[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 4/29/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

April 29, 2008

 

2. Supply –

 

Opinion:

Learning from our arid past

More droughts, less water -- our future depends on adapting to scarcity.

Los Angeles Times

 

Judge rejects delay to All-American Canal work -

Imperial Valley Press

 

Workshop packed over water supply for Shingle Springs casino

Legal opinion supports EID providing water, but not everyone agrees -

Sacramento Bee

 

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Opinion:

Learning from our arid past

More droughts, less water -- our future depends on adapting to scarcity.

Los Angeles Times – 4/29/08

By Brian Fagan - emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and the author of "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

 

One of the downsides to global warming is drought. About 11 million people in northeast Africa alone were in serious danger of starvation in 2006 as a result of drought. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria estimates that about 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa -- nearly a third of the population -- will suffer from malnutrition because of intensifying drought by 2010. With continued warming and more droughts on the horizon, we need to learn how to better live with our natural world and its cycles.

Here in the Western United States, it's tree rings that tell us that cycles of wet and dry, warm and cool are the historical reality.

In California, the source is tree stumps in Sierra lake beds. Owens Lake once covered more than 115 square miles at the mouth of the Owens River. The mountain runoff that fed the lake varied dramatically in cycles of wet and dry years. In drier periods, trees grew in the still-moist soil of the receding lake. When the rains came, the trees drowned, leaving stumps as a chronicle of aridity: An epochal drought began before AD 910 and ended about 1100; a wetter century then ensued, when rainfall was higher than in modern times. A second drought started before 1210 and ended 140 years later.

As for the wider West, a grid of more than 600 tree-ring sequences from throughout the region, compiled by a team at the Lamont-Doherty Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University, puts today's droughts in perspective. The centuries between AD 900 and 1253 witnessed long dry spells. After 1300, an abrupt change to wetter conditions lasted for 600 years, then gave way to today's aridity. Some people refer to a "mega-drought epoch" 1,000 years ago, when cool, dry La Niña conditions persisted for decades over the eastern Pacific and the winter jet stream stayed well north of what is now California.

None of today's droughts approach the intensity and duration of the medieval ones. The six-year California drought that began in 1987 resulted in Sierra Nevada runoff that was only 65% of normal. During the great medieval droughts, inflow to Owens Lake is estimated to have been 45% to 50% lower than usual.

Why did the medieval droughts persist so long? Gradually accumulating climatic evidence from around the world is showing that the mega-drought epoch experienced significant warming on a global level, similar to recent conditions. During the 20th century, increased Northern Hemisphere temperatures and unusual warming of the western Pacific and Indian oceans contributed to drought formation over middle latitudes.

How did people survive? A thousand years ago, California's human population was tiny, a scattering of hunters, gatherers and fishermen who adapted effortlessly to long-term drought. They tapped rare permanent water supplies, changed their diet and moved to higher ground. Acorns were a staple; so were sea fish in places such as the Santa Barbara Channel. Survival in some of the toughest landscapes on Earth depended on cooperation, intelligence about water supplies, mobility and flexibility, knowledge of their environment and on taking advantage of all kinds of food resources when they became available. Nevertheless, prolonged aridity must have killed thousands of people in medieval times, from the American West to the Saharan Sahel.

Although today's droughts are minuscule compared with the dry spells of 1,000 years ago, the future is truly frightening. Sophisticated computer models by Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research predict a 3% to 18% increase in the amount of the Earth's surface that will be exposed to extreme drought by 2100; 40% of the world will suffer from severe drought, up from the current 18%; 50% will suffer from moderate drought. California and other Western states, at the very least, will suffer from severe drought. By 2025, an estimated 2.8 billion of us will live in arid areas like California.

Today, we harvest water on an industrial scale -- from rainfall, from rivers and lakes and from rapidly shrinking water tables. Many of us in California live off what are, effectively, looted water supplies, brought by canal from Owens Lake or the Colorado River or drained from aquifers.

But at best we have accommodated ourselves to nature's fickle realities. Our greatest asset is not necessarily our technology but our opportunism and endless capacity to adapt to circumstances. We must learn from the history of the great droughts and begin to think of ourselves as partners with, rather than potential masters of, the changing natural world.

Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and the author of "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations."#

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fagan29apr29,0,4871853.story

 

Judge rejects delay to All-American Canal work

Imperial Valley Press – 4/28/08

By Brianna Lusk, staff writer

A request from opponents to the All-American Canal lining project to prevent the flow of water into the new channel was denied by a state appellate judge last week.

Jim Abatti, a member of Protect Our Water and Energy Rights, said the lawsuit did not attempt to stall the project.

Abatti said the request asked that water not be diverted into the newly lined canal until safety measures were put into place to save lives.

“It’s already a dangerous canal now,” Abatti said of the earthen canal. “There is no dollar on anything I’m suing for. I’m suing on the principle of making sure they do things right.”

At the center of the debate is whether the new canal, which is already under construction and scheduled to come on line in 2010, should have ridges in the concrete sides to allow animals or humans who fall in a chance to get out.

Imperial Irrigation District spokesman Kevin Kelley said the ridges presented a structural flaw to the district and other agencies lining the canal.

“Those ridges were eliminated based on the input of all the project partners including the Bureau of Reclamation,” Kelley said.

The construction of the canal includes metal ladders that have been placed on alternating sides of the canal every 250 feet.

A lawsuit brought forward by Abatti and POWER in 2006, alleging the Imperial Irrigation District failed to comply with California Environmental Quality Act, is still under appeal.

That case is being handled by the San Francisco Superior Court.

The alleged violations include IID’s decision not to implement alternatives for the lining including the escape ridges.

Abatti said he just wanted to prevent lives from being taken until the appeal is decided.

“We’ve already lost someone in there with just nine feet of water,” Abatti said, referring to a recent death in the newly lined canal. “I don’t see why they’re so worried about saving a few dollars and not saving lives.”#

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/04/29/local_news/news06.txt

 

Workshop packed over water supply for Shingle Springs casino

Legal opinion supports EID providing water, but not everyone agrees

Sacramento Bee – 4/29/08

By Cathy Locke, staff writer

 

A workshop seeking public comment on whether the El Dorado Irrigation District should supply water to an Indian casino under construction in Shingle Springs drew an overflow crowd Monday.

 

Members of the community filled the boardroom and adjoining foyer as the district's legal counsel and engineers reviewed a recent legal opinion and the district's ability to serve the casino without jeopardizing service to existing customers.

 

Directors stressed that the workshop, conducted by the board's legal and legislation standing committee, was intended as an informational session, and no board action would be considered until May 12.

County Supervisor Ron Briggs, whose district includes the Shingle Springs Rancheria and the Red Hawk Casino, said he believed the board had decided to serve the casino.

 

"I'm here to ask you not to," Briggs said. "We're working our rear ends off in this county to keep water for current residents," he said.

 

But Judy Mathat, president of the Shingle Springs-Cameron Park Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber supports business and economic ventures on the rancheria. She asked the district board to consider the request for water service "with no prejudices."

 

District directors in 2002 denied the request by the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians to provide water for a planned casino and hotel on the 160-acre rancheria north of Highway 50 between Shingle Springs Drive and Greenstone Road. They cited restrictions imposed by the El Dorado Local Agency Formation Commission in 1989, when the rancheria annexed to the district, limiting water service to 40 residences, a community building and garden plots. LAFCO rules on government reorganizations in the county.

 

But district counsel Tom Cumpston said Monday that a recent opinion by the U.S. Department of the Interior Solicitor General's Office questioning the validity of LAFCO's restrictions had convinced him that the board should reconsider its position.

 

The solicitor general's opinion indicated that if LAFCO's intention was to regulate use of the tribe's land, a court likely would find that federal law preempts the restrictions.

 

Cumpston cited minutes from LAFCO meetings in 1988, in which commission members expressed concern about future development on the rancheria, as evidence that land use was an issue.

 

Had it not been for LAFCO's restrictions, he said, the district would have evaluated the rancheria's 2002 request for water service as it would have a request for any other project.

 

Brian Mueller, co-manager of the district's drinking water division, said the district has enough water to serve the casino without compromising service to existing customers.

 

The additional service the tribe requests is the equivalent of the water required for about 216 average dwelling units, or about one-tenth of the water available for sale in the district's Western/Eastern supply area, he said.

 

District engineer Brian Cooper said the tribe is constructing a 500,000-gallon water storage tank near the freeway and a 3 million-gallon recycled-water storage tank on the hilltop near the casino to supply fire hydrants. The recycled water will be provided by the rancheria's new wastewater treatment plant.

 

Cumpston noted that the El Dorado Irrigation District does not provide sewer service in that part of the district.

 

Tribal chairman Nick Fonseca said the casino is 46 percent complete and should be finished about Nov. 1. A new Highway 50 interchange to serve the rancheria is about 75 percent complete and is scheduled to open in October, and the wastewater treatment plant will be ready for operation by early September.

 

"I don't have to buy your water," he told the board, but the alternative would involve hauling in up to 25 truckloads of water a day.

 

"We would like to be a partner with you and the county," Fonseca said.

 

Several people who live near the rancheria said their primary concern was the effect serving the casino would have on water supplies and water pressure in their neighborhoods.

 

"We're not going to oppose the rancheria getting water," said Ken Lee, a resident of the Grassy Run neighborhood. "We just want to live with them and have good water service."

 

District staff members said current water pressure would be maintained or improved in neighborhoods bordering the rancheria.

Other people said 25 water trucks traveling to and from the casino would create a safety hazard on Highway 50, and urged the district to provide water service to avoid such traffic.

 

But Shingle Springs resident Art Marinaccio argued that in addition to assuring service to existing customers, the district has an obligation to serve development anticipated in the general plan, the county's blueprint for growth. An analysis is needed to determine whether serving the casino would jeopardize water supplies for developable land in the Shingle Springs community region, he said.#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/898652.html