How Will East Coast Farmers Take to Water Reuse and Other Water Conservation Efforts?

With major water shortages plaguing the Western States, it can be easy to overlook what’s happening right here under our own feet. Historically, water shortages have not been a concern for Mid-Atlantic farmers who typically don’t need to irrigate their fields or implement water conservation methods like carefully scheduled irrigation and waste water reuse. But such measures are likely to be necessary in the future as climate change shifts rainfall patterns in ways that demand more irrigation even as groundwater levels drop dramatically.

No one knows how receptive farmers, policymakers and communities will be to such practices, or what factors will influence their decisions, and how these decisions will impact the water resources in the region. But Masoud Negahban-Azar and his colleagues intend to find out.

Negahban-Azar is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland. He and his colleagues received $749,890 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to study the socio-economic factors surrounding adoption of alternative water sources and water conservation best management practices in the Coastal Plain.

“Usually people think that because we are receiving a lot of rainfall here in the Mid-Atlantic or in the East Coast in general, we don't have any issue with water resources,” Negahban-Azar explained, “But that is not the case. We do have issues of groundwater availability. In some areas groundwater levels have fallen close to 100 feet, and we need to be thinking ahead to address these problems.”

Across the Mid-Atlantic region, groundwater provides the only source of freshwater for many communities. Demand for that water has risen sharply with population growth and increasing urbanization. In addition, although annual rainfall totals have remained fairly stable over the last 30 or 40 years, more rain falls in the spring now, and less falls during the growing season, which increases the irrigation needs for farmers. In addition, rainfall occurs in fewer, more intense events rather than being spread out in smaller events throughout the growing season. The compound effects of higher demand and shifting climate patterns point to a critical opportunity to solve an impending water shortage crisis before it strikes.

To achieve that goal, Negahban-Azar and his colleagues have devised a project with multiple components that they will carry out over the next three years.

First, they will conduct surveys and socioeconomic investigations to identify and understand the potential cultural, social, economic, and technological barriers to adopting alternative water sources like wastewater recycling and other conservation strategies. They will focus specific studies on a community of largely black farmers in Southern Maryland, and a community of largely white farmers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Next the team will develop models to investigate how different decisions among farmers, policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders could influence water use and adoption of water conservation methods.

Then they will develop a diagnostic decision tool—based on things like population growth, future climate scenarios, rainfall patterns, and water demand—that will identify critical areas and prescribe water management strategies specific to those areas.

“These problems that we are facing are not just specific to the Mid-Atlantic or the Atlantic coastal plain,” Negahban-Azar said. “These problems are very relevant to the entire East Coast with the growth in irrigated agriculture, changes in population dynamics, the shifting rainfall patterns and impacts of climate change. So, we believe this study could be very useful in other similar regions as well.”
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Other researchers working with Negahban-Azar on this project include professors in AGNR’s Department of Environmental Science and Technology Adel Shirmohammadi and Paul Leisnham, Professor and Associate Dean Puneet Srivastava, Senior University of Maryland Extension Agent Amanda Rockler, and Associate Professor in A. James Clark School of Engineering Hubert Montas.

This work was supported by the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) (Grant No. 2022-67019-36415).