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Long Beach Water Department: State officials project 85% cut to requested state water deliveries in 2009; The initial allocation is second lowest in the history of the State Water Project

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2008 at 3:21 pm

From the Long Beach Water Department, this press release:

Today, the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners are again urging area water suppliers to immediately implement mandatory prohibitions on certain outdoor uses of water, following a dramatic announcement by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) that imported water deliveries to the San Francisco Bay area, the Central Valley and to southern California are initially projected to only be 15 percent of normal. The State’s announcement, which comes each year around the end of November, comes early this year to encourage local water suppliers throughout the state to prepare for what is expected to be another dry year.

The State Water Project delivers water to more than 25 million California residents and more than 750,000 acres of farmland. This year, water contractors requested 4,166,376 million acre-feet of water for the 2009 calendar year, the maximum contractual amount allowed. The actual water deliveries can increase from the initial allocation depending on the year’s hydrologic and water supply conditions. The lowest initial allocation was 10 percent of contractors’ requested amount in 1993, but the number was increased to 100 percent of the requested amount as favorable weather conditions developed. Last year however, the initial figure was 25 percent and it was only increased to 35 percent.

Jeff Kightlinger, General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the agency that supplies Long Beach with half its water supply, said his agency is preparing for the very real possibility of shortages and rationing throughout the region next year. “Over the past two years, Metropolitan has depleted more than a third of its water reserves to deal with drought and court-ordered water cutbacks from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These reserves are rapidly reaching a level that demands careful management.” Kightliner also stated that his agency can’t count on relief from the situation if it rains here, in northern California or in the Colorado River watershed. “The Delta’s serious environmental problems are driving court decisions and regulatory actions that are drastically limiting the ability to move water across the estuary. This is not a short-term problem that will be washed away with a few good storms.”

Kevin Wattier, General Manager of the Long Beach Water Department, goes further, stating that the State of California, and water supply leaders like the Metropolitan Water District, must do all they can to move communities throughout the State, particularly here in southern California, into mandating strict water conservation requirements, most importantly the prohibition of egregious outdoor watering activities that have been common place in neighborhoods all across southern California. “We need to collectively engineer a major lifestyle change in the way we think about and use water, so that inefficient and wasteful uses, which go on each and every day in our communities, are no longer tolerated. Postponing action is a gamble that we cannot afford to make as a region, considering the consequences that we’ll face short of an above average rain year. We are at a point where southern California simply does not have enough water to meet our demand for it going forward, even in normal hydrologic years.”

In September 2007, the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners officially declared that a water supply shortage for southern California, including Long Beach, was imminent, triggering implementation of the Commission’s Emergency Water Supply Shortage Plan. Activation of that plan put in place several strict prohibitions on certain outdoor uses of water, making those particular uses illegal activities in the City of Long Beach. Long Beach water demand for Fiscal Year 2008 set a new, record 10-year low. That announcement, made earlier this month, means that less water was consumed in Long Beach this past fiscal year, than any other year over the past decade. In fact, Long Beach consumed less water this past fiscal year than the city did during the height of the 1987-1992 drought, with mandatory rationing and a population 15 percent smaller than today. September 2008 was the City’s 9th record setting month (all 10-year lows) for low water use since the Board of Water Commissioner’s water shortage declaration.

John Allen, President of the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners, cites marked human behavior and attitude change as the reason for the city’s record setting year. “This is an entire community coming together and engaging itself in a worthy endeavor. We need other southern California communities to get going, which will be the only way any successful region wide effort is going to be sustained.”

The Long Beach Water Department is an urban, southern California, retail water supply agency and the standard in water conservation and environmental stewardship.

October 30, 2008 · Filed Under State Water Project (DWR), Storage and supply, Water Agency News

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