Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 10, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People -
MWD panel weighs 14% rate hike for 2009 -
Ferry service threatened by
Supervisors may comment on proposed river park project -
Oroville Mercury Register
Teach climate change -
Pumping reduced for smelt -
Capital Press
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MWD panel weighs 14% rate hike for 2009
By Deborah Schoch,
The board of the Metropolitan Water District is to vote this week on a proposed 14.3% increase in the 2009 rates it would charge cities and water districts serving 18 million people in
Although the cities and districts would then determine how much more residents would pay, MWD officials estimated that the hike would add about $1.50 to monthly bills for an average household, varying widely from city to city.
If the increase is approved by a panel of the MWD board today and the full board Tuesday, it would take effect Jan. 1. Rates could rise again by 6% to 12% in 2010 and 5% to 10% in 2011, said Brian G. Thomas, chief financial officer and assistant general manager.
"Our rates have not been sufficient -- and will not be sufficient even with this increase -- to cover our expected costs," Thomas said.
The rising rates would bring home the problems plaguing water supplies in the state and across the West. The MWD, the region's largest water agency, imports water from Northern California and the
Driving the rate increase are the costs of buying extra water to offset a barrage of shortages resulting from last year's dry weather, a prolonged drought in the
The MWD must also pay for higher electricity rates and removing invasive quagga mussels from its pipes and pumps, officials said. In recent years, the agency has spent nearly half of its $425 million in financial reserves to forestall rate increases and must rebuild those reserves.
The rate hike would be the largest since the early 1990s for the MWD.
Overall response is mixed.
Although an increase of about $18 a year per household might not seem sizable, it would come during a time of rising gasoline prices and other increased costs, critics say. Many cities are also already raising water rates because of their growing costs.
"I cannot take a 14% increase to my constituents. That's not going to fly," said Susan J. Varty, board president of the Olivenhain Municipal Water District in Encinitas, which, like most of
Some groups believe the proposal could do more to encourage conservation.
"These increases really highlight the risks of depending on imported water," said Heather Cooley, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, an environmental research group in
Managers of water utilities in
"Their financial reserves are way down. I don't know that there's a whole lot they can do," said Bill Mace, assistant general manager for water systems in
Water, in general, is not heavily priced, said Peter Kavounas,
Each city served by the MWD, including
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also has proposed a hike, now being reviewed by the City Council. The combined increases would raise the median monthly water bill by $3.31 as of mid-2009.
DWP General Manager H. David Nahai said Saturday that he understands and accepts the reasons why water district officials believe they must raise rates.
He called the increase "another wake-up call" that
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water10mar10,1,3505565.story?ctrack=6&cset=true
Ferry service threatened by
By Christine Morente, STAFF WRITER
The plan's progress hinges on the appointment of a five-member advisory board to the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, and that hasn't happened yet.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to choose three people, while Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez are each expected to appoint a member, said Peter Grenell, general manager of the San Mateo County Harbor District.
"We would have preferred to know yesterday," Grenell said recently about the status of the appointments.
The new agency was formed in January with last year's passage of Senate Bill 976. It was to replace the now-defunct Bay Area Water Transit Authority and its 11-member board.
The staff from the former agency was transferred to the new authority. The agency is set up to receive up to $250 million from infrastructure bonds.
Sabrina Lockhart, spokeswoman for the governor, said Schwarzenegger is looking for the most qualified people for the positions and wants them filled as soon as possible. But Lockhart said she doesn't know when he will make the appointments.
To speed the process,
"We haven't heard anything," South City Mayor Pedro Gonzales said. "We are just feeling desperate."
Tissier stressed Thursday that the board appointments must be completed as soon as possible. Without a board, a construction contract for the terminal can't be awarded, and further delays could raise construction costs.
"We're already building boats," she said. "My concern is the longer we wait, the longer it would take to get the construction done, and the longer it would take for people to ride the ferry."
In December, the former Water Transit Authority signed a lease with the city and the harbor district to operate and provide ferry service between Oyster Point and
The total cost to build the terminal is expected to be $29 million.
In addition, Measure A, the
The plan is to run one boat three to four times in the morning and early evening on weekdays. The extra boat will be available if there is large demand. So far, there are no plans for weekend service.
Despite the absence of a board, preparations for the ferry terminal will stay on course, said Steve Castleberry, the authority's chief executive officer.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to create a breakwater to accommodate the ferries in May.
"We're not in paralysis," Castleberry said. "The design process continues and we're (preparing) environmental documents, but we have a whole laundry list of things we need a board for."
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_8519246
Supervisors may comment on proposed river park project
Oroville Mercury Register – 3/9/08
By ROGER H. AYLWORTH/MediaNews Group
A project that
The California Department of Parks and Recreation is proposing to add nearly 360 acres to
According to the state's draft environmental report, the addition would have the twin goals of returning orchard land to natural riparian habitat and providing day-use and overnight camping facilities to a park that currently has no camping.
Since the proposed addition is a state project, it does not require
Documents prepared by county staff for the supervisors outline a range of possible problems.
Local officials have expressed misgivings with the project being situated in a flood plain, about what the project might do to flooding in the surrounding area, the potential of on-site sewage getting into floodwater, the increased demand for law enforcement with overnight camping, and problems with fire response to the facility, as well as noise and traffic.
One of the strongest objections comes from the
"Overall, the draft EIR demonstrates a lack of acknowledgment regarding the impacts that the proposed change in the land
use will impose on the surrounding agricultural properties, and the possible health and safety risks the users of the proposed facility will be exposed to," states the document going to the supervisors.
"The project proposes to convert 359 acres of prime agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes," continues the report, which points out the project is in an area zoned for commercial agriculture.
The draft EIR describes the change differently.
"The proposed project would restore some land used for agriculture to native riparian habitat, effectively removing it from agricultural production; however, the process would be neither irreversible nor cause serious degradation or elimination of the physical or natural conditions that provide the land's value for farming ..." reads the state report.
County staff is asking supervisors to approve a letter to be sent to the state outlining local concerns and objections to the project.
The full agenda can be viewed online at www.buttecounty.net/cob/agendas.htm.
http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_8515308
Teach climate change
It's a controversial subject, but that's no reason to keep it out of the classroom.
By Tom Wagner and Kathleen Gorski
Is the science of global warming too controversial to be included in
A state Senate bill, which passed the chamber in January, would mandate that climate change be a science topic taught in the state's public schools. But the legislation, now in the Assembly, has drawn fire from some lawmakers, who say the science is too controversial for inclusion in the curriculum. They want guarantees that the views of skeptics will be included.
But those objections are just silly. The reality is that there is no disagreement any longer among scientists on the major principles, causes and effects of global warming. The world's largest and most reputable scientific societies, such as the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, all concur that the burning of fossil fuels is putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the Earth has been pushed off its natural cycle and is warming. As a result, sea levels will rise as ice sheets melt. Low-lying coastal regions will flood. And droughts and storms may become more frequent and severe.
That's what the science tells us, and teaching students about it is perfectly appropriate. Climate change will directly affect how young people live. They are inundated with information about it, and it is already guiding some of their career choices. But they need a message of hope. Too often the media and scientific community offer only predictions of doom and gloom. Accurate or not, young people need to feel empowered. And the best way to do that is to let them explore climate change in the classroom.
There are plenty of legitimate and fascinating subjects for students to debate. Among the most important questions: Will the ice caps melt away slowly or will they disintegrate in catastrophic events? Figuring this out will tell us whether sea levels will rise a few inches or many feet in the next 100 years.
Here's another question for students to think about: How much methane will be released by the melting of Arctic permafrost? Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and larger concentrations of it in the atmosphere would cause a major jump in temperatures. But do higher temperatures result in more clouds? Clouds could slow warming by reflecting more sunlight back into space, though we need to better understand how clouds form before we can incorporate them into predictive models of the Earth's temperature.
Given all of this uncertainty, the subject will certainly continue to be controversial; answers to these questions may have political and policy implications that students will have to grapple with.
There are many reasons to teach science, not the least of which is that it is inherently interesting and fun. Who doesn't marvel at the structure and behavior of a cell upon seeing it for the first time through a microscope?
Science is also important because it is among the best ways to train students to think critically and orderly. Only in science is it polite to say, "Prove it to me!" And good science repeatedly does, through testing and retesting of evidence, assumptions and methods. This approach provides us a common language to interpret the world.
But learning science is difficult. So science education tends to focus on phenomena that we know a great deal about and can explain most easily, such as the laws of motion as applied to a pendulum.
The problem is that a curriculum built solely on these tried-and-true examples is boring. Students know their work only replicates something already known. They don't see ways that they might one day explore and advance the field.
Controversial science, on the other hand, inspires. It poses grand questions, debates new theories and offers answers that can take on political overtones because of their implications for society. There is already a lot of it in the curriculum. The most obvious example is evolution, the controversy about which can be summed up with an understatement: Although the science is not in question, the theory is at odds with some religious beliefs.
Interestingly, less politically charged topics are often more scientifically controversial and are associated with far more uncertainty.
Take the Big Bang. While we generally accept it as the origin of the universe, and scientists have compiled tremendous and compelling evidence for what it was like, we have no idea what caused it. Even less grandiose topics like plate tectonics are controversial. Anyone looking at a globe can see that the continents fit together, and we have satellite measurements that prove they are moving. But we still don't know what drives them. Should we take the science out of schools?
Climate-change science is no different from these topics and other emerging areas of science already in the curriculum, such as dark matter and genetic engineering. And according to the National Science Teachers Assn., climate-change science meets every national education standard while lending itself to compelling teaching.
So let's get climate change and other controversial science into the curriculum. We do a disservice to students and educators to do otherwise.
Tom Wagner is the program director for Earth sciences for the U.S. Antarctic Program at the National Science Foundation. Kathleen Gorski is a science teacher and Einstein Fellow at the National Science Foundation. Their views are their own and do not reflect official views of the National Science Foundation.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-wagner9mar09,0,4380985.story
Pumping reduced for smelt
Capital Press – 3/7/06
The state is reducing pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta until early summer in order to comply with a federal court order to protect fish.
The California Department of Water Resources said it's reducing the pumping according to a federal court order focused on protecting the delta smelt issued late last year by Judge Oliver Wanger.
Carl Torgersen, DWR's chief of operations and maintenance for the State Water Project, said Wanger's order calls for the scaling back of exports into June in order to protect larval smelt.
One of the order's triggers is breeding season. Torgersen said a spent female smelt, which already had laid her eggs, was taken at the Skinner pumping facility on Feb. 18.
That requires a reverse flow into Old Middle River, Torgersen said. Sending water upstream achieves a negative flow; the order requires between minus 750 cubic feet per second to no greater than minus 5,000 cubic feet per second when the smelt are hatching.
Torgersen said this is the latest in a series of actions the order has necessitated since late December, which has cost the State Water Project 250,000 acre-feet through the end of February.
"We really can't tell you how much it's going to cost because it really depends on the weather and the hydrology," he said
DWR has estimated, however, that the pumping reduction this year will reduce the amount of water that can be allocated to 29 state water contractors across Southern California, the Bay Area and the Central Valley between 11 and 30 percent.
That's translating into challenges for organizations like the Kern County Water Agency, the largest agricultural water contractor in the State Water Project which, in turn, distributes water to districts covering about 800,000 acres.
Curtis Creel, the agency's water resources manager, said State Water Project contractors currently are receiving a 35-percent allocation; had it not been for the Wanger decision, it would have been closer to 50 percent.
"For
To offset the shortages, Creel said the agency is using water banking projects, but those won't be enough if a real-time shortage occurs at the beginning of summer. They also were drawn down heavily last year.
If exports this summer are curtailed to the point where no water is coming out of the delta, urban areas and farmers would be reliant on the San Luis Reservoir or local supplies, Creel said.
"We simply could not get water out of the ground fast enough to meet the local agriculture needs," Creel said
Creel said the Kern County Water Agency would like to see a "viable alternative" such as an isolated facility considered for the delta.
That would minimize the impact on both fish and farmers.
DWR's pumps operate on an almost day-to-day mode, Torgersen said, with change driven by several factors, the most important being hydrology.
Torgersen, who has worked for DWR for 27 years, calls the conditions under which the State Water Project currently is operating a "challenging scenario."
"As far as water supply and water operations, this is difficult," he said.
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=39832&TM=64691.57
DWR's California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader's services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news. DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of
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