Delta pumps trap over 250,000 threadfin shad

Posted by: Maven on October 31, 2007 at 5:46 am

From the California Progress Report:

The massive federal pumps that export water from the California Delta to agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley entrained (trapped) over 370,000 threadfin shad, a major forage species on the Delta, in one week.

On one day, October 16, Bureau of Reclamation biologists observed 250,000 shad in collection buckets in the pumping facilities. After collecting the buckets, the federal workers put the fish into a tanker truck and released them into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. “We were able to salvage most of the fish and get them back into the Delta,” observed Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, dismissing an earlier media report that some of the fish had to be buried.

McCracken said the large number of shad being taken in one week occurred when large schools of shad moved into the area of the Delta pumps, resulting in the entrainment of the introduced species. “We feel that we do successfully return most of the entrained fish to the Delta alive,” said Ron Silva of the U.S Bureau of Reclamation. “However, we haven’t assessed the survival rate of the threadfin shad because it is not a listed species like delta smelt, king salmon, steelhead or green sturgeon. In our salvage operations, we focus on the listed species, with the exception of one species, striped bass.”

To read the full text of this article from the California Progress Report, click here.

Water Contractors Blame Striped Bass for Decline of Delta Smelt, King Salmon

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2007 at 10:13 pm

Here’s an article by Dan Bacher regarding the “Coalition for a Sustainable Delta”, who recently announced intentions to file suit over the striped bass. Click here for link to Aquafornia story regarding this lawsuit.

The state water contractors, under their organization “Coalition for a Sustainable Delta,” are playing hardball. They now want to blame the striped bass for the decline of delta smelt, longfin smelt, king salmon and other fish in the California Delta in order to divert blame from the state and federal export pumps, even though the striped bass successfully coexisted with native species for over 125 years. The following piece is their press release issued on October 25.

The one big scientific fact that this press release completely avoids discussing is that striped bass, king salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, delta smelt and other fish populations were robust and healthy until the state and federal pumping increased in the early 1970′s. Dramatic declines of all of these species took place only after the state and federal federal water projects began exporting northern California water to southern California and subsidized agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. More recently, since 2001 four species of pelagic species – delta smelt, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and juvenile striped bass – have declined to record lows with increases of 1,0000,000 additional acre feet of water every year by the state and federal water projects.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration largely agrees with the water contractors’ assessment, having stopped striped bass restoration measures such as a pen rearing project because agency officials claimed the striped bass were eating juvenile salmon and steelhead. Both the administration and water contractors refuse to deal with the real root cause of the decline of all Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta species – the export of huge quantities of water from the estuary and the killing of millions and millions of juvenile fish in the pumping facilities in the South Delta. Continue reading “Water Contractors Blame Striped Bass for Decline of Delta Smelt, King Salmon” »

Flood & furrow irrigation is not necessarily wasteful, blogger says

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2007 at 9:56 pm

From the From The Archives blog, a technical discussion on irrigation practices, spurred by the blog post from the Political Animal blog, questioning agricultural water use.

From the Political Animal Blog (which is actually a link from another blog):

As [Jon] Gertner notes in passing, it’s farming, and not residential areas, that consumes the vast majority of water in the [Southwest] (90 percent of Colorado’s water goes toward agriculture). You’d think, then, that inefficient agriculture practices would get most of the scrutiny here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most irrigated farmland in the area — in California, Colorado, and Wyoming — is watered via flood irrigation, the least efficient method out there. Basically, farmers dig a bunch of trenches and dump water in them. In the short run, it’s cheap and easy; in the long run, it tends to waste water and deplete topsoil.

Not so fast, says the From the Archives blog. After a technical discussion on how, if managed correctly, furrow irrigation can be efficient, the blog has this to say:

So where do you see flood and furrow irrigation? You see it where water is so cheap that you don’t need to do careful applications. You also see it where the grower is constrained by the irrigation district. Some districts deliver water on rotation. They don’t keep all their lateral canals full all the time; you take your water when your canal is full, once every three weeks. If your district is on rotation, you have to use flood irrigation. You can’t put down enough water to last you for three weeks through some pansy little sprinklers***. You also see flood and furrow in modern irrigation districts, where the grower chose the method. Maybe the grower prefers labor costs to capital costs. Maybe the grower is experienced with furrow and wants to stay with his expertise.

My whole point is that flood and furrow irrigation are not themselves proof of wasting water. If you’re in a real old-school atmosphere, where the growers are contemptuous of water management, yeah, furrows are a strong signal of waste. But in a district where the manager and growers are alert to the modern ways of conservation, furrow and flood irrigation can be very good.

To read the full text of the Political Animal blog, click here. Or click here to read the Aquafornia post on this issue from earlier today. Click here to read the full article from the From the Archives blog on flood and furrow irrigation.

David Nahai chosen to head up the DWP; proposes rate increases

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2007 at 2:12 pm

LADWP general manager Ron Deaton has announced that he will be retiring from his position in December. Here’s the news from a different angle.

From the Owens Valley Committee website:

Mayor Villaraigosa has chosen H. David Nahai, who served as a Board of Water and Power commissioner for two years, to become the new general manager. His appointment is subject to Los Angeles City Council approval.

Nahai has visited the Owens Valley several times to consider local water policy issues during his service as a DWP commissioner, and has garnered a reputation locally for detailed knowledge of the issues and for a patient–but wary–ear for residents’ comments and questions.

He has gained a reputation for pithy and humorous observations as well, such as his rewording of William Mulholland’s 1913 speech regarding the diversion of the Owens River.

“There it is,” Nahai said at the Owens River rewatering ceremony in 2006. “Take it back.”

To read the full article and visit the Owens Valley Committee website, click here.

The Los Angeles Times article adds this:

The City Council still must vote to confirm Nahai, who spent two years as a Villaraigosa appointee on the five-member, volunteer Board of Water and Power Commissioners, which oversees the DWP.

As he stood next to the mayor, Nahai vowed to put the utility at the forefront in the development of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind. “I see the bright promise of greening this utility . . . and having Los Angeles become the center, and the leader, for renewable energy,” he said.

Nahai said he would assemble a DWP management team to specifically focus on renewable energy. And he promised to develop a “water contingency plan” within 30 days to help the utility respond to the statewide drought. That plan will offer ways to impose higher rates on the biggest water users to encourage conservation, he said.

“I believe we have to start to plan for a long dry spell,” he said.

To read the full text of the article from the LA Times, click here.

Those rate increases would be substantial, according to this editorial from the Los Angeles Times:

… the DWP is seeking significant — and perhaps continuing — rate hikes for both water and power. The department wants a 2.9% increase in electricity rates Jan. 1, followed a mere six months later with an increase of the same size, then an additional 2.7% on July 1, 2009. For water, it is asking for a 3.1% increase July 1, then another 3.1% on July 1, 2009.

The Los Angeles Times has an editorial generally supporting Nahai and the proposed rate increases, but feels more oversight is necessary:

Under the circumstances, the rate increases the department has proposed are measured, and they are warranted. The City Council should approve them.

But residents must remain vigilant. The Board of Water and Power Commissioners was once made up of civic leaders whose job was to keep a wary eye on City Hall. Today, they are insiders, close to the mayor who appointed them and who is now “asking” them to hire Nahai — their former board president and a man with very little management experience to be running a utility of the complexity of the DWP. We are relieved that Nahai must also face City Council confirmation.

Nahai, for his part, was on the right track when he called Monday for a committee of two Water and Power commissioners to oversee how the increased revenue is spent. But the suggestion doesn’t go far enough. It makes sense that residents even further outside the city structure take that role. Just as citizen oversight panels pick over every penny of bond funds the city spends, a similar panel should oversee DWP spending. The rate hikes would give the agency the money it needs; the panel would ensure it is spent as promised.

To read the full text of the editorial from the Los Angeles Times, click here.

However, Mayor Sam’s Sister City blog takes a different view:

Nahai will take the reins of a bloated, inefficient, and wasteful example of government, sinking fast. First on Nahai’s list of tasks, is selling a “Snake Oil” of a proposal to raise water and electric rates. This, as the Mayor and Nahai will want you believe, is to help the utility upgrade its aging infrastructure. Further, your increased rates would provide the “investment base” to pay for a “Greener and Kinder DWP”. Yet, cynics will opine on who will benefit from these investments.

On the theme of cynics, especially “Valley Cynics”, Los Angeles Times Davis Zahniser has a story on a DWP proposal to restructure rates based upon geographical location. This will surely spark dialog. Especially when people find that the valley will get a cut in their bills. Could this be a “Kilowatt of a Carrot” to help sell the rate hikes ?

Whatever way the DWP “glows and flows” so does the direction of the city. Yet hours to the north, winds spread the toxic dust of past deeds that still await their “day of reckoning”.

To read the full text of Mayor Sam’s Sister City blog, click here.

“Let us pay”, says the Grist; the connection between raising rates and conservation

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2007 at 6:27 am

From the Grist Blog:

As sources of drinking water slowly exhaust themselves, under pressure from growing demand and lagging supply, one wonders why governments in the region don’t raise water prices to encourage conservation.

Instead, most areas have chosen to ration supplies with top-down orders, which protect consumers from rate increases but force governments to spend time and energy enforcing the rules, and which all too often prove unequal to the task of conservation. It’s hard to believe that strict rationing and intrusive enforcement are more acceptable to citizens of the affected areas than higher rates for water, but when elected officials are involved in policy making, increased consumer rates are a third rail to be touched at great risk.

Much of the country’s critical infrastructure and many of its utilities are either directly controlled or heavily regulated by government institutions. This isn’t surprising. Infrastructure networks are subject to large positive and network externalities, such that purely private markets wouldn’t provide enough of the needed public goods.

Utilities are occasionally private, but are nearly universally heavily regulated. Opening a utility operation, particularly when transmission networks are needed, is an expensive proposition, and with the threat of competition few investors would find such a proposition appealing. Governments can encourage investment by guaranteeing a utility monopoly rights, but governments are then encouraged to regulate and monitor utilities to prevent abuse of that monopoly power.

The end result of these public arrangements is to insulate final consumers from anything resembling a market price on many scarce resources. This tends not to matter when supply runs well ahead of demand — when Lake Lanier is full and Atlanta is half its current size. As populations around the country grow, however, it becomes a serious problem.

To read the rest of this post on the Grist blog, click here.

Residential water use just a ‘drop in the bucket’; what about agricultural use?

Posted by: Maven on October 30, 2007 at 6:19 am

From The Plank blog, more reaction to the New York Times Magazine article on water and the west. This time, the author makes an important point not made a lot in the water debate:

Still, what’s missing from this picture? As Gertner notes in passing, it’s farming, and not residential areas, that consumes the vast majority of water in the region (90 percent of Colorado’s water goes toward agriculture). You’d think, then, that inefficient agriculture practices would get most of the scrutiny here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most irrigated farmland in the area—in California, Colorado, and Wyoming—is watered via flood irrigation, the least efficient method out there. Basically, farmers dig a bunch of trenches and dump water in them. In the short run, it’s cheap and easy; in the long run, it tends to waste water and deplete topsoil.

Subsidies are part of the problem here: Large farms often qualify for taxpayer- subsidized irrigation water, paying as little as 10 percent of the full cost. That, in turn, discourages conservation: “A 1997 study by researchers at Cornell University suggests that more than 50 percent of irrigation water never reaches crops because of losses during pumping and transport.” The subsidies also encourage farmers to grow water-guzzling crops like alfalfa, a crop that sucks up about 20 percent of California’s water but comprises only a tiny part of the economy (it’s mostly used to feed cows). I’d like to see more on the subject, but this seems like a major place to focus on, no?

To read the full text of the The Plank blog, click here.

I would agree. In California, according to DWR, agriculture uses 80% of the developed water. According to the California Farm Water Coalition, this is actually 43% agriculture, 46% environmental uses. Either way, agriculture uses the majority of the water here in California, so why don’t we hear more about agricultural conservation? Good question.

DWR says this about it:

California’s population growth and greater awareness of environmental water requirements has increased the pressure on California agriculture to use water more efficiently and to make more water available for urban and environmental uses. Decreasing agricultural water use is difficult for several reasons. First, California agricultural water use when considered on a broad regional scale, for the most part, is very efficient. Individual fields and farms in some regions may have low efficiencies, but water that is not used on one farm or field is often used on a nearby farm or field. Secondly, for most crops, production and yield is directly related to crop water use. A decrease in applied water will often directly decrease yield. The key is management strategies that improve water use efficiency without decreasing yield.

There are technologies and management strategies available that conserve water while maintaining yield and production standards. These technologies and management strategies like improved irrigation scheduling and crop specific irrigation management often not only conserve water, but also save energy and decrease growers costs.

The Political Animal Blog from CBS News has this to say:

Reducing agricultural water use by 20% would basically solve all our problems, but it can’t be done because water rights are controlled by an almost impenetrable maze of local water districts, Spanish land grants, English common law, multi-state compacts, acts of Congress, court rulings at every level imaginable, overlapping jurisdictions, and local, state and federal environmental regulations. And that’s not even counting the vast corporate lobbying forces that would be at work even if the legal Gordion knot weren’t.

So it’s hopeless, I guess. But that doesn’t stop me from bitching about it. And it sure doesn’t justify this massive Bush administration giveaway to California agribusiness, which has to be read to be believed.

To read the full text of the Political Animal Blog from CBS News, click here.

jfleck on the Imperial Valley

Posted by: Maven on October 29, 2007 at 11:10 pm

Here’s a post from jfleck over at the Inkstain blog, who writes about the Imperial Valley:

An article last week in the Imperial Valley Press outlines the plan to restrict, for “the first time in recent history”, water for farmers served by the massive Imperial Irrigation District:

“Farmers would have 5.13 acre-feet of water available per acre of farmed land, down from the average of six acre-feet currently.”

These are the people who control 3.1 million acre feet per year of Colorado River Water – the largest single chunk of Colorado water on anyone’s table. The Valley was quite literally uninhabitable desert when the IID was formed in 1911. Brawley, in the heart of the Imperial Valley, averages 2.6 inches (66 mm) of rain a year. But with the All America Canal flowing into the valley from the Colorado River, it’s an agricultural paradise. If you’re in the United States, chances are good that the next bit of lettuce you eat comes from there.

But even in the Imperial Valley, there is a growing tension between growing municipal demand and existing agriculture. Imperial County proclaims itself “California’s growth area”. Even they are shifting water from farms to cities.

To read jfleck’s post on the Inkstain blog, click here.

I think the Imperial Valley is a fascinating story, from it’s inception to today. One of my favorite books,which I recommend to anyone who wants to get to know the Imperial Valley better, is Salt Dreams. The description of how the Salton Sea was created and the efforts to plug the breach and stop the flood is truly fabulous. One of these days, I will write an Aquafornia briefing on the Imperial Valley and the QSA. It’s an interesting and convoluted tale!

New website promoting solar powered desalination – and Aquafornia!

Posted by: Maven on October 29, 2007 at 10:59 pm

Here’s a new website I just stumbled upon when going through my web stats – it’s called World View Water and it is promoting solar powered desalination. Here’s what the website says about itself:

The Goal of this project is to perfect a technology and develop a business model to produce drinkable water at prices competitive with existing sources, with favorable environmental impact while substantially increasing the total available amount of potable water.

Nearly two thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by water over a thousand meters deep, yet it is not “potable” or useful for human consumption or in agriculture, as it contains minerals that are incompatible with human or agricultural uses. As demand increases, costs of distributing, increasingly inadequate supplies and the traditional methods of processing existing water supplies become prohibitively expensive. Droughts are becoming common and devastating while the cost of purifying water is increasingly prohibitive.

This proprietary invention consists of:

1. A novel desalination technique which utilizes solar energy and an adaptation of existing “bubble pack” plastics
2. A method of producing potable water that may be actively and directly marketed or licensed to existing industry
3. Proprietary proprietary invention Characterizations, Development and Deployment

Here’s a little bit about their product:

A significant proportion required materials can be derived from recycled plastic. The cell or bubble with saltwater intake and fresh water output: by allowing the sun to warm a heating chamber within the cell, the saltwater is evaporated (leaving the salt and other impurities in solution) and the water vapor condenses on the cell’s chilling surface as desalinated water. The desalinated and largely purified water then drains from the cell and made available for drinking, cooking, cleaning and irrigation.

The product apparently has been designed and patented, and they are looking for investors, although the sell is so soft, it took me awhile to find it. They evidently have thought out all the different applications for their product, from large-scale municipalities to a unit small enough to go backpacking with – your own personal desal unit!

Oh, and I should mention that they are including Aquafornia news feeds throughout their website – thanks guys! How cool is that?

To visit the World View Water website, click here.

Monterey Amendments would give away state water resources, says the Planning & Conservation League

Posted by: Maven on October 28, 2007 at 7:21 am

From the California Progress Report:

Despite the recent crisis in the Delta and the Governor’s push for new dams, last week the Department of Water Resources (DWR) proposed to give away the largest water storage facility in the state and to eliminate drought safeguards for urban areas in California.

DWR’s draft decision, revealed in the Monterey Plus Environmental Impact Report (EIR), would require the State to adopt amendments to the State Water Project (SWP) contract, called the “the Monterey Amendments,” negotiated in secret by DWR in 1994. The original behind-closed-doors deal was successfully challenged in a lawsuit by the Planning and Conservation League, the Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara, and Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (Planning and Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources (2000) 83 Cal.App.3d). While DWR has been allowed to operate under the Monterey Amendments provisionally since 1995, the PCL lawsuit forced DWR to analyze the impacts of the amendments and to decide whether or not permanently to adopt the Monterey Amendments based on that analysis.

If permanently adopted, the Monterey Amendments would fundamentally change how the State Water Project operates.

To read the rest of this article from Gary Patton of the Planning & Conservation League, as posted on the California Progress Report, click here.

The Monterey Amendments: eliminating drought safeguards for urban areas, says the PCL

Posted by: Maven on October 27, 2007 at 6:23 am

From the Planning & Conservation League, this press release:

Despite the recent crisis in the Delta and the Governor’s push for new dams, last week the Department of Water Resources (DWR) proposed to give away the largest water storage facility in the state and to eliminate drought safeguards for urban areas in California.

DWR’s draft decision, revealed in the Monterey Plus Environmental Impact Report (EIR) (http://www.des.water.ca.gov/mitigation_restoration_branch/rpmi_section/projects/index.cfm), would require the State to permanently adopt State Water Project contract amendments, called the “the Monterey Amendments,” negotiated in secret by DWR in 1994. The original behind closed doors deal was successfully challenged in a lawsuit by the Planning and Conservation League, the Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara, and Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (Planning and Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources (2000) 83 Cal.App.3d). While DWR has been allowed to operate under the Monterey Amendments provisionally since 1995, the PCL lawsuit forced DWR to analyze the impact of the amendments and to decide whether or not permanently to adopt the Monterey Amendments or to modify the proposed contract changes based on that analysis. Continue reading “The Monterey Amendments: eliminating drought safeguards for urban areas, says the PCL” »

Peripheral Canal subject of radio broadcast

Posted by: Maven on October 26, 2007 at 5:02 pm

KQED, a Bay Area public radio station, is running a story on the return of the peripheral canal on its new series, Quest. The show lasts about 6 minutes. From the website:

The consequences of Southern California’s long drought have made themselves clear this past week. But here in Northern California, fire danger is low and the winter rains already have begun. This illustrates one of California’s oldest and thorniest problems: How to move water from the wet north to the dry south? This week Sacramento lawmakers failed to settle on a comprehensive water plan. And, as Amy Standen reports, debate has only just begun on one of the most politically explosive water proposals the state has ever seen.

To listen to this radio show from KQED, click here or click here.

Kayaking down the Los Angeles River??

Posted by: Maven on October 26, 2007 at 5:27 am

Tired of driving to work everyday, and long for something different? Commuter George Wolfe did, deciding to try kayaking down the concreted storm drain that passes for the Los Angeles River. (OK, not all the river is a concrete storm drain, but most of it.)

Worth a chuckle or two for your Friday.

Here’s the link to You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ro__HhM_3I

Enjoy!

History of water use in the west a prime example of short-sighted but big thinking American ingenuity

Posted by: Maven on October 25, 2007 at 5:58 am

From New West Politics, Diary of a Mad Voter Blog, a response to the New York Times Magazine article about water and the west:

We’re not completely doomed, as the article points out. It features and ingenious (and expensive) program being developed by the city of Aurora, CO to create a closed-loop recirculation system from the South Platte. It also details some, again very expensive, efforts by the city of Las Vegas (a city that probably wouldn’t exist in a rational world) that even include transport of desalinized water from the Pacific. It also included some strict conservation. Pat Mulroy, southern Nevada’s water maven puts it succinctly: “The people who move to the West today need to realize they’re moving into a desert,” Mulroy said. “If they want to live in a desert, they have to adapt to a desert lifestyle.”

That hard-headed view has to extend beyond the people moving into the region and sink in for those of us who’ve called it home for years, decades, and generations. And it has to sink in for our political leaders, who are notoriously averse to delivering bad news to constituents. Unfortunately, this isn’t a problem that can just be passed off to the next guy.

The history of water use in the West, like so much else of its natural resources, is a prime example of the short-sighted but big thinking American ingenuity that at once made us the greatest power in the post-war world all the while setting us up for a hard fall. Let’s hope that our current and future political leaders, public officials, and even plain old citizens (water users all, to the tune of about 140 gallons per day) have enough ingenuity, not to mention the ability to think beyond a generation or two, to lead on the issue. A good start would be us demanding they do so.

To read the full text of this article from New West Politics, click here.

Are the fires sweeping Southern California part of climate change?

Posted by: Maven on October 25, 2007 at 5:36 am

From the Science Daily website:

The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future — as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods. “This is exactly what we’ve been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts for this year and the longer term patterns that can be linked to global climate change,” said Ronald Neilson, a professor at Oregon State University and bioclimatologist with the USDA Forest Service.

“You can’t look at one event such as this and say with certainty that it was caused by a changing climate,” said Neilson, who was also a contributor to publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a co-recipient earlier this month of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. “But things just like this are consistent with what the latest modeling shows,” Neilson said, “and may be another piece of evidence that climate change is a reality, one with serious effects.”

The latest models, Neilson said, suggest that parts of the United States may be experiencing longer-term precipitation patterns — less year-to-year variability, but rather several wet years in a row followed by several that are drier than normal.

“As the planet warms, more water is getting evaporated from the oceans and all that water has to come down somewhere as precipitation,” said Neilson. “That can lead, at times, to heavier vegetation loads popping up and creation of a tremendous fuel load. But the warmth and other climatic forces are also going to create periodic droughts. If you get an ignition source during these periods, the fires can just become explosive.”

To read the full text of this article from Science Daily, click here.

But hold on. Are fires a sign of climate change? Not everyone thinks so. From the Los Angeles Times:

Are the massive fires burning across Southern California a product of global warming? Scientists said it would be difficult to make that case, given the dangerous mix of drought and wind that has plagued the region for centuries or more. But they said the extreme conditions that stoked the wildfires could become more common as the world warms.

Research suggests that rising temperatures are already increasing fire damage in many parts of the West. In a study published last year in the journal Science, researchers looking at Western federal forests found nearly seven times more land burned from 1987 to 2003 than in the previous 17 years. The analysis mainly attributed this to a 1.5-degree rise in average spring and summer temperatures. With spring arriving earlier and snow melting faster, the forests dried out sooner, extending the average fire season by more than two months.

The study, however, found Southern California was different from the rest of the West, with no increase in the frequency of fire as temperatures rose. “In Southern California, it’s hot and dry much of the year,” said Anthony Westerling, a climate scientist at UC Merced and the study’s lead author. In other words, Southern California was already perfect for fire. “That is a fire-prone environment regardless of whether we are in a climate-change scenario,” said Tom Wordell, a wildfire analyst at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. “I don’t want to be callous, because many people are homeless and suffering, but if you live in a snake pit, you’re going to get bit.”

To read the full text of the article from the Los Angeles Times, click here.

The San Francisco Chronicle also has an article asking this same question:

The 16 wind-blown fires that forced the largest mass evacuation in California history may or may not be the result of climate change, but studies have shown that the hot drought conditions that fed the flames are becoming more common. “Fires are burning hotter and bigger, becoming more damaging and dangerous to people and to property,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said. “Each year the fire season comes earlier and lasts longer.”

The flames stretching from Malibu to the Mexican border struck during the driest year in Southern California history. Measurements taken by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection detected less than 10 percent moisture in the region’s vegetation. The moisture level in kiln-dried lumber is generally 12 percent. “They got less rain than they’ve ever gotten,” said Hugh Safford, a Forest Service ecologist. “Any time you have a dry year like this one, you are going to get fires.”

The San Francisco Chronicle article also adds this:

Sources of ignition will increase, according to a study issued earlier this year by NASA. It predicted lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide – the most abundant global warming gas – doubles.

To read the full text of the article from the San Francisco Chronicle, click here.

Los Angeles water troubles addressed in science blog; is our water use excessive?

Posted by: Maven on October 23, 2007 at 9:54 am

From the Islands of Doubt Science Blog:

Jon Gertner’s feature in the current Sunday New York Times magazine is a timely reminder of 1) why the Nobel Committee is giving peace prizes to environmentalists and climatologists, and 2) why (as if we needed another reason) Bjorn Lomborg is wrong when he argues mitigating climate change is a poor use of money.

Gertner begins by pointing out that while sea level rise tends to get all the attention from the long list of bad things that come with a warmer planet, the threat posed by declining freshwater supplies in places like the western half of the United States is at least as troubling.

As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon.”

That’s perhaps a bit too strong a metaphor, but conflict between farms, cities and industry for dwindling water supplies is certain to grow, and if trends continue, it won’t be restricted to the courtroom.

Is Los Angeles’s use of water excessive? The writer addresses this in his blog post, and the issue is being discussed in the comments section, so be sure to read comments.

The Pacific Institute estimated at 12% of southern California water use is from leaks alone.
There’s definitely something wrong when algae grows in my gutter and none of my neighbors seem to care.

To read the rest of this post on The Island of Doubt Science Blog, click here.

“Clean, reliable water must be ensured for all Californians: residents, farmers and businesses”, says California Alliance for Jobs

Posted by: Maven on October 23, 2007 at 9:39 am

From the California Alliance for Jobs:

Governor Schwarzenegger recently released a water bond proposal that would provide $6 billion more to improve our aging and neglected water infrastructure in four critical areas: storage, Delta sustainability, water resources stewardship and conservation. In addition, Senate President pro tem Don Perata has come out with his own proposal to put a bond on the November 2008 ballot, giving the regional water authorities the ability to choose on which projects to spend the funds. Both proposals recognize the need to protect and increase the state’s water supply, yet with different approaches.

The California Alliance for Jobs supports a comprehensive, long-term plan that includes both water conveyance (i.e. a canal around the Delta), increasing groundwater capacity, recycling and surface water storage projects where they are economically feasible. Clean, reliable water must be ensured for all Californians: residents, farmers and businesses.

The bottom line is this: While conservation and technology have helped stave off water shortages over the past 25 years, it is critical that we now find long-term solutions to this problem. California’s weather pattern of long, dry seasons and a short, rainy season means that water must be stored in the winter and distributed the rest of the year. Further, our aging system of levees and canals are not able to handle heavy rain flow, letting billions of gallons of much-needed water wash into the sea during storms. At the same time, snow packs in the Sierras have significantly diminished in recent years, making it even more urgent to update our storage systems and utilize each drop of water available.

To read the rest of this article posted on Rebuild California, plus hear the radio spot, click here.

More from the blogosphere … (edited)

Posted by: Maven on October 22, 2007 at 6:26 pm

Here’s a couple of blogs that showed up today. From the “Eating Liberally” blog, this post, titled “Not So Flush”:

More and more of my friends are flushing their toilets less and less. In fact, some of us are even flushing each other’s toilets less and less. That may sound like a ghastly breach of etiquette to the vast majority of Americans, but when you’re as immersed in water issues as some of my friends are, you start to feel foolish about flushing away gallons of water just to disperse, say, a pint of pee.

Most of us have barely begun to size up our carbon footprint, and the concept of “peak oil” is just starting to seep into the MSM. But Jon Gertner’s chilling story on the cover of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, The Perfect Drought, adds two new phrases to the lexicon of looming limitations: “peak water,” and “water footprint.”

The West is dry as a bone, as Malibu’s transformation from hot spot to inferno so vividly illustrates, and the fires are spreading from San Diego to Santa Barbara. The drought is so severe in North Georgia that Governor Sonny Perdue has called on President Bush to declare 85 counties federal disaster areas.

All of which lends credence to Gertner’s claim that a severe water crisis is already in the pipeline. An extended drought compounded by climate change has left reservoirs at an all-time low just when more and more people are relocating to the increasingly arid West. There’s not enough water to meet the growing demands of agriculture and development, and the situation is only going to get worse—much, much worse, according to the experts Gertner interviewed.

To read the rest of this post from the Eating Liberally blog, click here.

Here’s a blog post from Lisa Moore, a PhD scientist on the Climate411 blog. This post is called “The Drinking Water Problem”:

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine had an article aptly titled “The Future is Drying Up”, about the threats that climate change and booming populations pose to precious water resources in western states. Usually when we think of water and climate change we think of rising sea levels, but climate change is also causing drops in drinking water supplies.

Most people living in the southwestern U.S. get their water from the Colorado River and California’s Central Valley, both of which are fed by winter rains and spring snowmelt. Unfortunately, global warming is not only causing more winter precipitation to fall as rain versus snow, but also is causing the snow that does fall to melt earlier. As a result, in some areas reservoirs will fill earlier in the year and less water will be available over the summer.

The chart below shows changes in the timing of the spring snowmelt over the second half of the 20th century. In many areas, snowpack is starting to melt three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago.

Click here to see the chart & read the rest of this blog post.

Bob Morris of the Politics in the Zeros blog responds to the New York Times Magazine article about the southwestern drought:

The real problem is the growing population and decreasing water supplies. Every drop has already been appropriated. But the snowmelt is lessening, and that means less water. You’ve heard of Peak Oil. We could be looking at Peak Water in the southwest – and the peak may have already occurred.

Possible solutions

Aurora CO plans to continually reuse water by pumping treated water into the South Platte river, then pumping it out miles downstream, purifying it again, and reusing it.

In the future, wastewater will have to be recycled and reused, so let’s all get used to it.

“Treated wastewater isn’t a liability, it’s an asset.” We don’t need potable water to flush our toilets or water our lawns. “One might say that’s a ridiculous use of potable water. In fact, I might say that. But that’s the way we’ve set it up. And that’s going to change, that’s got to change, in this century.”

To read more from the Politics in the Zeros, click here.

How to save hundreds of millions of dollars

Posted by: Maven on October 20, 2007 at 6:39 am

Aquafornia reader Bill Arens writes:

I have held a Grade 2 California Water Treatment Operators Permit and have taken the classes required for the Grade 3 & 4 as well as the classes required for the California Grade 2 Waste Water Treatment Operators Permit. The following suggestion is based on what I have learned from these classes.

We have been told that we must reduce the PPM (Parts Per Million) of chloride in the effluent (Output) of our waste water plants in the Santa Clarita Valley. If we do not we will be required to build a treatment plant, for hundreds of millions of dollars, which will require millions of dollars a year to operate. In addition to this we will have to install a pipeline from here to the ocean to transport the residue from this plant which in it self could cause an unwanted environmental impact. I believe there is a better way.

Properly treated waste water is suitable for human contact, having had any bio hazard removed, and can be used for irrigation or discharged into a water way. This water way may be the primary water source for a water treatment plant down stream which supplies potable water for human consumption for the community it serves. This process is used all across the country.

If we were to pump the effluent from our waste water plants to the head waters of the Castaic Lake where it would have time to BLEND with the water from the aqueduct it could be recycled in its entirety, diluting the chloride levels to well below the required levels, and save hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

The YUCK FACTOR! Ok, some people will have a problem with the “YUCK FACTOR” but it is not as bad as you think. To start with, the water we pull in from the Sacramento Delta is down stream of Multiple waste water plants and has been for over 30 years. That means that for over 30 years you have been drinking water that has been run, in part, through a waste water plant and you haven’t died! You didn’t even get sick! That’s because our modern water treatment plants can clean this water so it is safe, clean and healthy even though it passed through a waste water plant.

There may be some issue of the amount of water in the river would be reduced and farmers that would complain. No problem. Simply establish a water feed from the lake with the appropriate amount of water from the Lake. Since the chloride levels have been diluted, that water will meet the standards required.

The only costs here are for the pipe, (one time cost) the pumps and the power to run them. The power costs could be shared with the State water system (they will be able to sell some of this water) and the Sanitation District. A worst case situation is the waste water plants would require upgrades to meet the recycling standards which would be considerably lower in cost than a reverse osmosis plant and far less expensive to operate! I believe at least one of our plants meets that standard now.

Lets get over the YUCK and save a BUCK!
Bill

The Blogosphere: Check out this blog about water issues

Posted by: Maven on October 19, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Here’s a blog out of Northern California. From what I can deduce, the writer works in the field in some capacity. The blog is about many things, and sometimes about water. In this post, the blogger tackles reader questions, with a refreshing frankness and humorous point of view. And hey, here’s a Northern Californian blog that doesn’t talk about hating us Southern Californians. Yay!!!

Here are some snippets:

Career advice:

If you are just going to college for civil engineering and you love the earth and want to do totally righteous coastal remediation engineering, using the powers of concrete and the forces of water for good, you will have to be very very careful. There is an excellent chance that what your civil department calls ‘Environmental Engineering’ is really wastewater treatment. That is totally fine if you like that stuff. But if you were thinking of an awesome job combining outdoors work and saving the earth, it is a distraction. You’ll be designing shitter plants for your career. Danger.

About San Diego & the Colorado River & Imperial Valley:

I would like to point out that these are all issues south of the Tehachapis. This is still California, so I could understand it if I tried, but I don’t want to, because that shit is complicated. The Colorado goes through, like, seven states! And they fight! With multiple endangered species! And water transfers from the Imperial Valley, where they are evidently nutso, because their irrigation district board has fights! and scandals! and is forever hiring or not hiring some general manager. It is too late for me to understand it all now. I don’t try.

The bit about the Imperial Irrigation District cracked me up! About the differences between California & Eastern water policy:

Aw man. Why you got to ask me stuff like that? I have only the vaguest, foggiest ideas what they do in the east (and by east, I mean Nevada). Like, in the East, ag engineering is about drainage, not about irrigation. And, um, you use a lot of center pivot systems. And, like, you water your freeway medians, to turn them green all the time. In California, we think that is wasteful. Don’t you have water moccasins or something? We don’t have poisonous water snakes. Um, in Californa, everything is about salmon, all the time. Everything always links back to salmon. Do you have those in the east? You don’t, right? You have catfish or something. Oh yeah! Margie said that Midwestern fluvial geomorphology classes are about all about bedforms, but out here in the west, they teach about sediment transfer, as every right-thinking person would expect. Bedforms! Ha! Who cares?

There’s more… check out this blog by clicking here.

By the way, watch out for the selected hyperlinks to photos. Great pictures of debris flows. And be sure to read the comments!

Planning & Conservation League’s legislative wrap-up

Posted by: Maven on October 19, 2007 at 9:27 am

From the California Progress Report, the Planning & Conservation League’s Gary Patton gives us the wrap-up on the legislative session. Here’s what he has to say about the water issues:

Unfortunately, after talking at length about California’s water crisis, the Governor then vetoed two measures which would have gone a long way to help address the situation.

Schwarzenegger rejected SB 862 (Kuehl), a straightforward bill that sought to fill some of the critical information gaps in management of California’s water. SB 862 would have directed the State to provide information to local agencies on the availability of water from the State Water Project. It would also have ensured that energy usage was addressed in state and local water plans, and that the State Water Resources Control Board has accurate information on water rights and water diversions. Apparently, while the Governor is asking taxpayers to foot the bill for over $5 billion to build new dams, he sees no reason to invest in the basic information necessary to determine whether there’s water available to fill his proposed reservoirs.

The Governor also vetoed SB 1002 (Perata), which would have directed existing voter approved funds for drinking water improvements and “no regrets” actions to stabilize the fragile ecosystems of the Delta. SB 1002 had broad support from environmental organizations as well as water agencies, which recognized that without immediate action in the Delta, water supplies and the Delta ecosystem would continue to be at significant risk. The bill was also consistent with the recommendations of the Governor’s own Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force.

To read more from this article posted on the California Progress Report, click here.

A blog post written by Poseidon’s senior vice president (?)

Posted by: Maven on October 19, 2007 at 6:35 am

Here’s a blog, the city5nc blog from North Carolina, which has a post that says it was authored by Mr. Nikolay Voutchkov, Senior Vice President of Poseidon Resources Corporation. It’s an article about the proposed desalination plants in Carlsbad & Huntington Beach. From the blog:

By year 2030, California’s population is expected to increase more than 30 %, which even with aggressive reuse and conservation statewide would require over one billion gallons of new fresh water supplies. Recognizing this water supply challenge, the California Department of Water Resources has charted a new course for exploration of desalination as an addition to the state’s water portfolio.

Currently, there are over two dozen of new large seawater desalination projects under various stages of development throughout the state. All of these projects are proposed to use seawater reverse osmosis membrane technology to separate salts from the seawater and produce fresh drinking water of high quality at competitive cost.

Seawater Desalination in Southern California

Currently, Southern California imports approximately 50 % of its water from two main sources – the Sacramento Bay – San Joaquin River Delta, and the Colorado River. In order to address the uncertainties associated with the long-term use of imported water from these sources, by year 2020 the largest Southern California coastal utilities and municipalities are planning to supply 10 to 20 % of their drinking water from the ocean.

At present, the 50 MGD Carlsbad and Huntington Beach seawater desalination projects are at the most advanced stage of development. Both projects are collocated with coastal power generation plants using seawater for once-through cooling. The two desalination projects are developed as public-private partnerships between Poseidon Resources and local utilities and municipalities.

To read the rest of this article posted on the city5nc blog, click here.

The Carlsbad plant will have a hearing in front of the State Lands Commission at the end of this month, and a hearing with the California Coastal Commission in the middle of November.

San Diego’s long history of water challenges

Posted by: Maven on October 18, 2007 at 5:57 am

From KPBS in San Diego, an article detailing San Diego’s water history:

One question in particular has troubled arid Southern California for over two centuries. It is the question of water, so fundamental, so obvious – and so lacking. We have learned that whoever controls our water controls our destiny.

In the earliest days, the native Kumeyaay and other bands knew they couldn’t count on the unpredictable rainfall in this semi-desert, so they controlled their water through an irrigation system. When the Spaniards traveled north from Mexico in 1769 to establish a system of Missions, they arrived in San Diego starving, dehydrated and almost dead. They survived only because the generous Kumeyaay hauled water from the San Diego River and nursed the ragtag band to health. The Spaniards eventually repaid their kindness by taking their land, their liberty and, because they were no fools, their water.

The mission padres built dams, aqueducts and storage systems for water from the San Diego and San Luis Rey rivers. Everyone – priests, farmers, ranchers, natives – was entitled to water. No one was entitled to waste it.

But as the area grew and became more prosperous in the 1870s, wasting water became fashionable. San Diego’s iconic founding father Alonzo Horton, for one, created a large, lush garden with his own private well water, which he assumed would always flow freely. It didn’t.

To read the rest of this story from KPBS in San Diego, which includes a video with historical pictures, click here.

Perata sends sharply worded letter to Schwarzenegger: You’ve failed twice this week on critical water issues

Posted by: Maven on October 18, 2007 at 2:57 am

From the California Progress Report:

Senate President pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) sent a sharply worded letter to Governor Schwarrzenegger today accusing the Governor and Republicans legislators of irresponsibly opposing “legislation, holding the needs of our state hostage in an attempt to leverage billions of dollars for new dams in Republican districts.”

The letter notes that not a single Republican supported SB 2XX that Perata had worked hard to negotiate in the special session with “almost universal support from water districts, local governments, business leaders and conservation groups.” It ends with a reference to the Governor’s advice to the California Republican Party that they were not “filling the seats” because they were following a narrow agenda, saying: “As your predecessor will tell you, there are worse things in politics than empty seats. In a crisis, Californians rightly expect their leaders to set partisan agendas aside and respond to the problems at hand.”

On Monday, Perata said the Governor was not listening to the will of the voters when he vetoed SB 1002, passed in the regular session, to spend money from bonds approved by the voters last year in Propositions 1E and 84 because they did not specifically authorize dams.

To read the full text of this article from the California Progress Report, which includes the letter Perata sent to the Governor, click here.

Schwarzenegger’s compromise proposal would remove ‘area of origin’ rights from the Delta

Posted by: Maven on October 17, 2007 at 5:48 am

From IndyBay.org, the latest from Restore the Delta on the water bond proposals, and the possible compromise:

Restore the Delta Board Member, and Planning and Conservation League Water Expert, Mindy McIntyre, recently shared the following information regarding the Governor’s proposed amendments with Restore the Delta staff. (Comments in brackets and italics are information and commentary additions from Restore the Delta.)

– The area of origin language explicitly excludes the Delta. (Laws pertaining to area of origin protect water user rights within California.) You can guess why the Governor would want to strip the Delta of Area of Origin. In addition, the language states that the area of origin as established in the bill (excluding the Delta) would have to have a two-thirds vote of the legislature to change or repeal. That would be nearly impossible. (In other words, if this language were to slide by voters in a bond initiative it would be nearly impossible to change or alter this language to protect local Delta water users through the legislative process.)

–The proposed language from the Governor’s office states that the Department Water Resources (DWR) has the existing authority to “implement” a conveyance and sustainability solution. Such language would become law and actually give DWR the authority to build the peripheral canal or pipe without legislative oversight. (Again, the Governor is seeking to work around rather than with the Delta Vision Process which he mandated.)

–The Governor strikes out important language in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) section. Essentially, the Governor’s amendments would eliminate the need for the BDCP to comply with California Endangered Species Act. This is important because it implies that BDCP will just be used like the Environmental Water Account and other “restoration” programs. Essentially these programs, rather than restoring the Delta, are used to set a (minimum) baseline level of (water) resources, and if the Delta, (a flexible ecosystem) needs more fresh water, then too bad. (Delta fresh water allocations would be set as static, when current science and water export records indicate that a good part of the Delta’s ecosystem problems have resulted from too much water being pumped out of the Delta in dry years. In addition, we once again see the Governor seeking to bypass working collaboratively with Delta stakeholders and environmental groups.)

Ms. McIntyre added, “The people in the Delta should know that this is what the Governor is pushing. Everyone else is focused on the dams, but this language would setup the final collapse of the Delta.”

To read the full text of this article from Restore the Delta as posted on IndyBay.org, click here.

California state law says developers must prove sufficient water before building, but is the law effective?

Posted by: Maven on October 17, 2007 at 5:41 am

From KPBS in San Diego:

California law says cities have to show there will be sufficient water before they let developers build any project of more than 500 homes. That’s supposed to prevent runaway development in a state where water supply is often in question. There’s just one problem: No one from the state is checking that the water cities and counties say will be there, will actually be there.

Santee city officials refused to speak with us on camera. But they issued a written statement affirming there is sufficient water to serve Fanita Ranch [housing development in the approval stages] if the city approves it.

McIntyre: I would say that’s relying on paper water because it assumes that past supplies will meet the needs of new demand.

Mindy McIntyre is a water program manager with the Planning and Conservation League in Sacramento.

McIntyre: So the Colorado River and the state water project will be able to meet all the needs of the future. That simply isn’t true.

So, if the state doesn’t check to make sure cities and water agencies’ projections are verifiable, whose job is it? It turns out, it’s your job. It’s left up to citizens to try to determine whether the complex projections are true. We checked with the City of San Diego to see in the past seven years how many times has the water supply estimate for housing projects been challenged. The answer: Not even once.

Last month, San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre wanted to halt new development until a judge determined just how much water would be available for San Diego. The city council said no, and instead unanimously approved 560 new condos.

To read the full text of this story from KPBS in San Diego, click here.

Wave powered desalination one step closer to reality in Australia

Posted by: Maven on October 17, 2007 at 5:23 am

From News in Science: Innovation and Technology:

Commercial wave-powered water desalination and electricity generation is one step closer to reality, report Australian developers. Trials of a technology called CETO have yielded promising results, says Dr Michael Ottaviano of Carnegie Corporation, which is developing the system in the southern hemisphere. The tests, carried out in Fremantle, Western Australia, verify predictions of how much electricity and water the technology can produce under various wave conditions. “We’ve found a perfect correlation between the results our models predicted and what we’ve actually measured in the ocean, which is a major technical milestone,” says Ottaviano.

The CETO technology, first conceived by Perth-based inventor Alan Burns in 1975, consists of submerged buoys connected to seawater pumps fixed to the seabed. As each buoy moves back and forward with the swell, it generates energy to pump seawater onto land at high enough pressures to drive a reverse osmosis desalination plant as well as hydroelectricity turbines.

To read the full text of this story from the News in Science website, click here.

California’s water supply packs a one-two punch

Posted by: Maven on October 16, 2007 at 6:05 am

From KPBS in San Diego:

The future of California’s water supply is here now. Many areas of the state are dealing with effects of a one-two punch. Cutbacks in water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and lack of rain and snow. Water from the Delta make up about two-thirds of Southern California’s imported water. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed Joyce has more on the state’s water woes.

The shortage of rain and cutbacks in water supplies prompted The Association of California Water Agencies to launch an advertising campaign.

Campaign: California’s water, vital to our state’s character economy and environment is in crisis.

The Association is made up of public agencies responsible for 90 percent of the water delivered in the state.

Campaign: Not enough rain and snow, not enough places to store water or channels to deliver it.

Tight water supplies are expected to be even tighter when less water is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect an endangered fish. The Delta supplies water to more than two-thirds of the state including San Diego. The other source of San Diego’s water supply, the Colorado River Basin, is in the eighth year of drought. Dennis Cushman is the Assistant General Manager for the San Diego County Water Authority. He says Delta cutbacks and the dry water year make conservation critical.

Cushman: If 2008 turns out to be the second year of a multi-year drought then we’re going to be facing even more serious challenges next year. And overlay on top of that judicial restrictions on how much water can be pumped to Southern California.

To read the full text of this story from KPBS in San Diego, click here.

How bad can it get? Take a look at Atlanta and the southeast

Posted by: Maven on October 16, 2007 at 5:48 am

While the southwestern United States suffers from a drought labeled by the Drought Monitor as ‘extreme’, the southeastern U. S. suffers from an ‘exceptional drought’, the highest category on the drought monitor. Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s reservoir, has only about three months left of water for the city, experts say. From MSNBC:

If there’s a ground zero for the epic drought that’s tightening its grip on the South, it’s once-mighty Lake Lanier, the Atlanta water source that’s now a relative puddle surrounded by acres of dusty red clay. Tall measuring sticks once covered by a dozen feet of water stand bone dry. “No Diving” signs rise from rocks 25 feet from the water. Crowds of boaters have been replaced by men with metal detectors searching the arid lake bed for lost treasure. “This lake is a survivor,” Jeff “Buddha” Powell told a worried customer at his bait shop along the barren banks. “If you panic, you don’t help Mother Nature,” he added. “It’s going to rain when it rains.”

But little rain is in the forecast, and without it climatologists say the water source for more than 3 million people could run dry in just 90 days. That dire prediction has some towns considering more drastic measures than mere lawn-watering bans, including mandatory rationing that would penalize homeowners and businesses if they don’t reduce water usage.

“We’re way beyond limiting outdoor water use. We’re talking about indoor water use,” said Jeff Knight, an environmental engineer for the college town of Athens, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, which is preparing a last-ditch rationing program as its reservoir dries up. “There has to be limits to where government intrudes on someone’s life, but we have to impose a penalty on some people,” he added. “The problem is how much and who. That gets political. But it’s going to hurt everyone. We’re all going to share the pain.”

To read the full text of the story from MSNBC, click here.

For more on the story, visit the WaterCrunch blog and the WaterWired blog.

Our lush, green lawns: a major drain on our water supply

Posted by: Maven on October 15, 2007 at 1:32 pm

It is astonishing just how much water goes into landscaping, have you ever wondered how much? KPBS in San Diego has a report on water usage and lawns, and asked the question, just how much water does that lush green lawn use? It takes gallons and gallons of water:

It adds up. In 2005 a NASA scientist used satellite images to measure the 60-million or so lawns across America and came up with 40-million acres of grass soaking up 19 trillion gallons of water every year. Grass is the largest single irrigated crop in the country. In San Diego County, it is among the largest single uses of water.

Michel: What frustrates me, our grass is green. I’m not seeing any water restrictions where if you go to Colorado, you can’t water your grass.

Susanne Michel is an adjunct geography professor at Cuyamaca College.

She says San Diego County is in an ecological water crisis, yet we continue to pour our most valuable resource on to our lawns and flowers. Sixty per cent of all water use in the county, residential and industrial, goes to outdoor landscaping.

Michel: I am the only person on my block of about 15 homes that has native plants and drought tolerant plants. Nobody else does, everybody else has a lawn.

Marty Eberhardt spends a lot of her time trying to undo people’s fixation on lawns. Here at the water conservation garden, she points out alternatives to grass and water guzzling plants. More patio, more mulch and more native plants all save water.

Eberhardt: It’s possible to grow anything in San Diego. It’s a wonderful climate as long as you put enough water on it, you can grow anything and so we have and it’s been great and it’s been attractive. But I personally feel that era is coming to an end and probably should come to an end.

To read the rest of this story from KPBS and to see a short video on artificial turf, click here.

Why conservation needs to be part of California’s future

Posted by: Maven on October 15, 2007 at 8:01 am

Today is Blog Action Day, and this is my contribution. No matter what you think about dams, reservoirs, recycled water, farmers, environmentalists, legislators and the like, the one fact I believe is that water conservation is going to have to become part of our lifestyle. We need to rethink our attitudes and practices, and we need to start treating water as the precious resource it is.

Water. It is the one resource that has defined the west. Water is necessary for survival. Water can make the desert bloom. And it is water that gives the land its value. In California, there is perhaps no other factor that has shaped and defined this state as much as water.

But many factors are straining our supply of this vital resource. Continued population growth of the Southwest, persistent drought conditions, global warming, and the problems plaguing the Delta (where a large portion of southern California’s water supply originates from) continue to put ever-increasing demand on this decreasing resource. In 2003, the U.S. Department of the Interior released its report, Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West, and noted the challenges facing the semi-arid western states, stating that “today, in some areas of the West, existing water supplies are, or will be, inadequate to meet the water demands of people, cities, farms and the environment, even under normal conditions.” (Click here to see a map of projected water shortages in the western states in the year 2025.)

Continue reading “Why conservation needs to be part of California’s future” »

New report on Las Vegas pipeline project emphasizes solutions

Posted by: Maven on October 13, 2007 at 6:40 am

From a press release from Defenders of Wildlife:

A planned pipeline that would pump groundwater hundreds of miles to help slake Las Vegas’ ever-growing thirst would also devastate rural communities, public lands and wildlife throughout the region, according to a report released Thursday by Defenders of Wildlife and the Great Basin Water Network.

The report highlights the potential environmental and economic impacts of the Las Vegas pipeline on the Great Basin region and offers alternatives and solutions aimed at meeting the needs of Las Vegas while protecting ranchers and farmers, tribal lands, wildlife refuges, native plants and animals, and the ecotourism industry.

“The Great Basin is a delicate and vital landscape full of desert plants and animals that have adapted to the naturally low water levels of the region,” said Noah Matson, vice president of Land Conservation for Defenders of Wildlife. “Groundwater feeds the springs and plant roots that are the source of life in this sensitive landscape. Piping away what little ground water the area has would throw off this fragile balance, endangering native wildlife and destroying the national wildlife refuges created to protect these desert species. Before this massive groundwater development project is even considered, everything should be done to conserve water and use water more efficiently in southern Nevada.”

This latest report was released in conjunction with the Western Governor’s Association conference on water issues held in Salt Lake City this week. This report stresses alternatives to the pipeline projects:

“Las Vegas does need water, but there are so many other ways to get it that don’t involve jeopardizing important areas and communities in the Great Basin,” said Susan Lynn, a coordinator for the Great Basin Water Network. “This report highlights many conservation-based solutions that would provide the needed water without spending billions of dollars building a huge pipeline halfway across Nevada.”

To read the full text of the press release, click here.

To read the full text of the report, “Gambling on the Water Table”, click here.

To visit the Great Basin Water Network website, click here.

Expedition retracing Powell’s journey down the Colorado River

Posted by: Maven on October 12, 2007 at 6:26 am

From the Down the River (.org) website:

It’s been exactly 70 years since Buzz Holmstrom’s historic descent of the Green and Colorado rivers, retracing John Wesley Powell’s exploratory of the nation’s most rugged and desolate country, and becoming the first person to run all of the rapids along the way.

This year a Montana expedition of web designers, conservationists, and journalists will retrace the routes of Powell and Holmstrom to chronicle the 1,000-mile journey, and sort through the host of environmental and social issues that have woven around the West’s most prominent drainage along the way.

The goal of the expedition is to bring awareness to water issues facing the Western U. S. From the goals page of the website:

There are a multitude of water issues facing those who live and/or recreate in the Rocky Mountain region of the American West. As drought years continue and suburbia’s expand out across the West we all need to take a look at our own personal water use and collectively as communities.

Water use topics (Who owns, controls and uses this water) will be intertwined with interviews of water users of all types as we descend through the Colorado plateau. From ranchers to rafters. House-boaters to fly fishermen. Navajo natives to L.A. tourists. What does the river mean to you? Maybe we can find a place where all of the different people in the world can agree on how to treat the river.

The expedition is currently at Lake Powell. The website features daily journals and lots of great pictures. Check it out at http://downtheriver.org/index.html.

Learning to live within our ecological and hydrological means

Posted by: Maven on October 11, 2007 at 5:45 am

From the Calitics blog, a great, thoughtful post about how water development has changed the face of California. As the article points out, California’s climate has always been rather unpredictable, and the California of 150 years ago was much different than what you see today. The writer is aware that we cannot return California to what it was; what is important is where we go from here:

As we debate how to best manage this environment that we have shaped for ourselves, it would be wise to consider the unintended consequences of our previous rounds of terraforming and meddling, and make our future steps with more care. Static systems will eventually collapse under the relentless dynamism of the natural world, or else require massive amounts of time, money and effort to defend. Would it not be far better to try to work with those natural processes than continue stacking stones and driftwood across streams like children, and then throwing tantrums when they do not hold back the water?

I am not convinced that the solution to California’s perennial water wars is another round of dams, canals, and demands on already-faltering hydraulic systems and fragile ecosystems. If the Delta collapses, the waves will lap upon the Bay Area, the Central Valley and Southern California alike. Better in the long run to first work on reducing our profligate use of water, start treating it like the precious resource that it is, and try to find ways of living within our ecological and hydrological means. First and foremost, that entails accepting that we live in a flood-to-drought climate as a normal state, and not treating it like a unexpected crisis when the rain falls, or doesn’t fall. California has not properly accounted for its water, and working out a sustainable way forward should require sacrifice and accommodation from everyone who makes use of it, urban residents, industry, and farmers alike. None should go bust because of the changes, and yet none should fail to put their shoulders to the wheel either. It is time to face the reality that it is pragmatic to build systems with the environment in mind, and the height of pie-in-the-sky idealism to assume that we are omnipotent to force whatever changes that we want in the natural world without consequence.

To read the full text of this post from the Calitics blog, click here.

Brain eating amoeba in Tucson’s water supply poses no health risk, officials say

Posted by: Maven on October 11, 2007 at 5:25 am

From U. S. Water News Online:

A brain-eating amoeba has been identified in Tucson’s water supply but experts assure consumers that drinking from the city’s water supply does not pose a health risk.

The killer amoeba, known as Naegleria fowleri, was found in several Tucson wells but experts say its presence in the city’s water supply poses no danger to consumers. Tucson Water chlorinates its well water before distribution, killing the amoeba before the water reaches taps, the Associated Press reports. Its presence in underground water is however a surprise to at least one expert. “The organism is everywhere. It feeds on bacteria,” the AP quotes Charles Gerba, a microbiology professor with the University of Arizona’s Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science.

Naegleria fowleri can usually be found in surface water such as rivers and lakes and researchers speculate that it has thrived in underground water because of biodegradable oil used in pumps.

The CDC says that swimming pools are safe, as long as they are properly cleaned, maintained, and chlorinated.

To read the full text of this article from U. S. Water News Online, click here.

Republican Blog: Why we need dams

Posted by: Maven on October 10, 2007 at 2:32 pm

From the California Republican Blog:

Governor Schwarzenegger and Republicans are fighting for California’s future by insisting the state build much-needed surface storage capacity. Here are some myths v. facts from the Governor’s office:

“We don’t need to build more dams. We have plenty of storage already.”
Fact: We don’t have enough surface storage now. The last major state-built surface storage projects were completed 34 years ago, and their capacity inadequate for our population’s needs and the effects of global warming.

We’ve lost millions of acre feet of water as a result. From October 2005 to September 2006, two reservoirs, Shasta and Folsom, released more than 6.5 million acre-feet of water to the ocean because they did not have room to store flood flows from the Sacramento River.

“We can solve the state’s water crisis with conservation and recycling.”
Fact: Conservation can’t capture the Sierra snowmelt. Conservation certainly has a role in the Governor’s plan. But it can’t store water. Had the Governor’s plan been in place during the 2005-06 flooding, we would have started the 2007 water year with an additional 3.3 million acre-feet of water in storage allowing us to deliver more water and better protect the ecosystem.

More storage would have addressed current water shortages. The State’s major reservoirs have 2.5 million acre-feet less in storage than normal for this time of year, in part because we could not store flood waters from 2005-06.

Instead, we’ve been forced to release millions of gallons of water. The water released in 2005-06 to protect communities along our levees would have been more than enough to fill the proposed new reservoirs at Sites, Temperance Flat, and an expanded Los Vaqueros.

To read the rest of this post from the California Republican Blog, click here.

Stage is being set for ‘battle of the water bonds’

Posted by: Maven on October 10, 2007 at 2:29 pm

From the California Progress Report:

The “battle of the water bonds” has erupted at the State Capitol over the past two weeks after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in September called for a special legislative session to push through his health care and water bond legislation. The Governor’s competing water bond proposal (SB3xx), carried by Senator Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto), provides funding for the construction of two new reservoirs and the expansion of one reservoir and supports the building of a peripheral canal.

It is expected that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and State Senator Dave Cogdill will also attempt to place their environmentally destructive competing bond measure on the November ballot. The Schwarzenegger-Cogdill water bond increase water water exports to subsidized agribusiness and corporate water developers. If Schwarzenegger and Cogdill measure ever becomes law, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s fish and ecosystem will be destroyed.

Perata’s Safe Drinking Water Act of 2008, SB2xx, fell four votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority required for passage, according to Alicia Trost of Senator Perata’s office. The vote was 23 to 12 – and 27 yes votes were required to pass the bill. No Republican Senator voted to support the measure.

The Governor’s water bond failed to pass through the committee yesterday afternoon. Senators Darrell Steinberg, Mike Machado, Sheila Kuehl and Christine Kehoe strongly criticized the legislation for failing to address California’s immediate water supply and environmental needs while committing to the building of costly reservoirs at state expense that wouldn’t become operational for 10 to 15 years.

“I think the problem is that some people want dams built, but they want others to pay for them,” Kehoe quipped during the hearing.

To read the full text of this story from the California Progress Report, click here.

Clean Water Act: misinterpretation & misimplementation (CFBF commentary)

Posted by: Maven on October 10, 2007 at 5:58 am

From the California Farm Bureau Federation, this commentary written by Brad Goehring is a director of San Joaquin County Farm Bureau and owner of Goehring Vineyards Inc. in Clements:

Acting on an overly broad interpretation of the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) issued a cease and desist order on our family farm in the spring of 2004. We were planning to transition a parcel of grazing pasture into winegrapes and were accused of deep-ripping the ground and filling and destroying waters of the United States. In reality, we had simply disked the ground once annually as part of our normal and routine farming practices to reduce the fire hazard and regenerate the grasses for winter cattle feed.

The ACE claimed that there were wet areas on our property subject to the Clean Water Act (CWA) and our proposed transition from pasture to grapes violated the “prior converted cropland” provision of the CWA.

The cease and desist order remained in place for two years, during which time we were not able to graze cattle or begin planting the vineyard as planned. We lost two years’ worth of production income, in addition to hours of time and energy spent proving the parcel did not contain “navigable intrastate waters of the U.S.” that were subject to the CWA.

Unfortunately, this is not the only experience we’ve had where the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act has been misinterpreted and misimplemented to the detriment of our family farm. Now, that jurisdiction could be broadened even further. Continue reading “Clean Water Act: misinterpretation & misimplementation (CFBF commentary)” »

Restore the Delta supporters turn out in force for water bond hearings

Posted by: Maven on October 9, 2007 at 5:00 pm

From IndyBay.org:

Over 100 people representing diverse interests, including recreational anglers, duck hunters, Delta farmers, environmentalists, businesses and water agencies, spoke out in favor of Perata’s bill and in opposition to SB3xx. At a press conference before the afternoon hearing, Perata noted, “This is the first time Friends of the River and the Metropolitan Water District are standing on the same stage,” as representatives of the two organizations and others lined up behind him in support of his legislation.

Senator Christine Kehoe of San Diego aptly summed up the major flaw that she and the majority of Senators on the committee saw with the Codgill water bond, a measure that amounts to a big water grab funded at the public’s expense. “I think the problem is that some people want dams built, but they want others to pay for them,” she quipped.

The “battle of the water bonds” occurs in the context of a dramatic decline of four pelagic (open water) species – delta smelt, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and juvenile striped bass – over recent years. The major cause of this decline is a massive increase in water exports from the state and federal pumps every year since 2001. Delta smelt, an indicator species, is on the verge of extinction, while salmon and steelhead are also imperiled by water export increases.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, who did an outstanding job of organizing a big turnout of Restore the Delta supporters for the hearing, gives us her summary of the hearing.

To read the full text of this article from Dan Bacher & Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla as posted on IndyBay.org, click here.

More Delta restrictions may be possible, this time for salmon & steelhead

Posted by: Maven on October 9, 2007 at 4:57 pm

From Ching Lee at the California Farm Bureau:

Litigation over pumps that send water to San Joaquin Valley farmers and urban water users from the Bay Area to Southern California continues–this time about their effect on salmon and steelhead.

The current case comes more than a month after a federal judge ordered drastic restrictions on water pumped out of the delta to protect the endangered delta smelt, a tiny fish. The pumps help supply water to irrigate more than 750,000 acres of farmland and provide drinking water to some 25 million Californians.

U.S. District Count Judge Oliver Wanger, who ruled on the smelt case, heard arguments on Oct. 3 and is expected to issue a written ruling in a few weeks on whether the biological opinion supporting operation of the federal pumps is lawful and adequate to protect two species of salmon and steelhead.

“The Endangered Species Act says they’ve got to be protected,” said Chris Scheuring, managing counsel for the California Farm Bureau Federation’s national resources and environmental division, who was in court for the hearing. “The only real issue is whether we’ve got to shut down the pumps to protect them.” Continue reading “More Delta restrictions may be possible, this time for salmon & steelhead” »

The details of Senator Perata’s bill, “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2008″

Posted by: Maven on October 9, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Yesterday, the Senate Natural Resources & Water Committee passed Perata’s bill in a 5-1 partyline vote; however, even Senator Perata himself is not expecting the bill to pass the full Senate. From the California Progress Report:

It goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee this morning and could be voted on by the entire Senate as early as today. Perata is not optimistic that it will be able to get the support of two-thirds of the Senate, which is required. He needs the votes of two Republican Senators to get to this number. Even if he does, the bill faces tough sledding in the Assembly.

This 22 page bill has been worked out over months of negotiations with water experts and has the support of a number of diverse organizations. In a press conference before the committee hearing, Senator Perata noted that this may be the first time that Friends of the River and the Metropolitan Water District have appeared on the same stage.

So, at yesterday’s press conference, Perata stated that “This bill has been vetted” and that he would recommend that “these folks,” referring to those present with him on the stage, place the provisions of the bill on the ballot by petition if the legislature fails to pass it. If placed on the ballot by gathering signatures, rather than by the legislature, it would most likely be on the November, 2008 Presidential Election ballot because of deadlines and the process for doing so.

Click here to get a detailed analysis of what’s included in Senator Perata’s bill in this article from the California Progress Report.

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