WAT E R
P O R E F O RM
Floodwater Inf rast ructure as Civic Archi tecture
HA14_EVVGD - Water Absorptive Surface and Subterranean Basin
11,900’
8,600’
5,200’
3,600’
2,800’
2,000’
1,800’
1,600’
1,400’
1,300’
MUNICIPAL
SECTOR
MUNICIPAL
SECTOR
Water Imports
Water Imports
300,000AF
Urban Runoff
60,000AF
Return Flow Credits
60,000AF
Groundwater Pumpage
90,000AF
Water Imports
300,000AF
UrbanRunoff
60,000AF
Return Flow Credits
60,000AF
Groundwater Pumpage
90,000AF
Runoff
Precipitation
Evaporation
LAKE
MEAD
Groundwater Pumpage
Groundwater Pumpage
Water Imports
Return Flow Credits
Return Flow Credits
PrincipalAquifer
ShallowAquifer
OUT
OUT
LOST
IN IN
605’
1,720’
1,845’
2,110’
2,168’
2,300’
2,420’
2,538’
2,635’
2,860’
2,975’
3,205’
3,320’
3,435’
3,865’
11,918’
3,550’
HydrologicalBoundary
DrainageArea = 1,000,960 acres
Pressure Zones
ExistingDrainage
DetentionBasins
LAKE
MEAD
HOOVERDAM
NEVADA
LAS VEGAS
DOWNTOWN
VEGAS
P E O P L E
Ethical Standards and Social Inclusion
The goal of Poreform is to reposition water infrastructure
as a civic and cultural presence in the public realm, and
to rewrite a sustainable water economy.
Flood prevention
infrastructure has the power to recast flood water and runoff as
a local resource rather than a dangerous liability.
Throughout recent history water infrastructure has been hidden
underground, transported behind barriers, and retained outside
the city limits. Building invisible infrastructure has cultivated a
culture of water illiteracy - unaware of the origin, quantity or
distribution of our natural resources. Exposing the supply and
storage of water has the potential to reframe the relevance of
water in the public consciousness. One way of doing this is to
L A S V E G A S
E N G A G E M E N T
The WPP has been invited to Las Vegas to present Poreform
to a group of municipal stakeholders from the Southern
Nevada Water Authority, the Las Vegas Valley Flood Control
District, University of Nevada Las Vegas Civil Engineering
Department, and the Las Vegas Planning Department in late
February 2015. This meeting will be an opportunity for the city
to provide feedback and input to inform the detailed design
and engineering of the project as it develops, and build support
for the project within the city. Initial meetings with the SNWA
provided critical information for the research of the project; we
anticipate future support from municipal leadership will provide
Poreform the momentum necessary to support the development
and construction of the proposed flood control measures.
P R O T O T Y P I N G
Engineering and prototyping of the Poreform surface is under
development. We anticipate initial prototypes to be cast in
mid-2015 to test the surface parameters, on-site installation
procedures, and the customizable variables specific to Poreform.
Fabriform is contributing to the prototype, and coordination
about the specifications of their formwork system is ongoing.
R E S O U R C E S
P L A N E T
Resource and Environmental Performance
Water
Water scarcity is one of the most pressing global
challenges today, especially in the face of climate change
and exponential urban growth. Though there are many
perspectives from which problems of water insecurity should
be analyzed, and from which solutions should be generated,
this project addresses one relatively specific goal: runoff
collection and flood prevention in arid cities.
Flooding in arid cities is an under-appreciated phenomena,
though that makes it no less destructive. Urban environments
with dry, hard soil and high percentages of impervious surface
are particularly susceptible to dramatic flooding when the
city receives even the smallest amount of rain.
Despite
water scarcity that many of these cities experience, the
surface of the city is not designed to absorb, catch, or
store floodwater runoff when it arrives.
Effective design of water infrastructure poses a specific set of
challenges in arid cities. Poreform takes the urban surface of
P R O S P E R I T Y
Economic Viability and Compatibility
Water functions as a currency in Las Vegas, but when the true
value of that currency is calculated and compared, a rapidly
compounding water debt clearly demonstrates the instability
and imbalance of the city’s limited water resources. The
municipality spends twice as much on a gallon of water as
the public pays for it. Capturing the 60,000 acre-feet of water
that is lost as runoff each year could offset the economic
burden on the city by $175,000,000 annually.
Las Vegas loses 60,000 acre-feet of rainfall to the
shallow aquifer every year in the form of urban
runoff. At the same time, the city spends precious
energy pumping water uphill from Lake Mead
to the newest suburbs, and from the deepest
principal aquifer to offset what is lost to runoff.
The principal aquifer is depleted while the shallow
Las Vegas as the site on which this paradoxical problem can be
evaluated and remediated.
Las Vegas is a Thirsty City
Las Vegas is a particularly challenging test bed for new
infrastructural strategies, as an arid city that suffers
from periods of extreme water scarcity punctuated by
destructive flooding.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority,
which governs the water resources of the city, continually
strains against the outer limits of the available water supply in
an effort to prevent systemic shortages. Meanwhile, because
of the city’s position in the center of the Las Vegas valley
hydrographic basin, existing water infrastructure is incapable of
absorbing the 27.1 billion gallons of runoff that flood the center
of the city with only 1” of rainfall.
In order to understand the profoundly imbalanced equation
between water scarcity and flooding in Las Vegas, it is
important to revisit the history of Nevada’s water supply,
which is a story of political struggle, exponential urban growth,
and environmental vulnerability. In 1922, Nevada signed the
Colorado River Compact, which divided up the water available
from the Colorado River between the states bordering the
river according to population and need relative to groundwater
resources. At the time, the 200,000 acre-feet designated to
Nevada seemed more than enough for the sparsely populated
state. As Las Vegas rapidly grew in the decades following the
Compact, the city developed several risky ways of meeting
the growing demand. Water banking with surrounding states
became commonplace, and a significant percentage of the
city’s water supply today is considered “at risk”, or not directly
accounted for, in our analysis.
P R O J E C T T E AM
Designers:
Amy Mielke & Caitlin GK Taylor, Co-Founders
Water Pore Partnership (WPP)
Civil Engineering Advisor:
Nancy Choi, Senior Civil Engineer
Arup
Formwork Consultant:
Brady Akers
Fabriform, Construction Techniques Inc.
Thanks to:
Keller Easterling
Steve Mielke
Junpei Okai
Jesica Bello
map the water levels and movement across legible and apparent
infrastructure in the urban landscape. Awareness of our
resources better positions us to “contribute to a citizen-centered
water democracy in a meaningful and productive way. (Richter,
Chasing Water)”
Infrastructure should not be merely a servant to utility, but a
public resource that can be inherently social both in scope and
design. By turning it inside out, Poreform can build awareness
to sustain the future of water availability.
Contemporary cities
like Las Vegas, Nevada require a new water infrastructure
that is local, scalable, carefully calibrated, and present in
the complex urban context.
This issue is not confined to Las Vegas. As the World
Economic Forum warned, “We are now on the verge of water
bankruptcy in many places with no way of paying the debt
back … The consequences for regional economic and political
stability will be serious.” It is imperative for our natural, social
and economic environment that we find ways to eliminate this
debt.
aquifer fills with floodwater in almost equal
measure, which results in geological degradation,
surface compaction, and increasing seismic
instability. Even still, the amount pumped from the
principal aquifer is not enough to close the ever-
growing gap between the volume of water that
Las Vegas is alloted and what it requires.
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