A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 12, 2008
2. Supply
MWD RATE HIKE:
MWD approves 14% hike in rates for imported water; The effects of the increase, which takes effect Jan. 1, on Southern California household bills will vary broadly - Los Angeles Times
Water rate hike OK'd by district -
MWD board approves 14.3% water-rate increase - Torrance
EEL RIVER DIVERSIONS:
Advice puts Eel River diversion plan on shelf - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
CVP ALLOCATIONS:
Central Valley Water Allocation -
SOUTHWEST WATER ISSUES:
Lake's ghost town seen as a warning; To some, emergence of town's remains is sign that water poses eternal challenge to Vegas, all of Southwest - Las Vegas Sun
MWD RATE HIKE:
MWD approves 14% hike in rates for imported water; The effects of the increase, which takes effect Jan. 1, on
By Deborah Schoch, staff writer
The Metropolitan Water District board on Tuesday approved a 14.3% increase in the 2009 rates it will charge for imported water, a hike that will vary widely in the dollars it adds to
The increase is a harsh reminder of water shortages caused by dry weather in
Some members argued unsuccessfully that rates should rise 20%, an increase that would reflect the full cost of importing water. Next year, the MWD will take $166 million from already low reserves to balance the budget, officials said.
The 14.3% increase will go into effect Jan. 1, 2009, and rates are expected to rise again substantially in 2010 and 2011, they said. The board's largest voting blocs -- representing
Board Chairman Timothy F. Brick said in a statement after the meeting that the MWD must work with its 26 member cities and agencies to manage rising costs, including through "more aggressive water conservation." Some critics have said the MWD has not championed conservation to reduce imported water use and keep rates down.
The effect of the rate increase on 2009 residential bills will depend on how much imported water a customer's city or water district buys from the MWD.
The MWD increase will translate into a boost of about $2 a month in the bill of an average household in
Officials in several cities, including
The rate increase will help fund the MWD's budget for next year of $1.98 billion, a 7% increase from this year.
The rise reflects increased spending for more water purchases, higher power costs, debt service and efforts to stave off the spread of invasive quagga mussels discovered last year in some MWD pipes and reservoirs.
However, the rate increase does not provide for significant funds to help ease environmental problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Those problems led to the court decision to protect the delta smelt by reducing water deliveries to the south. Nor does the rate hike cover the rise in labor costs anticipated to result from union contract negotiations that open next year. The agency's labor costs amount to $260 million, or 13% of the total budget.
Some members warned that the public agency's triple-A bond rating could be jeopardized by effectively using reserves to shield consumers from higher water bills.
"I just think it's responsible to pay one's bills and adopt a balanced budget," said member Willard H. Murray Jr., who represents the Carson-based West Basin Municipal Water District. His motion for a 20% increase failed, garnering support from only seven of the 30 board members present.
The 14.3% increase passed 183,695 to 0, with 10,595 abstentions, under the board's weighted voting system. It allocates members' votes by property valuation in the cities and water districts they represent. #
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water12mar12,1,4423073.story
Water rate hike OK'd by district
By Michael Gardner, staff writer
Metropolitan Water District of Southern
The increase would work out to about $1.50 per month for the average household, Metropolitan officials said.
However, that is just an estimate that could end up being higher or lower depending on later budget decisions reached by Metropolitan's customers, such as the San Diego County Water Authority. Jim Bond, a county water authority director and member of Metropolitan's board, said the rate increase was unavoidable.
"Water supply costs are going up and up and up," he said.
The
Metropolitan officials say the various increases are necessary to offset the rising cost of securing more water to replace supplies lost by court-ordered pumping restrictions in the
"We're running out of water, pure and simple," Bond said.
Metropolitan's search to replace water lost under a new
Metropolitan once drew about 1 million acre-feet from the river, but now takes closer to 600,000 acre-feet annually.
The raw river water costs about 25 cents an acre-foot, plus delivery expenses. Replacement water is being sold to Metropolitan for at least $250 an acre-foot, Bond said.
Metropolitan's higher bills also will squeeze farmers, who will have to pay more for less. The new rate structure imposes a charge of $322 per acre-foot, up from the current $261. Deliveries to agriculture already have been cut.
The $25-per-acre-foot surcharge on delivered water will be set aside to buy up to 200,000 acre-feet of water from various sources. Metropolitan warns that compulsory measures to protect endangered smelt, a tiny fish, in the
The county water authority buys three-quarters of its 700,000 acre-feet of annual supply from Metropolitan,
Metropolitan's charges are only part of the overall water costs, authority officials note. Local rates also reflect the cost of ensuring reliable supplies, such as investing in expanding San Vicente Reservoir and potentially contracting with agencies other than Metropolitan for additional water.
As an example, Metropolitan raised its rates by 5.8 percent for this year. The water authority passed along that increase, but added nearly 1 percent on top of that for its programs, bringing the overall increase to 6.6 percent. #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080312-9999-1m12water.html
MWD board approves 14.3% water-rate increase
By wire service reports
The increase in the district's wholesale water rate is necessary in light of a federal court decision aimed at protecting Delta smelt, an endangered species of fish, in addition to a longtime drought on the
The impact on residents will depend on how much their local water agencies rely on MWD supplies. Officials estimated that the average household could see an increase of $1.50 a month.
West Basin Municipal Water District, a member agency that imports about two-thirds of its water and supplies it to cities across the
MWD typically receives 60 percent of its water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta but will now get substantially less as it restricts its pumping to protect the smelt.
"Over the next few years, we must continue to work creatively with our 26 member public agencies to manage our supply challenges as well as the rising cost of energy, financing capital improvements and operating and maintaining our water distribution system," said MWD board Chairman Timothy Brick.
"These costs include the need to acquire increasingly costly water transfers and more aggressive water conservation."
The board approved a 9.8 percent increase in the agency's base rate and a $25 surcharge, which together equal a 14.3 percent overall increase.
The rate increase was part of a $1.98 billion budget approved by the board. The spending plan includes money for 20 major projects, including construction of the Inland Feeder water line that will bring water to
Staff writer Kristin S. Agostoni contributed to this report. #
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8540843
EEL RIVER DIVERSIONS:
Advice puts
Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 3/12/08
By Glenda Anderson, staff writer
UKIAH -- A recently revived proposal to divert water from a protected portion of the
"For now, we've put the whole Dos Rios thing on hold," Mendocino County Water Agency chief Roland Sanford said.
The board was scheduled to discuss the plan and legal opinion last month, but
"We're very pleased," said David Drell of the
The legal opinion listed expensive obstacles to taking water from a section of the
At the least, the project would require an environmental impact report, and it undoubtedly would face legal challenges from environmental groups, according to the opinion by Rossmann and Moore, a
The opinion echoed issues raised by environmentalists and other critics since the proposal was first raised by Mendocino County Supervisor John Pinches in the 1990s.
"This outside legal opinion agreed with us almost completely," Drell said.
At issue was a plan to take water during spring high-flow runs from the main stem of the
In the most recent incarnation, the water was to be piped about 45 miles along the railroad right-of-way to
The legal opinion notes that the county would need to keep track of the water to ensure that it was needed, was used within the county and was not used for purposes, including agriculture, that are prohibited under wild and scenic regulations.
An early incarnation of the plan called for a new reservoir to store the water.
The diversion plan has met with resistance and legal threats since its initial unveiling. Critics said it would be too expensive, face too many legal hurdles and wasn't needed.
The county has plenty of water in the winter, they said. What it needs is more places to store that water.
Most county agencies initially ignored Pinches' proposal.
Only the Redwood Valley County Water District pursued the plan, seeking rights to the water in 1997.
The water agency spent almost $90,000 applying for water rights and initial engineering studies for the Dos Rios project. But the project was too big and expensive for
When Pinches returned to the Board of Supervisors last year, he renewed his push for the project. At the very least, he said, the county should apply for a water right to keep someone else from making a claim.
Pinches said this week that the project is too costly for the county to pursue alone. Instead, it will focus on other water projects, some of which have yet to be revealed.
"We've got a smaller project on the horizon," Pinches said. #
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080312/NEWS/803120321/1033/NEWS01
CVP ALLOCATIONS:
The Bureau of Reclamation announces the initial Water Year 2008 allocation for the Federal Central Valley Project. Reclamation prepared two forecasts: a conservative forecast with a 90% chance of having runoff greater than forecasted and a median forecast with a 50% chance of having runoff greater than forecasted. In the 90% exceedence forecast, the water year inflow into Shasta Reservoir is about 3.8 million acre-feet.
The Shasta Reservoir inflow is a criteria used to impose shortages to settlement contractors and refuges. This initial announcement of the available water supply outlook is based on February 1, 2008, water runoff information prepared by the California Department of Water Resources. In February, Reclamation notified the water rights settlement contractors and water rights exchange contractors that they will receive 100% of their water supply based on the Shasta Reservoir inflow criteria.
Reclamation is implementing interim court-ordered measures this year to provide additional protection for delta smelt. The actual actions will vary depending on a real-time assessment of Delta conditions and the location and maturity of Delta smelt. The extent that these actions will impact the water supply available for allocation can vary, and this initial project water supply allocation will be updated as more specific actions are identified.
The Friant Division deliveries for Water Year 2008 are projected to be 800,000 acre-feet, or 64% of 1.25 million acre-feet, which is the 5-year average allocation. The allocation for the Friant Division Contractors will be 100% Class 1 water and 0% Class 2 water. The projected Friant Division delivery of 800,000 acre-feet is based on the DWRs' 90%, February 1, 2008, forecast. As of February 25, 2008, precipitation in the
The CVP Eastside Division (
http://californiafarmer.com/index.aspx?ascxid=fpStory&fpsid=32658&fpstid=2
SOUTHWEST WATER ISSUES:
Lake's ghost town seen as a warning; To some, emergence of town's remains is sign that water poses eternal challenge to Vegas, all of Southwest
Las Vegas Sun – 3/12/08
By Phoebe Sweet, staff writer
Water gave birth to the town, and then buried it.
Now years of drought combined with the thirst of a burgeoning
A historian documenting the old Mormon settlement for the National Park Service visited its ruins for the first time Feb. 27 amid a growing belief that
A recent study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in
The region's water officials have, in large part, dismissed the study as overly pessimistic. But they admit that no one knows how long the drought will last or what role climate change will play in the drying of the Southwest.
Whatever the future may hold for
Just a few years ago the town was 70 feet under
"What I find interesting about it," says Aaron McArthur, a UNLV doctoral student who is writing the history of
"Now most of the people are dead ... Now the lessons that people seem to be drawing from it have less to do with matters of faith and 'grow where you're planted,' and more with a cautionary kind of thing about what happens when we're not responsible stewards of water."
McArthur, a Mormon originally from
As McArthur took his first walk through the town's remnants last week, he said, "Sometimes I think I understand some of it, but then I didn't live here when there was no running water and no air conditioning."
Later that night McArthur would shower in his temperature-controlled condo near UNLV, in the middle of one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas.
The Mormons sent to the scorching valley had settled in 1865 at the confluence of the Virgin and Muddy rivers. They referred to them as rivers, but they might have more rightly been called streams or even creeks. After the Mormons had traveled for weeks in wagons across an unforgiving desert, perhaps those trickles of water, constant through both winter and summer, looked like rivers to them.
Walking through the now bone-dry ruins of
Clear away the water-sucking, invasive tamarisk plants that choke what was once a dirt highway and picture the rows of cottonwood trees the settlers planted for shade along that highway through town. You can still see the path the road took across the hard-packed earth.
Listen hard and you can nearly hear the school bell ringing or the town's first radio playing on the steps of the car repair shop while bachelors jawed over the day's news. Hugh Lord, who owned the garage, refused to leave until the waters were lapping at his doorstep.
Walking from cistern to cistern along dirt trails that lead through the ruins of modern-day
But water is central to life throughout the Southwest, and it was a dam to control the fickle Colorado River and distribute its waters that eventually put
Surveys showed that
There's nostalgia about
Logandale resident Verna Heller, 89, was born in
Her family left in 1932, six years before the waters covered
The government moved the town's cemetery — which held the remains of Heller's twin brother — to Logandale before the waters came.
Heller recalls nightmares of a scene that would be a dream come true for 21st-century
"It did come up fast when it came up," she said. "I was too young to have anything but resentment."
When the residents of
Thousands of years before, the Anasazi, an ancient
Eva Jensen, an archaeologist with the
"Everybody should think about that," she says. "Just what is the capacity of the land and the resources that we have?"
Unable to grow crops to feed a population that had grown too fast to support their nearly 1,000 people, the Anasazi abandoned the dry valley about 1150, after living here for 1,000 years.
"The question we should be asking is: How were they able to survive here for as long as they did?" Jensen says. "Our current community hasn't been here that long, so we haven't really been tested. We'll see how we handle this latest drought."
Jensen, like many Southwest archaeologists and anthropologists, says there are lessons — or at the very least questions — to be taken from the history of Indians who were eventually beaten down by the realities and natural water cycles of desert life.
"Rapid growth anywhere is a stress on a population. We ... have always used our technology to take care of our problems, but there probably reaches a point where technology can't fix everything," she says. "We have to think about changing our philosophy of what we should be doing with the land and how rapidly we can grow.
"That question has been faced by populations throughout the world, throughout time."
Conservationists and archaeologists alike predict that our relatively young
"We have to consider the lessons of the past, and think about what it takes to be a sustainable community," said Launce Rake, spokesman for the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, a group that advocates water conservation. "It remains to be seen if we can overcome our self-destructive impulses when it comes to living in the Southwest." #
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/mar/12/lakes-ghost-town-seen-warning/#/A_town_dies/
####
No comments:
Post a Comment