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Odds and ends: Your lawn an ‘unreasonable use’ of water?, rationing and development in LA, our real crisis not budget but water, Aguanomics water chats in the Imperial Valley, PLF on the priorities of water allocations, the good and bad of desal, update on TCID case, Australia’s toilet tax – “pay as you go”, and beautiful aerial shots of the Delta, plus more!

Posted by: Maven on February 22, 2009 at 11:03 pm

With my desktop filling up, this post is long overdue…..

Could your thirsty green lawn be determined an ‘unreasonable use’ of water? Quite possibly, says the Pasadena Sub Rosa blog, and we all had better pay attention: An anonymous apparent insider to the backstage dealings of California’s water crisis has alerted this blog to the real possibility that imported water could be shut off soon to Southern California’s cities if the cities have the wrong type of landscaping (i.e., water thirsty home gardens). This shut off scenario could hit Southern California cities out of nowhere much like the world-wide financial meltdown appeared nearly overnight. And like the financial meltdown, it would be wise to listen to those who are furtively trying to give us an early warning signal of this emerging situation. Read all about it from the Pasadean Sub Rosa blog: Imported water to So Cal cities could be shut off soon if they have the wrong landscaping

LA’s rationing plan & penalties especially unfair to the residential class, especially considering Los Angeles city council’s penchant for building more and more housing without regards to infrastructure, says the Westerhcester Parents blog: Imposing penalties on residents is bad policy given that the drought was created by ill-managed housing policies throughtout Southern California and not mother nature alone. The problem is.. our elected officials “build at all opportunities” housing policy. As if there are no other Southern California regions participating in the larger equation. Participants such as the other five counties including Imperial, Orange, Riverside, Orange and San Bernadino counties who all have similar myopic goals to meet California’s populaton projections. This is classic “silo mentality” thinking at the county and city level. Read more from the Westchester Parents blog: Wrecking L.A.’s residential class

Forget the budget – California’s real crisis is water management, says the TreeHugger blog: Last minute negotiations may have solved California’s budget crisis; but, a more protracted problem shadows the future of civilization-as-they-know-it: water reservoirs are drying up; and climate change is likely to worsen the problem. Food prices throughout North American, and even parts of Asia, which import produce from California, will be affected in the short-term. Long-term water shortage prospects point to an either-or scenario: social disorganization on a large scale or, alternatively, to massive, government-funded water project expansions, plus water conservation measures, and dietary changes. Read more from the TreeHugger blog: California’s Real Sustainabilty Problem: Not Budgets, Water Resources Management

Aguanomics travels south for ‘water chats’ in the Imperial Valley: Here’s his photo essay, his chat with Imperial Valley farmer Joe Tagg: Water is too expensive at IID. $17/AF is way more than $6-12/AF that farmers pay elsewhere. and The Imperial Irrigation District does NOT own the water. It belongs to the farmers. Then he chats with IID staffers, writing about it in two posts. In the first post (click here), he writes: I came out of this interview convinced that IID is walking into a shitstorm of its own making: 1. Nobody appeared to know how much revenue IID has made from water exports to urban areas or when or how that revenue would be distributed to farmers who fallowed land. Farmers are angry about that. 2. IID is trying to set quantity (5.25AF/acre) AND price ($17/AF) at the same time. It’s basic economics that you can’t set both without getting a surplus or shortage. 3. IID appears to think that water rights do not belong to the farmers whose land initially attracted those water rights. That’s just silly. In the second post (click here), he tries to explain why he thinks IID is so dysfunctional, pointing to a divergence between voting and economic power: At IID, this means that one-man, one-vote political power does not match the concentration of economic power in farmers who are few in number (about 300) but responsible for 97% of water purchases. The result is that the majority (by vote) makes policies that serve it (e.g., no water trades or reform of water institutions), and the minority (by vote) suffers from a reduction in the value of their assets (irrigated farmland). The answer, he says, is to split the power and water divisions, but there’s no political will within IID to do that. From the Aguanomics blog.

The Pacific Legal Foundation responds to the news that the state and feds knowingly violated rules to protect the smelt in order to protect the salmon: If you’re a farmer in California’s Central Valley, it’s news like this that makes you wonder. On the one hand, you’re told that the amount of water you receive is restricted in part due to required protection for the delta smelt. On the other hand, California water officials are restricting the amount of flow into the delta, making the recovery of the delta smelt species and the needed lifting of water export restrictions that much less likely. In other words, the order of priorities for the allocation of water seems to be 1) salmon, 2) delta fish species, 3) farmers. Read more from the Pacific Legal Foundation: News on Delta interspecies conflict

Desalination – there are both good and bad reasons to pursue it, but eventually it will be necessary in some locales more so than others, says the California Greening blog: The economic costs of dealinization are one of the most promising areas for ventue capital application right now. New membrane products from NanoH2O are many times more efficient than current technologies. New processes such as those being developed by Oasys in New England project a 90% reduction in energy consumption. Industrial permaculture processes could reduce costs even more. Read more from the California Greening blog: Desalination – neither savior or devil

Update on Truckee Carson Irrigation District trial: It has been delayed for at least a year.

Australia considers changing sewage charges based on volume of sewage generated by the household: Says official: “It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers,recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbingto reduce their charges,”Professor Young said. “Some people may go as far as not flushing their toilet as often because the less sewage you produce, the less sewage rate you pay.” And what do they plan to call this new system? “Pay as you go”, of course…. From the Environmental Economics blog: I love when the jokes write themselves

More stunning Delta pictures: I love the patterns the fields and water makes on the earth. Check out this aerial gallery of pictures of the Delta and other places by photographer Adrian Mendoza. And here’s a great photo gallery of Eastern Sierra photos by Kevin McNeal Photography.

Honorable mentions for interestingness: Aguanomics weekend discussion on moving water between watersheds; Our precarious levee system by Romick in Oakley; Torqopia blog on Water in the West; The California water vs Delta smelt war by RBO, Drought in California to suck worse than ever by La Vida Locavore; the Porterville Nerd responds to Jim Gogek’s post about water conservation beginning down on the farm; A sponge brick in the toilet tank – why Pasadena’s rainfall flows to the sea in a drought from the Pasadena Sub Rosa blog, and last but not least, Winter Ascent of the Complete North Ridge of Lone Pine Peak – okay, this isn’t necessarily water related, but it does mention Owens Valley, which is how I found it, but I did get a kick out of Astronaut, Viking and Pirate’s crazy adventure of actually hiking to the top of a mountain in the middle of winter – folks, don’t try this one at home – these guys are seriously nuts!

February 22, 2009 · Filed Under Aquafornia News & Exclusives, Uncategorized

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