[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 5/14/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

May 14, 2008

 

2. Supply –

 

 

 

Water rationing imposed on East Bay: EBMUD asks for conservation measures, rate increases

The Oakland Tribune – 5/13/08

 

Editorial:

Ration water properly

The Oakland Tribune– 5/13/08

 

 

Farmers face low water year: Reservoir levels drop as California braces for dry conditions

The Capital Press -5/14/08

 

Water regulators mandate water conservation east of S.F. Bay

Associated Press – 5/13/08

 

Blog:

California Water Politics- the Water Buffaloes are back!

Indybay.org – 5/13/08

 

Triennial science conference: Salt lakes around world in danger: The Dead Sea, for example, will likely drop 100 meters, geologist says

The Salt Lake Tribune – 5/14/08

 

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Water rationing imposed on East Bay: EBMUD asks for conservation measures, rate increases

The Oakland Tribune – 5/13/08

By Mike Taugher, Staff Writer

OAKLAND — Water deliveries to 1.3 million East Bay residents will be rationed for the first time since the early 1990s after the East Bay Municipal Utility District board of directors on Tuesday declared an emergency water shortage and prohibited a list a potentially wasteful water practices.

 

The crackdown is designed to reduce water use by 15 percent and was made necessary by two consecutive dry years and severely depleted reservoirs in the central Sierra.

 

Effective immediately, EBMUD customers are prohibited from hosing off sidewalks, washing cars without using shutoff nozzles, irrigating on consecutive days and a host of other items.

 

The district also is asking customers to voluntarily reduce outdoor water use by 30 percent and conserve indoor water use by taking shorter showers.

 

In declaring new drought regulations, the board imposed conservation goals ranging from 30 percent for irrigators, 19 percent for owners of single-family homes, 11 percent for apartment residents and 5 percent for industrial users.

 

The across-the-board conservation goals angered many residents, who say they have already conserved water and should not be required to cut the same percentage as water-wasters who could more easily find ways to save water.

 

"You are penalizing people like me who have been conserving all along and rewarding those water hogs," said Sandra Turnbull of Oakland, who told the board her family of four uses just 120 gallons per day.

 

In response to those kinds of complaints, the board tweaked the proposed drought water rate structure so that customers who use less than 100 gallons of water per day would see no rate increase and would not be subject to drought surcharges.

The rate increases, which are scheduled for a public hearing and a vote July 8, would go into effect Aug. 1.

 

The board tentatively approved a 10 percent rate increase for all water users except those who use less than 100 gallons a day.

In addition, water users would be subject to a drought surcharge of $2 for every unit of water — 750 gallons — used above their allocated amount, which is set at half the 19 percent homeowner conservation goal.

 

That means that a homeowner who uses more than 100 gallons a day would see a 10 percent rate increase. In addition, if the homeowner fails to use 10 percent less water in a given month compared to their average use for that month during the last three years, then that homeowner would pay $2 for every 750 gallons used above that allocation.

 

EBMUD general manager Dennis Diemer said that although rates are going up, customers' bills will go down if they meet conservation targets.

 

The district also plans to hire six temporary water patrol technicians to look for water waste. While the district will seek cooperation first, it could install flow-control devices or shut off water to penalize flagrant violators, said EBMUD director John Coleman.

 

The decision marks the first time the district has rationed water since 1991-93.

 

EBMUD's service area stretches from Crockett to San Leandro in western Contra Costa and Alameda counties, and stretches east through Lamorinda, parts of Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek and south to San Ramon.

 

The Bay Area's other water districts have asked for voluntary conservation. However, none of the East Bay's other water districts have plans to ration water this year.#

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_9248908

Editorial: Ration water properly The Oakland Tribune– 5/13/08   AFTER TWO RELATIVELY dry years and a lower-than-average snow pack, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has no choice but to impose water rationing. But the utility does have a choice as to how to do it.   Unfortunately, EBMUD is heading toward a flawed method of getting its 1.3 million customers to cut back on water use.   If the water district had more extensive storage capacity, perhaps rationing would not be necessary, especially in the absence of a drought. But that is not the case, and water usage needs to be reduced now to prevent more severe shortages in the coming months.   EBMUD officials have a goal of 15 percent reduction in water use for businesses and residents, with a conservation target of 19 percent for residents of single-family homes.   These overall goals seem to be appropriate and should not be too great a hardship for most water users. However, EBMUD officials need to reconsider their proposed method of rationing.   The chief flaw is basing water rationing on average use over the past three years. Many EBMUD customers have been conserving their water use for many years, while others have not.   Using average water use over the last three years would penalize those who were most diligent in conserving water. Residents who have not been careful about water use could cut back 19 percent and still use far more water than conservation-minded neighbors.   EBMUD's plans to increase rates and use surcharges to enforce rationing make sense. But it would be more equitable to base water-use policy on the number of gallons used per person in a household.   Those who already are frugal water consumers might no have to cut back much, or at all, while those who use excessive amounts of water might have to cut back more than 19 percent.   EBMUD has suggested some reasonable ways to reduce water usage such as prohibiting excessive use of outdoor watering or washing cars without a hose with a shutoff nozzle.   Bans on fountains that do no recycle water and watering sidewalks also make sense.   These restrictions should not impose major hardships on anyone and are effective ways to significantly cut back on water use. But such restrictions already have been self-imposed by many of EBMUD's customers. It would be unfair to force them to reduce water use by the same percentage as those who have not taken any action to conserve.   EBMUD has the ability to gather the necessary data to base conservation on a gallons-per-person basis for residential consumption. That is the fairest method to effectively ration water without imposing undue hardships on those who have been the most responsible in the past in using water.#

http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/tribune/ci_9251396

 

 

 

Farmers face low water year: Reservoir levels drop as California braces for dry conditions

The Capital Press -5/14/08
By Elizabeth Larson

After two years of thin snowpacks, California's water conditions are causing increasing concern for agriculture, with hundreds of thousands of fallowed acres this year and concerns about what farmers may face in the next.

After a promising start to the snow season, the Department of Water Resources' last snow survey of the year on May 1 showed the state's critical snowpack is averaging only 67 percent of normal statewide because of record dry conditions.

DWR's electronic sensor readings show northern Sierra snow water equivalents at 88 percent of normal for this date, central Sierra at 61 percent and southern Sierra at 60 percent.

Despite better moisture conditions in January and February, DWR reported that March and April 2008 combined are the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921, the first year that records were kept.

As a result, parched soil is taking up water content, DWR's May 1 report stated.

That has resulted in dwindling water runoff into streams and reservoirs, which now measure only 55 to 65 percent of normal, DWR reported.

Conditions have resulted in dropping levels in the state's reservoirs, including Lake Oroville, the principal storage reservoir for the State Water Project, which DWR reported is at 48 percent of capacity, and 58 percent of average storage for this time of year.

That, coupled with court orders, likely will result in a tough water year. The Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California may only receive 35 percent of their requested allocations from the State Water Project this year, DWR reported.

However, the Bureau of Reclamation reported late in April that farmers north and south of the Delta will still receive from the federal Central Valley Project a 45-percent allocation, the same amount announced earlier in the year.

For farmers in some areas of the state, actions already have been taken in order to deal with less water.

Sarah Woolf, spokesperson for the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, said last year's conditions led to the fallowing of 200,000 of the 600,000 acres served by Westlands, the state's largest irrigation district.

"Our growers made a lot of decisions in the winter regarding how much acreage they could and could not plant based on the Wanger decision and the knowledge that our water supply was going to be short because of that decision."

The Wanger decision is a federal court ruling handed down last year that will limit water exports from the Bay-Delta in order to protect endangered delta smelt populations.

Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, agreed that acreage is being scaled back around the state.

"People started making these decisions last Sept. 1 after the Wanger decision," he said.

Water, he said, is being shifted from annual to permanent crops.

Looking at the snowpack and the reservoir levels leads Wade to believe the state may be in the second year of a drought - but no one wants to say the word, he added.

The question is, what will conditions be in 2009 if the state's water storage has been depleted, Wade said. He estimated conditions could look similar to those in 1990 or 1991.

What's shocking, said Wade, is it only took California two years to get into a critical situation.

While it's good news that the Central Valley Project's allocation will remain stable, it's too late to benefit farmers in Westlands, said Woolf, where it's too late to add to crop plantings.

Woolf said there are just too many impacts on the delta - both natural and environmental - for farmers to feel comfortable with increasing plantings.

The state legislature didn't manage to get a delta restoration bill through this year, but Wade said the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is moving forward, although a draft of it likely won't be released until next spring.

Still ahead, Judge Wanger is due to look at delta exports with regards to the crashing salmon population.

Woolf said any resulting decision likely will affect next year's water supplies.

The 2008 snowpack is better than last year's, but that isn't saying much. In 2007 the state's snowpack amounted to a dismal 29 percent statewide average, which caused state reservoirs to be drawn down and they lost the cushion gained over a few good wet years.

This year, DWR reported that the snowpack's depth and water contact has declined since April, when - despite a dry March - water content was just short of 100 percent of normal.

The snow season had started with extremely high snow levels in the Sierras, at one point measuring more than 120-percent of normal.#

 

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=792&ArticleID=41569&TM=9713.357

 

 

 

Water regulators mandate water conservation east of S.F. Bay

Associated Press – 5/13/08

By Juliana Barbassa

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - About 1.3 million water customers east of San Francisco Bay must cut back on their water use under rules imposed Tuesday amid the most severe water shortage in nearly 20 years.

 

The East Bay Municipal Utility District's board of directors voted unanimously to declare a water shortage emergency in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

 

A drought management program approved by the board aims to curtail water use by 15 percent compared to average annual demand in the district.

 

The plan forbids activities like washing a car while letting the hose run, washing sidewalks and patios instead of sweeping, running water fountains that don't recycle water and watering lawns more than three times a week.

 

"Our goal is to impact people's lives as little as possible and get the maximum amount of conservation that we can," said Andrea Pook, spokeswoman for EBMUD. "So really, we're going after water waste."

 

Customers caught going against these prohibitions will be cited, though the cost of the fine is still uncertain, Pook said.

 

The package of measures to curb water use also include television, print and radio campaigns to educate the public.

 

A final decision on increasing water rates while the shortage lasts will be made during a public hearing July 8. New rates adopted then could go into effect in August and show up on customers' bills by September.

 

The rate hike would include a ten percent increase for all customers, who would also be asked to consume 10 percent less than their average use for the last three years.

 

A $2 surcharge would be added to the bill for each unit of water used that exceeds each consumer's goal.

 

Customers who already use little water - less than 100 gallons per house per day - would be exempted from the rate hike and the surcharge, Pook said.

 

Water officials blamed two years of dry weather for the emergency. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a main source of California's water supply, has fallen one-third below normal levels and is not replenishing drinking water supplies as usual.

 

Instead of seeing water levels rise in EBMUD's Pardee and Camanche Reservoirs, as is typical when Sierra snows melt in the spring, officials said they're seeing the levels decrease.#

 

http://www.examiner.com/a-1389814~Water_regulators_mandate_water_conservation_east_of_S_F__Bay.html

 

Blog:

California Water Politics- the Water Buffaloes are back!

Indybay.org – 5/13/08

By Felice Pace

 

California Governor Schwarzenegger wants to build two new dams. They are being sold as necessary to cope with the reduction in Sierra Nevada, Cascade and Klamath Mountains snowpack expected as a result of climate change. The governor and his backers are ignoring the role upland forest management play as the states largest reservoir. State officials are also ignoring the water savings possible if irrigation interests implement modern irrigation technology and management. A look at history reveals that irrigation interests continue to want more storage so that they will have more water to lease during droughts to urban areas. Climate change arguments are yet another attempt to grab more Northern California water and get California voters to pay for costly and unnecessary dams and reservoirs.

 

California Governor Schwarzenegger wants to build two new dams - Sites and Temperance Flat. They are being sold as necessary to cope with the reduction in Sierra Nevada, Cascade and Klamath Mountains snowpack expected as a result of climate change. New and “enhanced” storage are being marketed by Lester Snow, director of California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) as part of a "portfolio approach" which, in addition to “enhanced" storage, calls for urban water conservation, better groundwater facilities, improved wastewater processing and research into lowering the cost of desalination. The dams are to provide increased capacity in order to catch earlier runoff that – according to climate change data and predictions - will no longer be held in mountain snowpack.

Schwarzenegger and Snow are counting on the climate change predictions to be fairly accurate. If the actual climate does not follow the predictions, the new and “enhanced’ reservoirs might never fill. Furthermore, increasing surface storage would result in more extensive water loss through evaporation. In 1998 the measured evaporation from Californiareservoirs was about a million acre feet - that's enough water to cover a million acres of land with a foot of water. That’s a lot of water but the amount will rise if new and “enhanced’ reservoirs are developed. Furthermore, if climate change results in higher summer temperatures evaporation from all reservoirs will increase.

The Schwarzenegger/Snow “portfolio approach” ignores the states largest “reservoir” – upland forest soils - and its biggest water user – irrigated agriculture. Let’s look at the forests first.

Upland forest soils in the Sierra Nevada, Cascade and Klamath Mountains are the states largest reservoir. Healthy forest soils are on average about 1/3 empty spaces. In the winter wet season these spaces fill up with water which is released slowly to springs, streams and groundwater during the summer/fall dry season. Road building and logging are known to compact forest soils – reducing their ability to store water.

Increases in flood flows in streams and rivers and a corresponding decreases in base flow as a result of intensive logging are well documented in research and by experience on the ground. But apparently no one in the California state establishment is looking at how upland California forests should be managed to restore the ability of California’s forest soil reservoirs to store water. The state is not even looking at hard research that tells us we can maximize snowpack retention by limiting clearcuts to no more than an acre. The failure to address upland management in the “portfolio approach” may have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of Sierra Forests are owned by Sierra Pacific Industries – a private forest products company that is California’s largest landowner.

The other big California forest “owner” – the Forest Service – has a research focus on climate change that also ignores the forest soil reservoir. Instead Forest Service climate change scientists prefer to look at how climate change may impact fire behavior. Few who know Forest Service’s history and culture are surprised that the agency’s preferred response to climate change is more logging to “fire proof” our forests.

 
California officials are also ignoring the state’s #1 water consumer – irrigated agriculture. Irrigation engineers tell us that – depending on current irrigation methods used – agricultural operations in California can reduce consumptive water use by 20% to 70% by installing modern irrigation methods and adopting modern irrigation management . This leads one to suspect that California’s water supply “crisis” has been created or exaggerated in order to convince California taxpayers to build new dams and reservoirs. Since California irrigation interests are already leasing water to urban water agencies, they stand to gain billions if new reservoirs are built.

Thus it comes as no surprise that one of the most vocal backers of the Schwarzenegger/Snow “portfolio approach” is the California Farm Bureau (CFB) – an organization that has never seen a dam it did not like. The proposed Sites dam/reservoirs is very near the site of the Paskenta-Newville dam proposed back in the early 70’s when Ronald Reagan was California’s governor. That reservoir was intended as the terminus of a tunnel to transfer Northcoast California water to the Central Valley where it could be used to expand corporate agriculture. Conspiracy theorists will be tempted to see the Sites dam/reservoir proposal as part of a long-term CFB strategy to get a hold of more Northcoast water. If the new reservoir is built but there is not enough water to fill it calls to transfer more Northcoast water may gain new impetus.

In the 1970s Northcoast California leaders rebuffed efforts to send more Northcoast/Klamath water south. In 1982 California voters also defeated an initiative to build the “Peripheral Canal” which was designed to send more water from the Sacramento River south. Voters correctly saw the reservoirs and canal as water grabs by irrigation and other Southern California interests.

One lesson in this history is that corporate agriculture and its operatives in the Farm Bureau Federation and California state government can be beaten back but never defeated. I guess that’s why they call them “water buffaloes”. The water buffaloes are back now riding the climate change wave. It remains to be seen whether California citizens will once again see through the propaganda and defeat the latest effort to move more Northern California water south. #

 

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/05/13/18498899.php

 

 

 

 

Triennial science conference: Salt lakes around world in danger: The Dead Sea, for example, will likely drop 100 meters, geologist says

The Salt Lake Tribune – 5/14/08

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

 

 

Around the world, salt lakes - bodies of water that harbor some of the most fascinating ecosystems in the world - are under assault from humans, particularly in the developing world.

 

Like the Great Salt Lake, the Middle East's Dead Sea is fed by a river called Jordan. But unlike Utah's much-abused inland sea, many fear the Dead Sea is in mortal danger of ecological collapse thanks to water diversions to thirsty populations and extractive industries in Jordan and Israel.

The water level is expected to drop another 100 meters in the future, wrecking lakeside infrastructure as sinkholes form under roads and buildings and drying up the Dead Sea's southern basin, said Israeli geologist Ittai Gavrieli Tuesday at a conference of the International Society on Salt Lake Research. About 200 scientists from 20 nations are at the triennial event, held this year at the University of Utah's Fort Douglas in conjunction with the Friends of the Great Salt Lake Issues Forum.

Salt lakes dot the arid American West, which boasts iconic names like California's Mono Lake and Salton Sea and Nevada's Pyramid Lake. In the last several years, Americans have shown a growing appreciation for these lakes, which provide crucial habitat for migratory birds, and a willingness to preserve them. But globally the prognosis is far from secure, said Bob Jellison, a society board member who gave Monday's keynote address.

 

A limnologist with the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Jellison has focused his research on Mono Lake.
   

Saline lakes constitute 17 percent of the world's total volume of inland water (45 percent if the Caspian Sea is considered), furnishing critical aquatic habitat, according to Jellison.
   

"In the developed world, we can afford to conserve salt lakes for their nonuse or 'existence values,' " Jellison said. The story is different in developing countries where it's hard to persuade a struggling economy to preserve a resource whose values are not easy to quantify. "A lot of people put their hope in nature tourism, but for that to work, you have to make sure the benefits accrue to those who are giving up their water to conserve these lakes."

 

At the shrinking Dead Sea, the ecologically preferred solution would be to return freshwater inflows to historic levels. Since that is not likely to happen, Israel and Jordan are considering other options, including a $10 billion pipeline to convey sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, 100 miles to the south. However, it is not known what would happen when low-salt sea water is introduced to the Dead Sea, home to some of the saltiest water on the planet. It could trigger microbial blooms that would discolor the surface.

 

 "Do we want the Dead Sea to become the Red Sea?" Gavrieli said. "It's a no-win situation. None of the options is favorable."

A glimpse at saline lakes
   

Public events at the conference of the International Society on Salt Lake Research include a slide show of the Great Salt Lake by Riverton photographer Michael Slade tonight at 7:30 p.m., and another slide show Friday at noon by wildlife photographer Rosalie Winard at the Post Theater at Fort Douglas, Salt Lake City.#

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9251453