A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 24, 2008
2. Supply
SNOWPACK WATER SUPPLY:
Snowpack survey: Some things really don't change; WATER FORECASTERS USE CENTURY-OLD METHOD - San Jose Mercury News
Let It Snow: With regional shortfalls imminent, Pasadena will become more dependent on local water resources - Pasadena Weekly
DROUGHT PLANNING:
County water supplier considers model drought plan - North County Times
NESTLE ISSUES:
U.S. town splits after quenching Nestlé's thirst for water - International Herald Tribune
Editorial: Tired of having a dry riverbed running through
WATER STORAGE:
Editorial: Water storage crucial to Delta, state's future -
AG ISSUES:
Guest Opinion: Why
WESTERN WATER ISSUES:
Water authority goes with Virgin River flow - Las Vegas Review Journal
SNOWPACK WATER SUPPLY:
Snowpack survey: Some things really don't change; WATER FORECASTERS USE CENTURY-OLD METHOD
By Julie Sevrens Lyons, staff writer
James E. Church once said, "Nature tells you things if you but question her and open your eyes."
For the professor of Latin, German and art appreciation, nature spoke in the form of the tiny snowflakes that danced atop Sierra mountaintops in the early 1900s, speaking loudly about a crucial issue for the West - the region's fickle water supply.
Church never owned a car, had no formal scientific training and was labeled a "freak" by some because he scaled mountain peaks - in the midst of winter. So he might seem like an unlikely father of snow surveying and water forecasting.
But when surveyors with the California Department of Water Resources go out this week and take the most important snowpack measures of the year, they will use essentially the same
"In the snow survey world, he's like the Brett Favre of football. He's very famous," said Steve Hale, a recreation specialist with the U.S. Forest Service who portrays Church several times a year for schoolchildren. "His work is finding even more value as time goes on."
Important finding
It was Church who found there was a correlation between the water content of the snow on Mount Rose each winter and the rise of the water level of
By 1929, his work had resulted in a state law, with California Water Code Section 228 requiring the state to take snowpack measurements and provide annual forecasts of the water supply.
When surveyors follow in Church's snowshoes Wednesday, they will carry with them a "Mount Rose snow sampler," a long, hollow aluminum tube almost identical to the
Frank Gehrke is one of those surveyors.
Gehrke, who at 60 is still thin and muscular, is among dozens of surveyors from more than 50 state, national and private agencies who collect snow data from more than 250 places across the state.
During the winter and early spring, the Sierra serves as his office. He trudges up mountainsides and along snowy meadows, taking several measurements at each stop, averaging the results to help determine how much snow the state received.
The world of snow surveying does not stop for blizzards or rain. It is only when avalanche conditions are extremely high that Gehrke does not don his Gore-Tex vest and head out into the chill.
During a recent outing to Tamarack Flat, not far from the hamlet of Strawberry, the skies were sunny. Hoisting several pounds of equipment over his shoulder, including a scale, measuring tape and notebook, Gehrke skied a few hundred yards to get to the snowy measurement course.
Since his last visit just four weeks earlier, a wooden bridge straddling the creek had collapsed. Skillfully, using his skis and a shovel, he fashioned a pile of snow into a bridge, compacting it so he could cross to the survey site.
"Actually getting to that point can be tricky sometimes," he said.
It isn't just the depth of the snow that matters. A century ago, Church was the first to demonstrate that not all snow is created equal - some contains significantly more water.
Depth, moisture
Using the sampler, Gehrke and his colleagues will extract cores of snow to measure the depth and then weigh them to determine their moisture level. Their measurements will be tabulated to make water supply forecasts.
"You don't want to be wrong," said Gehrke, a hydrologist with the state Department of Water Resources.
Which is one of the reasons why Gehrke still has a job. The measurements taken by the surveyors are considered more accurate than the data provided by 150 electronic sensors located throughout the state.
Although those provide hourly snowpack data, they are also prone to problems like foraging animals, and they gauge less ground.
"Sometimes, even low-tech works pretty well," said Keith Whitman, a water supply manager with the Santa Clara Valley Water District. "They're still pretty good methods."
The snow surveys are funded by more than a dozen entities, including water agencies and Pacific Gas & Electric, which have come to rely on the data for water supply forecasts.
But the information also is being used increasingly to help monitor climate change, because the samples are relatively pure - taken from untouched rural areas - and consistent, with comparison data going back more than five decades.
Scientists can compare whether snow is melting earlier than in past years, therefore altering how much melted snow is captured in reservoirs and when. Wednesday's snow survey data might help substantiate or discount researchers' fears that the snow is disappearing earlier than they would like.
Other agencies use the data to calculate when to harvest timber. One Forest Service worker used it to study how predators migrate in the winter. And farmers use it to plan their crop planting and irrigation schedules.
Gehrke has been surveying
Summers are even busier than wintertime, with Gehrke and his colleagues performing maintenance on the electronic sensors. They also oversee maintenance of the snow survey sites, ensuring that new trees don't pop up in the middle of the meadows, which could skew snowfall measurements in the winter.
Surveys take time
If Church's longtime method of snow sampling is effective, it is also extremely time-consuming.
One day in late February, Gehrke's colleague, Dave Hart, spent all day - including six hours of non-stop skiing - covering an 11-mile loop that took him to just two survey areas.
Surveyors get to rugged wilderness sites in any way they can: boats, trams, snowmobiles and helicopters, and even horses and mules. Their treks take them thousands of feet up mountains.
"It can be pretty brutal," Gehrke concedes. "You can spend two to three days getting some place to do a half hour's work."
Some surveyors have been stranded in the snow for days at a time, while others have ended up with broken bones.
Church, for his part, didn't seem to mind the treacherous commutes he made generations ago. In 1944, when he was 75 years old, he was still making regular trips to the snowy forest, even though he had already trained others on how to carry out his work.
At that time, he sat down with the Reno Gazette Journal, revealing how simple the inspiration was for his snow measuring device. In the 1880s, when refrigeration was problematic, the grocer in his native
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_8668542?nclick_check=1
Let It Snow: With regional shortfalls imminent,
By Joe Piasecki and Liz Hendrick, staff writers
That it's cold outside one day does not mean global warming is a myth.
Likewise, the picturesque snowcaps visible earlier this year on the mountains above
A Sunday driver or nature enthusiast visiting the peaks near
With
"We're a little better off, but we need five or six years of above-average rain and snowfall until we see some real improvement," said Kwan, who explained that in wet years, the city's water supply can rise by as much as 7 percent.
The complex ecosystem that connects the San Gabriel Mountains to the Arroyo Seco to your kitchen sink is the subject of a $2.68 million, two-year study by the Army Corps of Engineers on how to better harness area rain and snow while possibly tearing up sections of the concrete flood channel that passes underneath the Colorado Street Bridge.
Restoring water courses to a more natural state, said Kwan, will allow more water to percolate into the ground rather than flow into the Los Angeles River and spill into the Pacific Ocean. Currently, the city maximizes percolation by maintaining decades-old spreading basins below Devil's Gate Dam. Spreading basins are essentially large ponds that slow runoff, Kwan explained.
Other projects under consideration for
The study covers a 47-square-mile watershed that includes parts of
Capturing precipitation to augment the area's native water supply is becoming more important than ever as resources continue to dry up elsewhere, said Kwan.
To satisfy the city's thirst, Pasadena Water and Power must purchase 60 percent of the water it serves from the Metropolitan Water District,
Though that plan is unlikely to take effect this year, now is the best time to prepare for shortfalls, said Tim Brick,
"To even consider the fact that we might not have adequate supplies is a very tough thing to contemplate. This, however, is the time to do it," said Brick.
Water that comes to
Although a recent analysis of
A 2007 federal court order to slow pumping from the San Joaquin Delta to places like
Water contractors such as the MWD make annual requests of the DWR based on the specific water needs of the areas they serve. This year, the DWR has allocated only 35 percent of the water requested by agencies, forcing many to tap into historic reserves. "We'd be closer to 50 percent of the allocation if not for the court order on delta pumping," said MWD spokesman Bob Muir.
Decreased water levels in the
"
For all of these reasons, the
To mitigate shortages, the MWD has encouraged the use of "gray water" (such as that already used for showers, dishwashing and laundry machines) for landscape irrigation and is studying possibilities for desalinization of ocean water, said Muir.
Ultimately, the success of conservation efforts lies in the hands of water users, he explained.
Although it may not seem like there's much any one person can do, "One shower multiplied by 36 million people is a lot of water," said Muir. #
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/let_it_snow/5800/
DROUGHT PLANNING:
County water supplier considers model drought plan
By Bradley J. Fikes, staff writer
Hoping to forge a unified response by local water districts if water supplies are threatened this summer,
Local water districts would also have to adopt the suggested plan for it to work, said Dana Friehauf, principal water resources specialist for the San Diego County Water Authority. The authority, which imports water from outside the county and resells it to local water districts, takes up the proposal at next Thursday's meeting.
The model ordinance has been developed over six months in cooperation with the districts, Friehauf said. If approved by the Water Authority, it will be sent to the districts with an official recommendation.
"Every one (of these districts) has one of these ordinances in place, but what we've found is there's inconsistencies between the ordinances," Friehauf said. "We also found that one of them hadn't been updated since 1991, during the last drought."
The model ordinance sets up four levels of conservation, with increasingly stringent cuts called for at each level.
The first stage, a Drought Watch, calls for voluntary conservation of up to 10 percent.
Stage 2, Drought Alert, seeks up to 20 percent conservation; Stage 3, Drought Critical, up to 40 percent; and Stage 4, Drought Emergency, seeks more than 40 percent conservation. Each stage outlines steps to achieve the conservation goals. These include restricting irrigation of landscaping or car washing.
Levels 2 through 4 are mandatory, and punishable by various penalties, such as fines or up to 30 days in the county jail.
By making the definitions the same across the board, agencies will make it easier for the public to cooperate, Friehauf said. The ordinance makes allowances for those who are already taking steps to conserve water. It would be unfair to ask them to make the same percentage cutbacks as those who are not conserving, she said.
It's a good time to update the ordinances, Friehauf said. With winter over,
"We will be officially notified in April by the Metropolitan Water District, the agency that supplies us," Friehauf said.
The impending cutback complicates a water outlook that otherwise is not too bad after years of below-average rain and snow prompted drought warnings. The county's rainfall, which supplies a fraction of the county's water, is a little less than average. The snowpack in the Sierra mountains, a much bigger source of water, is a bit above average.
The complete text of the model ordinance is in PDF at the water authority's Web site, at: http://tinyurl.com/27m529. #
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/03/22/business/ba4da2afa18cf8fc8825741300694ec1.txt
NESTLE ISSUES:
International Herald Tribune – 3/19/08
By Eric Giles
SAN FRANCISCO: McCloud, a former lumber company town in the far north of
In 2003, the town government signed a contract to sell its spring water to Nestlé Waters North America, a subsidiary of the largest food and beverage company in the world. Nearly one-third of bottled water sold in the
The Nestlé deal has divided this close-knit town of about 1,350 people. While some support it because they welcome economic development, others object to the lack of public input on the contract, the contract's terms, and the possible environmental effects. Five years after the contract was signed, construction of the plant, mired in conflict, has yet to begin.
"It's the issue in town," said Curtis Knight, the
Controversy has followed such Nestlé operations. Its worldwide water bottling earned €6.3 billion, or $9.9 billion, in 2007. Lawsuits against the company have been filed - and some won - in
The debate in McCloud over the bottling contract is about method and content.
Dennis Kucinich, a
McCloud is unincorporated, so the McCloud Community Services District board serves as the town government, with five elected board members. Many residents said the board signed the deal with little public input.
Nestlé's
"I was really upset," said Tim Dickinson, the board president. "It was announced as being an 'info' session, and after it was done, the board signed the contract."
Kucinich said this story was common. At his hearings, people "testified that local and state authorities often short-circuited their complaints and curtailed their input in the face of these perceived economic benefits that a water bottling plant promised to bring to a region," he said.
The McCloud contract's terms trouble many people. Debra Anderson is a third-generation McCloud resident who helped create McCloud Watershed Council in 2004 to educate her neighbors about the issues. The group took a survey two years ago and found that 77 percent of the citizens were opposed to the contract.
Knight of the fishery group said opponents' top concerns were the price that Nestlé would pay for the water, once the plant started operating, and the length of the contract, which runs for 100 years.
McCloud would receive about $305,000 the first year, based on residential water tariffs, which equals $191 per acre foot, or 15.5 cents per cubic meter. By comparison, Nestlé is paying $2,183 per acre foot to Pure Mountain Spring in
People also objected to an exclusivity clause, the quantity of water to be sold and the lack of information on how it would effect the environment.
An local group, Concerned McCloud Citizens, filed a lawsuit against Nestlé, saying that an environmental review, allowing discussion of alternatives or mitigation measures, should have been done before the town agreed to a contract. A district court sided with Concerned McCloud Citizens, but Nestlé appealed the decision and won because it said McCloud still had the right to negotiate contingency issues.
A water rights lawyer, Don Mooney, who handled the case for Concerned McCloud Citizens, said that even though the case had been lost, "we have an appellate decision saying that the district has further discretion with regards to the project, the size of the project, or whether or not the project should even go forward."
Palais of Nestlé disagreed, saying McCloud had no right to end the contract.
While the case was going through the courts, Nestlé began an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act. The first draft, published in 2006, received 4,000 public comments.
Protect Our Waters, a group of residents and trout fishery and habitat conservationists, hired experts to study the report. Betsy Phair of Concerned McCloud Citizens said the report did not address downstream communities, aquifer effects, global warming, fish, diesel fumes from increased trucking, or hazardous waste on the former mill site where Nestlé plans to build its plant.
In February, under pressure from conservationists, Nestlé agreed to cap its water extraction at 1,600 acre feet a year, or just under 2 million cubic meters. It also agreed that it would not drill groundwater wells and would conduct more environmental studies in a second environmental impact report.
But Nestlé is not altering the contract with the town to reflect these changes. Palais said the issues were already covered by contingency terms.
Groundwater and surface water are interconnected in a single hydrological system, said Kucinich, the congressman. "The existing regulatory structure barely recognizes this fact. For every gallon that's extracted for the bottled spring water, that's one gallon lost for surrounding streams and watershed."
Knight of the fishery group worries that water removal could effect the fish and ecosystem. He said a local fish hatchery had been distributing
Under the contract, Nestlé can build a bottling plant covering an area of up to 1 million square feet, or 93,000 square meters.
"This would totally destroy the integrity of our small, historic mill town," said
The contract also allows for 600 daily truck trips, and the trucks could run 24 hours a day all year. Some people are concerned about traffic and pollution. Residents who favor the plant say that plenty of trucks drove through town during logging's heyday. But other residents say logging trucks peaked at 150 per day, and they did not run at night, on weekends, during the winter or on holidays.
Project supporters hope that jobs at Nestlé will strengthen the town's economy. But the ECONorthwest report said that, of the 60 to 240 jobs predicted by Nestlé to be generated at various stages of operation, most "would likely be filled by people who do not currently live in McCloud." It said some jobs probably would be seasonal, and only low-paying production jobs would be open to local residents.
Still, even low-paying jobs would be welcomed, said Dickinson, the board president. "I know people in town who would dearly love to have a $10-an-hour job with benefits," he said. "I don't think their expectations are all that high."
"Most of the businesses in town are dying,"
Conservationists point to tourism as an alternative to the bottling plant, but "tourism doesn't contribute a lot of money," he said.
Knight of the fishery group said Nestlé would not take care of local residents the way the town's lumber company once did. "Any comparison of what Nestlé is trying to do to that is a complete fallacy," he said.
Jane Lazgin, a spokeswoman for Nestlé Waters North America, said: "I think it's appropriate that communities would have questions and concerns. In most cases, we're welcomed because we're able to offer a rural community an economic benefit, while harvesting responsibly a natural resource and providing jobs that otherwise have been lost." #
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/19/business/rbognestle.php?page=1
Editorial: Tired of having a dry riverbed running through
What is it worth to you to have water in the Kern River as it meanders gracefully through metropolitan
According to the thousands of people who participated in Vision 2020, a community planning exercise that first convened in 1999, it's a big deal. It means a lot.
Next to having clean air to breathe and decent roads to drive on, it ranks right up there as a top priority with people who live in
Let's face it, in the summer,
You would think the mighty
But the mighty Kern's flow into
And
Seen the T-shirt?
It's no joke. It's true. It's often all we are left with. Is anyone laughing?
Some years ago, the city was given grants to purchase giant pumps to suck water from the ground and dump it into the riverbed in metropolitan
But the pumps have remained idle. City officials won't cough up the $1 million a year it takes to run the pumps. Every year, they find other uses for taxpayers' dollars.
Pump water into the river or pave streets? Or hire police officers? Or build sports arenas? Pumping water into the river always seems to be on the losing end of the equation.
With state funding cutbacks looming and the city's tax revenues declining, this year will be no different. No money will be available to pump water into the
We gripe about the dry riverbed. We complain that it looks ugly and gives
So what will it take? What is it really worth to us to have what we say we are thirsting to have water in the Kern River as it flows through
Are you willing to give up one big, fancy cup of coffee a year? That's roughly what water officials estimate it would cost to set up an assessment district. Five dollars a year, added to our tax bill, will fund operation of the pumps from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Too cheap to do that? OK, are you willing to give up some city services maybe delay some road repairs to scrape together the money?
Is your demand for water in the
http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/editorials/story/396258.html
WATER STORAGE:
Editorial: Water storage crucial to Delta, state's future
THE severe problems facing the Delta and the millions of Californians who rely on water flowing through the estuary have been known for many years. And, the primary water policy goals have been established for just as long.
Despite the critical need for a solution, there has been little progress. With a growing population, a collapsing Delta ecosystem and the state's agricultural future at stake, it is past time for action.
Most importantly, the 23 million people and a major portion of the state's farms that get water from the Delta need dependable supplies. At the same time, rapidly declining fish populations in the Delta need to be restored and old, decaying levees must be replaced.
There is little disagreement on these basic problems and goals. But controversies remain on what course to take to assure a healthy Delta and adequate, reliable water supplies to farms and urban users.
To move the process along, the state's Department of Water Resources has begun a 30-month study on how to stabilize water supplies. The analysis will move forward even though the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is not complete and there is no agreement on a solution.
There are three ways, besides the status quo, of moving water from the
Improving the levees should be part of any plan.
But the main effect would be to prevent flooding. It would not necessarily make water supplies more dependable.
Adding an aqueduct around the Delta to either replace or supplement current pumps could help protect fish in the Delta and improve water dependability. But there are legitimate concerns that an aqueduct would be a reincarnation of the dreaded
The hope is that the studies sought by state water officials will provide answers on just how much water can be sent south without jeopardizing efforts to restore the Delta ecosystem and fish populations.
What should be increasingly clear is that there is no way to provide adequate and reliable water supplies to users and the Delta environment in dry as well as wet periods without substantial water storage.
That means any of the possible courses being studied by water officials should include water storage in reservoirs and aquifers. There is no way to assure enough water for the Delta, farms and urban users in dry years without a major increase in storage.
Without storage there is a very real threat that either the Delta or agriculture will lose out.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/tribune/ci_8676683
AG ISSUES:
Guest Opinion: Why
By Amy Kaleita, public policy fellow for environmental studies at the Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco
The water shortage in
As a result, farmers who grow annual crops such as rice, cantaloupes and tomatoes around
Who can blame them? These farmers are just doing what makes the most economic sense for them. This situation, however, is less beneficial for taxpayers. Because the farmers' water is subsidized, when they, in turn, sell the water to a municipal supplier rather than using it to grow their crops, the taxpayers are paying for food security they aren't getting. While it's difficult to predict the precise impact the water situation will have on food prices, rising prices are a distinct possibility as planted acreage decreases.
Further, when the subsidized water is sold on the open market, the cost of water reflects these artificial prices rather than the short supply and high demand. As this means that city water rates don't accurately reflect the shortage, the costs won't necessarily encourage consumers to conserve as much as they would if the water was appropriately priced.
More regulation could address situations such as prohibitions on reselling irrigation water, for example.
However, regulations on the water supply system are already complex, and in some cases, exacerbating the situation. A December federal court ruling has forced water managers to limit pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect the Delta smelt, an endangered fish.
This situation illustrates why governments need to be extremely cautious in allocating subsidies and passing policy that supports one segment of the market over another. No industry exists in a vacuum, not even agriculture, and the ripple effect can cause unintended and negative consequences in times of stress. #
http://eurekareporter.com/article/080323-why-california-farmers-go-with-the-flow
WESTERN WATER ISSUES:
Water authority goes with
By Henry Brean, staff writer
Under a sweeping agreement signed in December by the seven Colorado River states, water managers in
Now the Southern Nevada Water Authority is moving to secure as much of that worry-free water as it can.
Through a series of swaps and purchases approved last week with water users in the
When stretched through reuse, that's enough water to supply about 17,000 homes.
That might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but getting the water couldn't be easier. All the authority has to do is wait for it to flow down the river and into Lake Mead, then pipe it to the
Best of all, the water will still be available even when some Colorado River water is off limits due to mandatory shortages, said John Entsminger, deputy counsel for the authority.
"It really becomes the best water in our portfolio," he said.
Only Virgin River rights permitted before 1929 can be taken by the authority under
With that in mind, board members voted to buy about 1,060 acre-feet of water rights permitted in 1914. As part of the $12.4 million deal with the owners of an old ranch southwest of
Under a separate deal, also approved last week, the newer rights will be swapped with the Virgin Valley Water District in
The authority also transferred to the Virgin Valley Water District some pending applications for groundwater in northeastern
The rural water district serves about 18,000 customers in and around
If
Entsminger said the authority plans to start using its share of the Virgin River this year, either by delivering it to customers or storing it underground in the
The new seven-state agreement also allows the authority to bank its Virgin River water in
"We're not going to lose it," Entsminger said.
The authority board also has signed off on a plan to develop a comprehensive habitat conservation and recovery program for the
The program would be developed in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, Nevada Department of Wildlife,
Water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said the river could use the help.
"The Virgin has been on the threatened river list forever," she said. #
http://www.lvrj.com/news/16948516.html
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