Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 29, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People -
Muni to sue DWR?
Highland Community News
Specialist urges focus on water-use
San Bernardino Sun
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Unfunded mandate
Lots in Krekorian bill – except enough money
San Diego Union Tribune
China considers earthquake danger of dams
The presence of so many dams near the epicenter in Sichuan province has complicated rescue and recovery efforts. Some even say that dams can cause quakes.
Los Angeles Times
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Muni to sue DWR?
Highland Community News – 5/29/08
By Charles Roberts, Editor
The San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District (Muni) may be going to court against the Department of Water Resources, its source for state imported water from central California.
The Muni Board of Directors voted May 21 to conduct a workshop, inviting attorneys to discuss the possibility.
Board President Patrick Milligan said although “we have gotten some good things and had some great dealings with the Department of Water Resources, that's not always the experience.”
He cited charges against state water contractors, like Muni, which were questionable.
“They put things in that they knew had no bearing whatsoever on the items that we could be charged for,” Milligan said, calling the DWR practices “almost dishonest in their relationship with the contractors that they supposedly represented.”
Milligan said, “The whole state is oblivious to all these conservation lawsuits that have wound up against the State Water Project, and they are going to just decimate that project in the next four or five years if everybody sits by and treats it like we have treated the Delta smelt.”
The state water contractors tax their residents to pay for the State Water Project and related developments to continue to supply water to local water districts.
The state Department of Water Resources allocates water to the project and its contractors, but cannot fulfill that obligation after a lawsuit to protect the Delta smelt severely reduced the amount of water available through the State Water Project.
The Muni Board has suggested that the Department of Water Resources conceded defeat after the initial ruling, and should have appealed the ruling to a higher federal court.
The Muni suit, should it occur, will allege the DWR failed in its commitment to local water contractors to deliver promised water that was demanded under contract. #
http://www.highlandnews.net/articles/2008/05/29/news/05muni.txt
Specialist urges focus on water-use
San Bernardino Sun – 5/28/08
Robert Rogers, Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO - It's time Southern California civic planners, city officials and residents rethink how they use water.
In fact, water needs to a bigger part of every decision, said Brad Buller, a Rancho Cucamonga-based consultant specializing in municipal land and water uses.
"About 70 percent of the water we use is put into our landscaping," Buller said. "The state is going to tighten this up."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into law in 2006 mandating that cities implement new landscape conservation ordinances to comply with strict water-saving standards by 2010.
With that deadline fast-approaching, Cal State San Bernardino's Water Resources Institute scheduled four educational sessions aimed at providing local city planners and staff with ideas and plans to meet new requirements.
Called the Upper Santa Ana Landscape Alliance, the partnership is among the Cal State San Bernardino Water Resources Institute, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water Department and a handful of local retail water agencies.
The informational sessions, the first of which was held at San Bernardino's City Hall Wednesday morning, are specifically for cities in the Upper Santa Ana River watershed, which cannot only learn best practices but provide an opportunity for water-saving partnerships.
With cities scrambling for tactics to meet the coming toughened state requirements, water conservation experts hope laws help to usher in a new era of water conservation in a way that prices have not. While costs for energy, especially gasoline, have soared and made major dents in personal behavior and energy consumption, relatively cheap water bills provide little incentive to rein in use.
"We know we don't have water to waste," WRI Director Susan Lien Longville said to about 20 people, mostly planners and other government staff from surrounding cities. "It's all about changing (public) behavior."
County Supervisor Josie Gonzales was also on hand. She told attendees that real-estate developers must be made partners in building water-saving projects. She pointed to Muscoy, a county pocket in her district, as an example of government working with developers. She said new construction would occur there in 18 to 24 months, and assured that plans for indigenous desert plants and other modifications were water-friendly.
Buller stressed a number of measures cities could adopt to make long-term dents in water consumption, including landscaping ordinances that require indigenous desert plants and rebates on "smart controller" devices that conserve water by adapting sprinkler systems to weather conditions.
Buller likened water conservation today to recycling decades ago.
"Right now, recycling is just normal (behavior)," Buller said. "Water is not at that same level, but it needs to be."
Future meetings are scheduled at city halls in Rialto, Yucaipa and Highland.
WATER PROVISIONS
AB 1881, a water conservation measure, will hold cities to tighter standards by 2010.
Among the provisions:
Requires the California Department of Water Resources to develop - and local agencies to adopt - an updated landscape water conservation ordinance. Local agencies can adopt their own standards if they exceed state rules.
Requires the California Energy Commission to adopt performance standards for irrigation equipment.
Prohibits common interest developments (such as condominiums) from restricting the use of low water-using plants. #
http://www.sbsun.com/sanbernardino/ci_9409883
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Unfunded mandate
Lots in Krekorian bill – except enough money
San Diego Union Tribune – 5/28/08
Localities have come to expect mandates imposed by the Legislature, with no money attached to pay for them. Cities and counties often pay for these state mandates with local taxes disguised as fees. That way, legislators avoid adding to the state's deficit or raising taxes directly. So it is with the “Water Efficiency and Security Act” introduced by Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank.
In this instance, legislators also would sidestep the state's main water problem, which is insufficient supply. Instead, they would dump much of the burden of conservation on developers.
In the name of water conservation, Krekorian's bill would require new residential and commercial projects to “implement all feasible and cost-effective water efficiency measures,” inside and outside.
If, however, such measures don't keep a new project's estimated water use from rising above the previous level, the developers would have to spend up to 1 percent of the total price of the project to “mitigate” that additional water consumption “within the same hydrologic region.”
How so? By taking on leaky water infrastructure, recycling plants, facilities to capture storm water, and other public projects. A minimum of 40 percent of this mitigation would have to entail projects that would serve disadvantaged communities. The rest would involve “affordable housing” projects and public buildings, such as schools. Mitigation programs would have to last at least 20 years (or until the fee runs out) and measurably decrease the demand for water by an amount equal to the annual consumption of the project.
Conserving water is important. Requiring that new developments use water-efficient systems is rational. Even a small fee paid directly into a local government fund to repair aging water infrastructure might be reasonable. But not grabbing private money for overarching social goals that historically are the responsibility of city councils, county supervisors, school boards and other government agencies funded by all taxpayers for the public good.
Krekorian's bill does not address ways to expand water supplies, on the apparent assumption that conservation alone will remedy the loss of a third of the state's water supply in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, due to the threatened delta smelt, and historically low flows in the Colorado River.
The San Diego County Water Authority, which is heavily promoting conservation, expects it will reduce water consumption for the foreseeable future by a maximum 11 percent. Fine. But California can't save enough water to supply its anticipated 60 million residents by 2050.
Building reservoirs, recycling non-potable water for irrigation, purifying brackish water and desalting ocean water into potable water – all can increase supply and jobs. Krekorian's bill would stop projects that create jobs. Just one more reason the Legislature should stop it. #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080528/news_lz1ed28top.html
China considers earthquake danger of dams
The presence of so many dams near the epicenter in Sichuan province has complicated rescue and recovery efforts. Some even say that dams can cause quakes.
Los Angeles Times – 5/28/08
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
BEIJING -- Mao Tse-tung famously declared "man must conquer nature," and his political heirs have followed his dictum zealously by building dams and other gigantic projects that have altered the landscape of China.
But this month's deadly earthquake may tilt the balance of public opinion in favor of a more cautious and environmentally conscious approach to such development.
China has more dams than any other country, about half of the world's total, and the presence of so many near the epicenter in Sichuan province has been a huge complication in the quake's aftermath. After two weeks of downplaying the problem, the Water Resources Ministry acknowledged Sunday that 69 reservoirs and dams were on the verge of collapse, and nearly 3,000 in China had sustained damage.
The threat of flash floods from dams and "quake lakes" formed from landslides blocking rivers has forced tens of thousands of already traumatized quake survivors to relocate, some more than once. The dams also prevented rescue workers from navigating the rivers to reach victims in areas made inaccessible after roads were washed out.
Many Chinese hold the mystical view that natural disasters are the result of human failings and point to the widespread construction of dams as a possible culprit. The Min River, a tributary of the Yangtze that runs through the path of destruction, is one of the most dammed rivers in the country.
"Chinese ancient culture has a philosophy of a cohesive connection between people and nature. What we did to that river shows no respect for nature, and now nature is taking its revenge," said Ai Nanshan, a professor of environmental sciences at Sichuan University in Chengdu.
It is not pure superstition. Geologists have long warned of the danger of building dams in earthquake-prone locations. Not only can the structures collapse, but some temblors -- most famously one in 1967 in Koyna, India -- also are believed to have been triggered by the weight of a dam's reservoir.
"We don't want to appear to benefit from human catastrophe by pushing an agenda, but we are making information about earthquakes and dams available," said Peter Bradford, an official with International Rivers Network, a Berkeley environmental group. Bradford said that three people he met on a visit to Beijing this week separately predicted that the Chinese government would reconsider its aggressive dam-building program.
It is too late to stop China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric power project, which is nearly complete at a cost of $30 billion and more than 1 million people displaced. But environmentalists are likely to use the Sichuan experience to fight controversial plans for a dam for the Nu River in a quake-prone location near the border with Myanmar.
Within days of the magnitude 7.9 quake on May 12, activists scored a big victory when PetroChina announced that it would reconsider its plans for a $5.5-billion refinery and petrochemical plant in Pengzhou, 30 miles from the epicenter. A demonstration early in the month had not appeared to derail the project by China's largest state-run oil company, and just hours before the temblor, some protest organizers were arrested on charges of inciting unrest.
"You had the earthquake, and everything changed overnight," said Ai, the professor.
Sichuan province's environmentalists have been fighting against dams for years. In 2003, they managed to stop a project that was to be built in Dujiangyan on the grounds that it would destroy a 2,000-year-old irrigation system that is a World Heritage Site. (The ancient system, only 20 miles from the epicenter, survived the quake virtually unscathed.)
But they could not block another large project, the Zipingpu dam, which opened two years ago over the objections of the Sichuan Seismological Bureau. The government agency said the dam was too close to a major fault line.
The warnings proved well-founded. Zipingpu's concrete face sustained severe cracks May 12 even though it was built to the highest quake-resistant standards. Fan Xiao, a geologist in Sichuan who fought Zipingpu, has called for an investigation of whether the dam could have contributed to the temblor.
The area's Taipingyi and Tongzhong dams also were seriously damaged, Fan said.
Not only did dams crack during the quake, but landslides also damaged hydroelectric power facilities and caused reservoirs to rise to dangerously high levels.
Dams are something of an obsession for the burgeoning Chinese environmental movement. They are at once the most vivid example of Mao's call to reshape nature and a symbol of greed in the market economy. Most of the dams built in the last decade are to satisfy the nation's hunger for hydroelectric power and to generate revenue for local governments. Sichuan province (the very name means four rivers), where the rivers rush down from high elevations, is the most tempting location in China for hydropower.
"We have a saying that bridges are silver, highways are gold, and dams are diamonds. If you get a contract to build a dam, there is so much money," said Dai Qing, a writer who was imprisoned after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989 and now devotes herself to fighting against the building of dams.
She and others are demanding an investigation of the role of dams in the quake.
"We must look carefully at the questions: How do dams impact earthquakes. How do earthquakes impact dams," Dai said.#
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-fg-dams28-2008may28,0,2751490.story?track=rss
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 California.
