Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
May 30, 2007
1. Top Item
IID 5-0 on step to conserve water
By Darren Simon, staff writer
In this day of waste-not, want-not policies involving the
By a 5-0 vote, the district board approved constructing a water seepage recovery system along the
The system will capture water that seeps through the highline — water that now is wasted — and place it back into the canal system.
The vote represented one of the board’s first unified votes on a water conservation program called the Definite Plan.
But with the $7.6 million a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars water conservation ultimately will cost, the most difficult board actions have yet to come.
Perhaps as a sign of the complex decisions to come on water conservation, Director James Hanks told his fellow board members and the public Tuesday he wants the district to implement a water rationing system called equitable distribution.
Under the tenets of equitable distribution, there likely would be limits placed on water use across the board — to both farmers and cities.
“Equitable distribution should be put in place as soon as possible,” Hanks said.
AT ISSUE
The move to conserve water comes at a cornerstone in the district’s history — as it has come under fire from other states and water agencies that have claimed IID wastes water.
The Valley now is living under the age of the Quantification Settlement Agreement — a 75-year water pact adopted in 2003 meant to protect the Valley’s water from future challenges.
But key elements of the QSA have cut the Valley’s water supply and call on the district to transfer water to other water agencies in the state.
By 2026 the Valley is to be transferring 303,000 acre-feet of water per year — enough water to serve hundreds of thousands of homes — to
As part of the 2003 QSA, the Valley agreed to fallow farmland to conserve water for the first 15 years of the transfer.
By 2012, the Valley is to move away from fallowing and have in place other means of conserving water. Such conservation efforts would include upgrading the district’s water-delivery system to implementing a massive on-farm water conservation program.
The system improvements are expected to cost $110 million, on-farm conservation is expected to cost $5 billion, and all of that will be paid for through water transfer revenues.
WHAT’S NEXT
The $7.6 million seepage recovery program the district approved Tuesday is part of the system upgrades.
In approving the seepage recovery program, district board members said they don’t want to be caught off guard with costs.
“We need accounting every 30 days, so we don’t get into an overrun,” Director John Pierre Menvielle said.
Directors James Hanks and Mike Abatti said they want IID construction teams to build the seepage recovery system themselves to control costs as opposed to contracting out the work.
“I would like this project built in-house,” Abatti said.
Water Department Manager Mike King responded: “Our plan is to use IID teams to build this.”
But, King said, the design work likely will be contracted outside the district.
With the seepage recovery system now approved, the district will wrestle with other system upgrades and with developing a plan for on-farm conservation.
Such discussions are expected in coming weeks and will continue throughout the summer. #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/05/30/news/news03.txt
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