a clear definition and obvious distinctions from other industrial codes make water a very difficult “sector” to analyze. For the purposes of this investigation I define the water industry as all of the firms, agencies, contractors, and technologies that are involved in the extraction, transport, distribution, use, collection, and discharge of water. This would include everything from large-scale infrastructure contractors, to pipe manufacturers, to groundwater geologists, to specialized filter manufactures to chemical treatment suppliers to water monitoring device manufacturers. I concede this is perhaps an overly broad definition–certainly too broad to study sectorial trends effectively— however, despite its inelegance this is an accurate description.