Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 31, 2007
2. Supply
PUMPING COSTS:
Report: Big farms get unfair electricity subsidy to pump water - KESQ Channel 3 (Palm Springs)
LOCAL WATER SUPPLY ISSUES:
Officials assess water supply - Agoura Hills Acorn (Southern California)
WATER SUPPLY OPTIONS:
Water agencies will try to bring on rain - Bakersfield Californian
GLEN CANYON DAM:
Disputed dam marks 50 years - Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming)
PUMPING COSTS:
Report: Big farms get unfair electricity subsidy to pump water
KESQ Channel 3 (Palm Springs) – 5/30/070
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - An environmental group is claiming that some of the nation's largest farming operations are paying rock-bottom rates for the electricity they use to pump government-subsidized water to their fields.
About 7,000 farming operations in California get their water from the Central Valley Project, an irrigation system that only charges irrigators about a penny per kilowatt-hour to move the water to their fields.
Officials with the Department of Water Resources say by comparison, farmers that rely on a state-run irrigation system paid about 22 cents per kilowatt hour for wholesale electricity last year.
Bill Walker -- a vice president of the Oakland-based Environmental Working Group -- says the system is what he calls "socialized agriculture supported by corporate welfare."
Federal water officials disagree with the idea that farming operations fed by the nearly 500 miles of canals and pumping stations had a competitive advantage over other California farmers. #
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=6585905&nav=9qrx
LOCAL WATER SUPPLY ISSUES:
Officials assess water supply
Agoura Hills Acorn (Southern California) - 5/31/07
By Stephanie Bertholdo, staff writer
Water is precious in arid climates like Southern California's. In summer months, water districts throughout the state, especially in the south, attempt to stretch their supplies by using conservation measures and tapping into stored water from alternate facilities.
As levels run low and the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District draws water from other local reservoirs, some consumers might notice slight differences in the taste and smell of their tap water, said John Mundy, district general manager.
"The changes are usually subtle but they are a normal experience at this time of year," Mundy said. "Many people don't notice it at all, but each year a few call us to ask why it's different."
Several factors affect the seasonal change in water taste, Mundy said. Warm weather triggers algae blooms in supply reservoirs, resulting in an "earthy" odor or taste, even after the water has been treated and filtered.
Although water might taste differently or have a slightly odd scent, Mundy said it is completely safe and healthy to drink.
During summer, the water district meets added demand by drawing supplies from the Las Virgenes Reservoir in Westlake Village.
"No two treatment facilities are alike, so there are small differences some people notice in the water's taste," Mundy said, while renewing the district's familiar call for conservation.
"Because of the dry winter across the state, we're asking customers to reduce their outdoor water use through shorter watering times and by refraining from using water to wash down driveways and sidewalks," Mundy said. "If there is another dry winter, the water we save this year could well be water we need next year."
The last statewide drought occurred in the 19871992 period, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The department says one dry year doesn't necessarily constitute a drought.
Customers in the Las Virgenes district receive water from the State Water Project. The water travels more than 400 miles in pipes and aqueducts from the Bay Delta in the north and serves more than 20 million people in Southern California.
To keep customers abreast of all things concerning water, the district distributes its annual Water Quality Report, which offers a scientific analysis of the water delivered by the district.
Potable water flowing to residents from the Las Virgenes District has no contaminants and is considered "high quality," exceeding state or federal regulatory guidelines.
"Las Virgenes Municipal Water District customers have traditionally enjoyed very high water quality, and this year is no exception," Mundy said.
Because May is Water Awareness Month, the district put several educational programs into place to remind residents about the need to conserve water due to the increased demand that coincides with rising temperatures.
The district conducted several community outreach events during the month, including its annual water awareness poster contest and its 12th annual "gifting" of waterrelated books to local libraries.
At last week's Agoura Hills City Council meeting, community library manager Raya Sagi accepted a wide assortment of books for the Agoura Hills Library from Glen Peterson, a Las Virgenes board director and Metropolitan Water District representative.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District serves a population of 65,000 in the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Westlake Village and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. #
http://www.theacorn.com/news/2007/0531/Community/005.html
WATER SUPPLY OPTIONS:
Water agencies will try to bring on rain
Bakersfield Californian – 5/30/07
By James Geluso, staff writer
Faced with a dry year, three area water providers and a possible fourth are planning to take unusual measures to wring the last bits of moisture from the sky.
They'll hire Fresno-based Atmospherics Inc. to fly cloud-seeding missions over the Kern River's north fork during the summer.
They already pay the firm to seed clouds in the winter, but this is the first time they're trying the summertime approach.
"I'll call it a little bit of a gamble on our part," said Florn Core, Bakersfield's water resources manager. "It's a trial basis, it's a dry year, it's worth it to give it a try."
The targets of the seeding efforts are storms that come up from the Gulf of California into the upper part of the Kern River watershed. The clouds head north through a narrow trough that reaches from Kernville to Mount Whitney.
The idea of seeding the clouds is to make them dump their moisture over the Kern River basin, where it will come to Kern County, said Steve Lafond, Bakersfield's hydrographic supervisor.
Core said the company already made a flight earlier this month under its existing winter-season contract. A day and a half later, there was a noticeable bump in flows, Core said, although it's impossible to be sure the seeding was responsible.
Each of the providers involved can expect to pay $16,000 to $18,000 for the service over the four months, depending on factors ranging from the number of storms that come up the trough to the cost of fuel, Core said.
For decades, the providers have paid for cloud seeding during the winter to increase the amount of snowfall over the basin. But this is the first time they will try summer seeding.
Cloud seeding involves airplanes firing silver iodide into clouds to induce rain.
The Bakersfield Water Board approved the move Tuesday. The North Kern Water Storage District and Buena Vista Water Storage District boards have already approved it. The Kern Delta Water District hasn't approved it yet, Core said. If Kern Delta doesn't join the effort, the three remaining providers will likely just split the cost, he said.
The providers are desperate because the snowmelt this year is less than a third of normal, Lafond said. Isabella Lake currently holds about 243,000 acre-feet of water, or 79.3 billion gallons, and is expected to drop to half that this fall, he said.
Lafond said the area is on track for the 11th driest in the 105 years that records have been kept. #
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/153755.html
GLEN CANYON DAM:
Disputed dam marks 50 years
Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming) – 5/31/07
By Christopher Smart, Salt Lake City Tribune staff writer
PAGE Ariz. -- Fifty dam years. Make that "50 Dam Great Years."
Yep, the city of Page -- on the lip of Glen Canyon and dubbed "the town the dam built" -- is throwing itself a birthday party Friday and Saturday.
But some environmentalists, charting the receding waters of Lake Powell, wonder if Page will live to see 100.
Once described as the most desolate place in the contiguous 48 states, the camp where construction workers bivouacked in dusty trailers in 1957 now is an oasis complete with churches, schools and parks. And the 7,000 full-time inhabitants of this tourist hub on Lake Powell's picturesque Wahweap Bay are pretty "dam proud.”
We're like any other small town," says longtime Page resident and booster Joan Nevills-Staveley as she strolls along manicured Lake Powell Boulevard, "except we have this tremendous swimming pool out our back door."
It's difficult to talk about Page without considering the 186-mile-long reservoir named for explorer John Wesley Powell. About 3.5 million visitors take it in each year, spurring tourist economies in southern Utah and northern Arizona.
Eventually, though, Lake Powell discussions flow to the controversy that has backed up -- along with the muddy waters of the Colorado River -- against Glen Canyon Dam since its completion in 1963.
A political tide aimed at damming the Colorado and its tributaries coursed through Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, recalls Ken Sleight, a southern Utah environmentalist and former river runner who was immortalized as Seldom Seen Smith in Edward Abbey's anarchist primer, "The Monkey Wrench Gang."
Sleight and a handful of critics warned that the dam would come at a huge price, burying what he calls "the heart" of canyon country, including such natural wonders as Cathedral in the Desert, Music Temple and Gregory Natural Bridge, beneath Lake Powell's waters.
"The momentum grew and grew, and then it became necessary to build the dam. It's like the Iraq war. Once you get so far, it's hard to back down," Sleight recalls while sipping coffee at his ranch south of Moab.
Nearly five decades later, burgeoning demands on the Colorado coupled with dire forecasts about global warming equal a big question mark for the future of the river that is the lifeblood of the Southwest. Uncertainty about upstream flows and the population explosion downriver make the crystal ball for Lake Powell's future murky.
Fifty years from now, there will be no reservoir upstream from Page, predicts Richard Ingebretsen, the founder of the Glen Canyon Institute who views the dam as an ecological disaster.
"The dam will be there, or it won't be there," he says while surveying the partially revealed Cathedral in the Desert on the reservoir's Escalante arm. "But with the overuse of the water and global warming, Lake Powell won't be here."
Nevills-Staveley, whose father was the first commercial river runner in Glen Canyon, sees a bright future for her city. Fifty years hence, she says, Page will be thriving with a population twice what it is today. Its 1,600 motel beds may double as well.
"As long as people can get to the water -- they may grouse and carry on (about low lake levels) -- but they will come."
It isn't just Page's tourist economy that lies downstream of an uncertain Colorado River. It's the entire Southwest that pins the future on the waterway. A planned 158-mile pipeline from Lake Powell would feed the ever-growing population in Utah's Dixie.
The $500 million aqueduct would deliver 70,000 acre-feet of water annually and double the area's present capacity. (One acre-foot is the amount required annually by a family of four.) The pipeline would nurture growth for decades to come, says Ron Thompson, manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District.
"If we grow at the rate everyone says, we'd be tapped out (by 2020) without it."
Portentous predictions about low Colorado flows don't faze the veteran water manager, who has watched the desert alternatively bake and flood through the years.
"If you look at the long-term average of Lake Powell, it looks to me like there's very little risk," Thompson says. "Even if you get a decrease in snow pack, global warming means you get some wet years."
Recent dry years -- with the exception of the winter and spring of 2005-06 -- show Lake Powell is functioning as planned, says Barry Wirth, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which built and maintains the dam. It stores water in wet periods to help cover dry spells and allows upper-basin states to meet obligations of the 1922 Colorado River Compact to their lower-basin partners.
Water released from Lake Powell travels down the Colorado to Lake Mead, impounded behind Hoover Dam. Mead is vital to the lower basin -- Arizona, California and Nevada -- where the population is expected to swell by the millions in the next decade.
"The system," Wirth says, "is more important now than it's ever been."
Nonetheless, Wirth concedes, Southwest growth will keep Lake Powell lower than in the past.
"It's going to fill less frequently because there is more (water) demand."
Ingebretsen, on the other hand, contends such observations are an understatement.
"The latest, very conservative data, using Bureau of Reclamation (global-warming) models, shows it will be empty 15 (percent) to 50 percent of the time. Over the next 25 years, there is a good likelihood Lake Powell will be empty." #
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2007/05/31/news/regional/c13674a66b787860872572eb006c1d0f.txt
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