A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
December 7, 2007
2. Supply
Southern Nevada's Efforts to Get More Water Scores Major Win - KLAS Channel News 8 (
WATER SHORTAGE ALERT:
Water Authority hikes alert status - North County Times
WATER RECYCLING:
Palmdale mayor objects to proposed 'toilet to tap' plan -
WINTER STORM:
Rain too Little to End Redwood Valley Water Woes - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Just a little bit of wet - Tracy Press
Editorial: Let it rain. And snow; Californians need a wet winter to avoid dramatic water rationing - Stockton Record
INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS:
Column: Cost of pipeline project is painful but necessary -
KLAS Channel News 8 (
By Edward Lawrence, Reporter
The state cleared a major hurdle Thursday in the effort to bring more water to
The water authority general manager broke barriers to get all seven states along the
General Manager Pat Mulroy says it's enough to keep faucets going until the authority can start piping water from other sources.
"This absolutely will cover the gap, but always with the backdrop being conservation. This assumes that we stay on track on our conservation goals," Mulroy said.
The additional drinking water is enough for the equivalent of 210,000 homes for a year.
To get the concession, the water authority will spend between $172 million and $206 million building a reservoir near the Mexican border. The project is designed to capture unused
The agreements then outline official federal government support -- and official support from the seven other states -- for
Mulroy continued, "We will be able to use our tributary water. We will be able to start as we test pump Coyote Springs injecting that water into the
SNWA Conservation Manager Doug Bennett said, "No one component -- be it the Colorado River,
Bennett says the valley cannot just conserve its way out of the drought. "No investor in the stock market would take their life savings and put it into a single company because of the risk," he added.
At the moment, 90-percent of the
Pat Mulroy said, "There is a balancing act you have to have. That is what this is all about."
She believes the seven state package of agreements is just part of it. Mulroy also thinks the secretary of the interior will declare an official shortage on the
SNWA says it will not dictate growth. It will let the economy do that, but it agrees that more conservation is needed.
The agreements also re-organizes how Lake Mead and
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=7462482&nav=168XDWn7
WATER SHORTAGE ALERT:
Water Authority hikes alert status
Water leaders from around
The vote Thursday by San Diego County Water Authority board members firmed up action the agency took in September, when it voted to start negotiating with farming interests in
Water Authority officials said the action to formally initiate water-transfer deals hikes the agency's three-stage supply shortage alert system ---- its drought management plan ---- to stage two. The Water Authority initiated stage one in May by asking local residents to voluntarily cut water use by about 10 percent in their "20-gallon challenge." The agency's third stage would likely include mandatory water cutbacks for county residents.
Water officials around the state say Southern California could face water shortages in 2008 and beyond because of a long-term drought on the Colorado River and a court decision that could cut supplies from
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/07/news/sandiego/21_44_0212_6_07.txt
WATER RECYCLING:
Palmdale mayor objects to proposed 'toilet to tap' plan
By Bob Wilson, staff writer
PALMDALE - Mayor Jim Ledford said he is concerned about a plan to mix treated wastewater directly into the
The proposal for mixing clean and reclaimed waters is part of the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan, adopted unanimously Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
The same plan will come for approval by the Palmdale City Council tonight .
Ledford said Tuesday he supports adoption of a regional water management plan but has concerns about mixing treated waste water directly into the aquifer, the
Ledford is chairman of both sanitation districts that operate in the Valley. Both districts are moving to construct tertiary-level treatment plants that would clean waste water to a level where it would be safe to use on landscaping.
In the regional plan, however, the treated wastewater "would be put into our water table, and I think that is a huge public policy decision that should be separated so we can have a dialogue as a community on whether this is, in fact, something we want to do," Ledford said.
The region's sanitation districts recently raised user rates to fund construction of the tertiary treatment plants for Palmdale and Lancaster, the mayor said.
"They went to tertiary to bring safe water for landscaping to parks and schools" so grass would not have to die during potable water shortages, he said. "The way it's been presented up to now is that (tertiary treatment) is about landscaping."
But the regional plan "says something other than that. It says we should put wastewater in our aquifer," Ledford said. "It makes it a priority to put (treated water) into the ground."
Although treated water meets some standards for drinking, questions remain about the failure of tertiary treatment to remove heavy metals and pharmaceutical products during the cleaning process, the mayor continued.
"They may have to go to an elevated level of treatment, and some say reverse osmosis may be required to do this," he said. "But we don't know the answers to any of this yet, yet this program prioritizes recharge of our wastewater, and I don't think the public knows this.
"I believe this group (of program members) should step back with the wastewater component, and we should have a public policy discussion," Ledford said.
"I think this is too big" to be approved without comment by the general public, he said. "What do people think about the idea of drinking wastewater? … 'Toilet to tap' is what this is called."
A plan to mix wastewater into drinking water already has been rejected by residents of
"It doesn't sit right with me because we don't have the studies" proving it should be an integral part of the
"I think we should pull this component out of the plan and have a public discussion - maybe do a focused environmental impact report to see if this is, in fact, safe before we start programming ourselves to move forward" with implementation of the plan as a whole, the mayor said.
Ledford said he would raise his concerns with his council colleagues tonight to hear their opinions.
If the overall management plan is approved by the member agencies, those agencies "will start marching" to implement its policies "before we have any information about whether it's practical, feasible or environmentally sound, and I think we should answer those questions first," he said.
Thirty-five agencies participated in the discussions that led to the development of the regional water plan, including 17 water companies or agencies; Palmdale, Lancaster and
http://www.avpress.com/n/05/1205_s3.hts
WINTER STORM:
Rain too Little to End Redwood Valley Water Woes
Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 12/7/07
By Glenda Anderson, staff writer
UKIAH -- Rainfall this week slowed the decline of
"It's starting to hold steady, and hopefully by later today they're going to show an increase in lake levels," said Don Butow, chairman of the Redwood Valley County Water District.
The district last week cut the amount of water it pumps from
The water district is holding a public hearing Tuesday and plans to declare a water emergency and impose conservation requirements on its customers.
The emergency likely will be declared even if water in the lake increases to more than 30,000 acre-feet, Butow said. That would allow the agency to implement mandatory conservation measures more quickly should the lake levels again drop.
Under its contract to buy water from Sonoma County, the Redwood Valley district is required to reduce its water draw from the lake from 56 acre-feet -- its average December consumption -- to 28 acre-feet when water in the lake drops to 30,000 acre feet.
An acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons.
This week's rainfall failed to raise the lake's water level, but that could change now that the ground is saturated with water, creating more runoff potential, said Chris Murray, Sonoma County Water Agency principal engineer.
"It wouldn't take a whole lot," he said. "One good December storm, and the lake fills up." #
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20071207/NEWS/712070448/1033/NEWS01
Just a little bit of wet
Tracy Press – 12/7/07
The storm that dampened
The storm that briefly dampened the northern
That might be good news to those who have plans to be outdoors this weekend, but state water watchers worry that small storms like this won’t be enough to fill state reservoirs for next year.
Elissa Lynn, chief meteorologist for the California Department of Water Resources, said the agency’s first water supply report of the season will come out next week, and the past month has seen rainfall totals far below the seasonal average.
"It’s not good," she said. "Our December so far is about 14 percent of average for the season, and the season has been about 5.8 of our normal 10.9 inches for the northern
She added that November was about the same, though October got a little more rain than average. The northern Sierra rain and snowpack will flow from the mountains into the
Jim Mathews, meteorologist for the National Weather Service Sacramento office, said the northern
"Our air over the weekend will come from
http://tracypress.com/content/view/12568/2242/
Editorial: Let it rain. And snow; Californians need a wet winter to avoid dramatic water rationing
Whether the La Nina pheonmenon blows jet-stream winds - carrying rain and snow - slightly south or just north of
National Weather Service forecasters aren't optimistic. So far, there are no indications we're headed for a memorably wet winter. We need one.
Below-average rainfall last season, coupled with population growth and new restrictions on water flows to
La Nina contains the needed moisture, but no one knows if it will swing far enough south to dump snow in the Sierra Nevada and rain in the
A fickle weather pattern, it has alternated in contributing to extra-dry and extra-wet
"That's the biggest message with La Nina. You just don't know," Mike Anderson, a state climatologist, said.
There are reasons for hoping this winter will be really wet:
» The amount of rain and snow between September 2006 and October 2007 was the lowest since 1988. A recent extension of an already overlong foothils fire season was the result.
» State and federal water reservoirs are far below normal.
» Those same reservoirs were drawn down even more to offset a court decision that halted pumping from the Delta in 2007.
» Mandatory rationing is being considered by
» The winter weather forecast has led water-delivery managers to warn that 2008 allocations to State Water Supply contractors might reach only 25 percent of normal, impacting farmers in the southern part of the Valley and urban users in metropolitan areas.
Californians need to be prepared for rationing, more efficient agricultural use and more emphasis on recycling water.
The state's leaders must do something to improve the infrastructure that's needed to weather cycles of flooding and drought.
Storage capacity has remained static for 30 years while the state's population has grown by one-third to 37 million.
While lawmakers in
If winter moisture is above average, there'll be more time. If it isn't, water managers will be implementing emergency measures to increase conservation and limit supplies.
We can't make the rain or snow fall, but we can be better prepared if it doesn't.
We can tell our legislators to stop playing politics and get busy developing practical, realistic solutions that improve the state's water storage capacity. #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071207/A_OPINION01/712070308/-1/A_OPINION06
INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS:
Column: Cost of pipeline project is painful but necessary
By Phil Dirkx, columnist
I felt hopeful and worried Tuesday night after the Paso Robles City Council meeting. I was hopeful because the council had adopted a much fairer water rate increase than it had originally OK’d last summer.
But I was worried by something that was said by a speaker at the meeting. He said he represented a group opposed to this rate increase that it believes has legal defects. He said the group has contacted a lawyer and plans a challenge. I don’t want my hometown mired in a long cat fight like the decades-long sewer wrangle in Los Osos.
The water rate increase will pay the city’s share of the new pipeline from
An earlier rate increase was based on charging a flat fee per water meter. That meant a private homeowner would pay the same dollar amount as a large commercial user. But in October, the City Council agreed that the plan was unfair and repealed it.
Under the new rate increase adopted Tuesday, customers will be charged only for the amount of water they use starting Feb. 8 at $2.25 per water unit. (A water unit is 748 gallons.) It will gradually rise until it reaches $4 in 2010. At that time, my water bill may range from $28 per month in the winter to $116 in summer.
Do I want to pay that much? No; a large water rate increase is painful. I’d like it to go away and leave me alone, but water is scarce in
Do I understand why some people oppose this rate increase? Of course. When we’re confronted with something painful, we welcome any plausible sounding reason to avoid it. But it’s like going to the dentist — the longer we delay, the more difficult and expensive it becomes.
Does Paso Robles really need more water? Yes. Paso Robles doesn’t have an adequate water supply now. This summer, the city pumps couldn’t produce as much water as was needed, according to Katie Di-Simone, the city utilities manager. The 4,000 acre-feet of water from the Nacimiento pipeline will increase the city’s annual water supply by 50 percent.
The California Finance Department says the state’s population will reach 60 million by 2050. It is now 34.1 million. The state also says every community must take its share of people. If we don’t have enough water it will be a disaster.
Can Paso Robles get out of the Nacimiento Water Project? No. City officials have already signed the contracts and sold the bonds to finance it. It must be paid for.
What should we Roblans do now? Face the facts, take a deep breath and remember that Paso Robles is us. #
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/213570.html
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