Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
June 9, 2008
1. Top Items -
Dan Walters: It's time for state to get serious about drought
The Sacramento
Editorial
California water projects may flow under new leadership in Legislature
The Chosen One: Anointed to head the valley's water district, Pat Mulroy has already reaped big rewards — while earning her comparisons to the man who turned California 's Owens Valley
Water-Starved
The New York Times – 6/7/08
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Dan Walters: It's time for state to get serious about drought
The Sacramento
By Dan Walters
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's declaration that
Make no mistake. Like
We haven't made a major positive decision on water in this state for four-plus decades; instead, we saw voter rejection of a peripheral canal in 1982 after a very misleading political campaign, followed by sweeping declarations of good intentions by political figures that amounted to nothing. 
Had a peripheral canal been constructed to carry water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it would have solved many of the problems inherent in relying on the Delta as a water source, particularly deteriorating water quality that has depleted fish populations and led to judicial orders to reduce water exports from the estuary.
Those who opposed the canal for very shortsighted and very different reasons – environmental groups and
This problem is not going to go away.
Those who oppose water development seem to believe, against all evidence, that somehow curtailing supply will stop population growth, even though they largely belong to the same left-leaning ideological faction that opposes more stringent curbs on immigration, which is the source of virtually all the state's population expansion.
It is, moreover, the same ideological faction that raises alarms about global warming. Yet one of its predicted effects is that
Another predicted impact of global warming is that sea levels will rise. The rivers and sloughs of the Delta, the source of drinking water for two-thirds of the state's population, will therefore experience more saltwater intrusion, rendering that water less fit for consumption.
If one believes that global warming is happening and if one believes that we shouldn't be closing down our borders, how, then, can one believe that we don't need a greater ability to store water and convey it around the environmentally degraded Delta? It simply makes no sense.
That's not to say that we shouldn't be conserving water. But we should also understand that about three-fourths of
It's time to get real about water in all its forms and uses.
What we have lacked is political will. It's time to grow up and find it. #
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/998503.html
Editorial
California water projects may flow under new leadership in Legislature
George Skelton
"Coming from
"I know that it's a contentious issue -- I mean, '
"That was the extent of my knowledge. And then I come up here and find out I live in a flood plain [near the
Bass is laughing over lunch. She's acknowledging her water ignorance, but -- most important -- expressing an eagerness to learn.
Recently, before replacing termed-out Fabian Nuñez (D-
Bass is one hopeful sign for impatient water warriors because of a leadership transition at the Capitol.
Another is Sen. Darrell Steinberg of
Steinberg is a policy wonk who, as a Sacramentan, is very familiar with the leaky, creaky Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its vulnerability to flood or, worse, earthquake.
The delta estuary is
Steinberg, chairman of the Senate water committee, is eager to repair and update the state's aged water facilities. So is Bass, unlike her predecessor Nuñez, whose main interest in water was to use it as a bargaining chip to achieve universal healthcare.
Water talks between Perata and the Schwarzenegger administration were scuttled when the Senate killed Nuñez's health insurance bill in January. A bitter Nuñez would have killed any water bond proposal the Senate had sent the Assembly. But Perata denied him the sweet revenge by pulling the plug on water.
Bass has told Perata that she has no such hang-ups about water and healthcare.
Neither does she or Steinberg harbor the instinctive opposition to dams that many environmentalist-influenced Democrats have exhibited in recent years.
"What's absolutely true is I'm open," Bass told the Sacramento Press Club last week. "I don't come into this issue with rigid positions around dams."
But she is concerned about cost, benefits and who pays, Bass added.
That has been a major quarrel among water negotiators. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans have argued that the cost should be 50-50: half public, half water contractor.
They contend that the public would use any new dam for flood control and recreation and the water for delta ecological restoration. Democrats counter that water contractors -- for farmers and city dwellers -- traditionally have financed the lion's share of dams.
There has been some recent progress on resolving this dispute.
Sen. Michael Machado, a Democratic farmer from
But Machado, who represents delta farmers, still is leery of carving a so-called peripheral canal around the delta to carry
That issue currently is being studied by a Schwarzenegger-created blue-ribbon commission, which is expected to recommend building a combo contraption to transport water in canals both outside and inside the delta. That could muck up the delta's most popular, scenic recreational boating area, called the Meadows.
But the Legislature won't decide that this year -- or maybe ever. The administration believes it has the power, granted by voters in 1960 when they authorized the State Water Project, to build a peripheral canal without asking the Legislature. Contractors would pay the entire cost.
Prediction: No peripheral canal -- or anything else it might be dubbed -- will ever be built without legislative approval. Nor should anything that significant.
The water issue has resurfaced in
Schwarzenegger called a news conference last week to declare a "serious drought." Just because a governor says there's a drought, doesn't mean there really is one. And this doesn't seem to be one. But "drought" is an attention-grabbing word, and the governor was correctly trying to prod the politicians into action.
"There is no more time to waste," Schwarzenegger asserted. "We have to go and get started because we have been talking about this now for years."
He called for building dams, cleaning up groundwater, fixing delta levees, conserving . . . and placing a multibillion-dollar bond on the November ballot.
Who knows? It all could happen as part of a budget deal this summer.
But if not, here's one thing the governor could do: Agree to sign a bill appropriating $600 million in already-authorized bond money for various water projects, including delta repairs. Perata passed such a bill last year and Schwarzenegger vetoed it, holding the measure hostage for the comprehensive bond bill that died. Perata is pushing similar legislation this year.
The governor also could agree to sign an Assembly bill that would require Californians to cut water use 20% by 2020.
That would constitute at least minimum progress while lawmakers are focused on budget balancing.
Then next year, Bass says, water "will be a high priority."
We've heard that before. But listening to Bass say it -- with Steinberg waiting in the wings -- the promise doesn't seem so far-fetched.#
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-me-cap9-2008jun09,0,5394680.column?page=1
The Chosen One: Anointed to head the valley's water district, Pat Mulroy has already reaped big rewards — while earning her comparisons to the man who turned California 's Owens Valley
The men who manage urban water districts in the West tend to come out of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Who better to understand how and where Western water is taken from the
They are not fazed that people consider them nuts for having proposed such a system of dams, reservoirs and open-air canals to deliver water across blazing deserts.
To explain why their system was built that way, Reclamation veterans will point to the tangled evolution of the Colorado Compact, their "Magna Carta," their "constitution."
After that, they will invite you to penetrate the bulging casebook of resolved water feuds known as "the law of the river."
"It's not a perfect system," they will say, "but it works."
"It's not a perfect system, but it's better than no system."
These men even have a nickname: "The water buffaloes."
But when Pat Mulroy took over as general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District in 1989, she was not a man, not from Reclamation, not even particularly experienced in water.
Nobody accused her of being a buffalo.
Her reaction to the Colorado Compact and its water delivery system, which sends the least water to the city closest to the river's largest reservoir, earned her a different nickname entirely. "Scarlett."
For those unfamiliar with "Gone With the Wind," Scarlett is the ruthless, scheming, tough, histrionic and beautiful one who thrusts the turnips in the air and cries, "As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!"
Mulroy's vow:
• • •
When Clark County Manager Richard Bunker first interviewed Pat Mulroy for a general administrative job in 1978, she was 25, exotic, blond and smart. A German-born daughter of an American father and a German mother, she was working at UNLV trying to finance a master's degree in German literature at
Diplomacy's loss was Bunker's gain. As she sharpened her pencils and found her parking spot at the
Mulroy was so capable that Bunker quickly promoted her to lobbyist for
Not two full years after starting work with Bunker, it was over. Returning from a German holiday in January 1979, she learned from the passenger next to her that her mentor had just been appointed to the Gaming Control Board. "I landed and went, 'Gee, I wonder if I still have a job?' "
She did, a number of them, but Bunker hadn't spotted the job that would define her yet. By 1985, after a series of turnstile administrative positions, she landed as deputy general manager in charge of administration at the Las Vegas Valley Water District. Four years later, the district was looking for a new general manager.
As weighty as the deputy title sounds, it was in no way an obvious steppingstone to the general manager's job. Administrators administrate. Water managers fight to keep their regions in water.
But Bunker saw steel and rare competence in Pat Mulroy, according to Mulroy, qualities that she didn't even see in herself. He pushed her to apply for the top job.
Now, the logical candidate in terms of experience was not only a water buffalo but head buffalo, former Reclamation Commissioner Bob Broadbent.
Bunker, however, had a water pedigree to top that. He came from three generations of Southern Nevada Mormon irrigation farmers and renowned city burghers. One uncle had been among the U.S. senators to get Henderson hooked up to Lake Mead, another as a state assemblyman had tackled the crisis when casino wells threatened to cave in the ground beneath their golf courses. His father had led the formation of the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
By this point, Bunker himself was such an effective gaming lobbyist he all but spoke for the Strip. He understood, from the water mains upward, what was unfolding in a town that was about to give rise to the megaresort.
The man who as county manager had chosen fire chiefs and city planners did not want a buffalo running the Las Vegas Valley Water District. A buffalo would passively allow
No, Bunker wanted Mulroy, so he did what came most naturally to him. He lobbied her.
At first she resisted. "Richard talked me into it," Mulroy recalls. "He talked at me like a Dutch uncle. It took a while."
The vote was 6-1 to appoint her general manager of the district. Clark County Commissioner Jay Bingham cast the dissenting vote. He said he didn't think she was tough enough.
He may be the last person ever to hold that view.
• • •
As Mulroy took over the job, at first on an interim basis, even Bunker was not prepared for her daring.
She abhorred waste. The
If they didn't come to the table, Mulroy went to them. "Probably the first confrontation was with Steve," Mulroy says. Steve Wynn. "He was just about to build
He said, 'OK, what do I need to do?' I said, 'you need to use gray water' " — treated wastewater.
When she left his office, she carried a check for $100,000 for her conservation program and a dare to get every other casino owner to match it.
"The biggest of the big shots in town became her most vocal advocates,"
Ironically, the most egregious waste wasn't from the casinos but from the seven local water companies serving the
"You got what you used," Bunker recalls, "so everyone was using everything they could." If they couldn't use it, they dumped it into storm drains to protect their allocations.
Mulroy headed only one of the seven. She needed the other six to get with the program. Almost immediately, Mulroy was pressing them to pool their collective water under a new agency.
Bunker didn't like her chances. "There was too much jealousy."
But Mulroy had bait. Since the mid-1980s, the Las Vegas Valley Water District had been hunting Northern and
The notion of slipping ground water away from the rural counties promised an uproar. So quietly, very quietly, Vegas prospectors scoured the water audit bulletins of the state engineer, sizing up just how much ground water might be funneled out from beneath the rest of the
In October 1989, seven months into Mulroy's tenure as general manager, the Las Vegas Valley Water District filed applications in Carson City for unclaimed ground water in 30 basins across four counties, a prospective haul of roughly 840,000 acre-feet of water — reportedly half the unclaimed water in Nevada.
State Sen. Virgil Getto, representative of the most water-rich counties targeted by
"I thought it was a dirty trick," he says.
Mulroy would have a long road to travel to persuade the state engineer of
The rival water companies signed on to her plan. She had her new agency. After only three years in office, she was general manager not only of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, but also of a new regional supercooperative that comprised all seven water companies serving the then-835,000 residents of
Once she had formed the Southern Nevada Water Authority in 1991, Mulroy wanted it to have a seat at the negotiating table with the six other states vying for water from the
She was sitting with Bunker in a
In a bit of lobbying so successful that it surprised even Bunker, he got the idea past both the governor and the Legislature. As pure icing, by 1993 Bunker was on the river commission and by 1997, he was chairman of it.
The upshot: Northern Nevadans in
That wouldn't happen again.
• • •
Every triumph has a price tag. Assuming control over the local water districts of greater
Valentine's Day 1991 was the day she refused to issue any more automatic "Will Serve" letters to developers. Her message: "Just because you own a piece of dirt doesn't mean you have any water to go with it."
From then on, they would have to commit to a project without a guarantee of water.
Logical policymakers might have controlled growth: 1991 was the year that poll after poll began showing residents in favor of slower, planned development.
History might read differently if
But for those who stayed, as Steve Wynn went from his tropical lagoon to grand luxe phase,
Politicians who tilt at their constituents' prosperity, or even more perilously at that of
But Mulroy the lobbyist survived taking water guarantees away from builders by persuading them that their fortunes would come by taking risks.
This was her "New Paradigm," and it went like this: With Mulroy at the water company and Bunker and a number of her staff on the river commission,
It was a Las Vegas-sized dare. The logic: Defy the limits under
As the New Paradigm was unveiled in the press, a spokesman for
The buffaloes put down their newspapers at the sheer nerve of it. There was only one place from which
If they failed, they still had the ground water applications in rural
• • •
Water is fuel. Without it, runaway growth across the Southwest would not be possible. To witness what cheap, federally subsidized water out of the Colorado River can do, look at the urbanization of
None of it was possible on the roughly 500,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water left over for
Combined with water drawn from the Sierra and another vast siphon from
That was more than three times the Colorado River allocation for all of Southern Nevada, enough potable water for 2 million families, rushing through the gutters of greater
In 1992, that meant lobbying new Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the former governor of
But like any Arizonan, Babbitt was also a natural ally of
By the time Babbitt left office in 2001, Nevada had been so successful in bringing California's draw on the river back into line that even President Bush's new interior secretary adopted the Babbitt policy.
Mulroy did not stop there. Ferocious in search of water, she executed trades so complex that in 2006 even the state engineer's panel of professional water people had trouble following them. A sample:
• She struck a massive water-banking deal with
• She bought up historic, pre-Colorado Compact water rights on the Virgin and Muddy rivers, both
• She moved with
But the biggest, most potentially valuable supply of water in the
• • •
The
The topography is classic Western basin and range and, for all its beauty, it's a prehistoric accident scene.
These were formed by the stretching of the continent until it ripped apart, tossing rock and earth into what is now a heroic network of north-south-running mountains and valleys.
As glaciers melted at the close of the Ice Age, the trapped store of ground water in the often porous jumble of rock underlying the area became the
In stark contrast to the way a massive tide of snowmelt from the Rockies courses toward the sea in the Colorado River, spring thaw in the dry ranges of the
What life exists naturally aboveground, both in the hot desert to the south and in the cold desert to the north, depends on the state of the underground water table.
In "dry valleys," the upward pressure of the carbonate aquifer sustains the springs feeding startling oases, even in the blazing deserts of
In "wet valleys," the aquifer's pressure can make the desert seem suddenly lush. Snowmelt from the ranges drains into such highly saturated basins that it dances out of springs, then streams onto the valley floors. It can even shoot from newly drilled wells.
Just this kind of thing used to happen in
Nothing terrifies the cold desert counties north of
Over in the Sierra, the Los Angeles Aqueduct drained what was once
In dry years, dust storms were common.
The minute that Mulroy's applications for the Great Basin became public in October 1989, the protests were so thick that in no time "Scarlett" was being likened to another mythic figure, the man who inspired "
Between 1989 and 1994, every major newspaper in the country had likened Mulroy's project to that of the notorious William Mulholland, the
Some of the worst pain registered in
Among the more than 3,600 protests to Mulroy's plan sent to the state engineer were ones from almost every agency in the Department of Interior except Reclamation.
To get her water, Mulroy would have to go through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management.
To top it off, no group took more passionate exception to Mulroy's plan than the descendants of the very pioneers of the region. To rile a Utah Mormon, try describing the Great Basin aquifer as a
By February 1994, a chastened Mulroy had backed off the plan, so far that in an interview with the High Country News, she cheerfully quoted — and even appeared to concur with — critics that the
Then the dawn of the century brought drought.#
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jun/08/chosen-one/
Water-Starved
The New York Times – 6/7/08
By Jennifer Steinhauer
PERRIS,
Water authorities and other government agencies scattered throughout the state, including here in sprawling Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, have begun denying, delaying or challenging authorization for dozens of housing tracts and other developments under a state law that requires a 20-year water supply as a condition for building.
The state law was enacted in 2001, but until statewide water shortages, it had not been invoked to hold up projects.
While previous droughts and supply problems have led to severe water cutbacks and rationing, water officials said the outright refusal to sign off on projects over water scarcity had until now been virtually unheard of on a statewide scale.
"Businesses are telling us that they can't get things done because of water," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said in a telephone interview.
On Wednesday, Mr. Schwarzenegger declared an official statewide drought, the first such designation since 1991. As the governor was making his drought announcement, the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County — one of the fastest-growing counties in the state in recent years — gave a provisional nod to nine projects that it had held up for months because of water concerns. The approval came with the caveat that the water district could revisit its decision, and only after adjustments had been made to the plans to reduce water demand.
"The statement that we're making is that this isn't business as usual," said Randy A. Record, a water district board member, at the meeting here in Perris.
Shawn Jenkins, a developer who had two projects caught up in the delays, said he was accustomed to piles of paperwork and reams of red tape in getting projects approved. But he was not prepared to have the water district hold up the projects he was planning. He changed the projects' landscaping, to make it less water dependent, as the board pondered their fate.
"I think this is a warning for everyone," Mr. Jenkins said.
Also in
In San Luis Obispo County, north of Los Angeles, the City of Pismo Beach was recently denied the right to annex unincorporated land to build a large multipurpose project because, "the city didn't have enough water to adequately serve the development," said Paul Hood, the executive officer of the commission that approves the annexations and incorporations of cities.
In agriculturally rich
Throughout the state, other projects have been suspended or are being revised to accommodate water shortages, and water authorities and cities have increasingly begun to consider holding off on "will-serve" letters — promises to developers to provide water — for new projects.
"The water in our state is not sufficient to add more demand," said Lester Snow, the director of the California Department of Water Resources. "And that now means that some large development can't go forward. If we don't make changes with water, we are going to have a major economic problem in this state."
The words "crisis" and "water" have gone together in this state since the 49ers traded flecks of gold for food. But several factors have combined to make the current water crisis more acute than those of recent years.
An eight-year drought in the
Even more significant, a judge in federal district court last year issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta — where the
The smelt problem was a powerful indicator of the environmental fallout from the delta's water system, which was constructed over 50 years ago for a far smaller population.
"We have bad hydrology, compromised infrastructure and our management tools are broken," said Timothy Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. "All that paints a fairly grim picture for Californians trying to manage water in the 21st century."
The 2001 state water law, which took effect in 2002, requires developers to prove that new projects have a plan for providing at least 20 years' worth of water before local water authorities can sign off on them. With the recent problems, more and more local governments are unable to simply approve projects.
"Water is one of our most difficult issues when we are evaluating large-scale projects," said Lorelei Oviatt, the division chief for the Kern County Planning Department. In cases where developers are unable to present a long-term water plan, "then certainly I can't recommend they approve" those developments, Ms. Oviatt said.
As the denied building permits indicate, the lack of sufficient water sources could become a serious threat to economic development in
"Water has been seriously under-priced in
The water authority for
Interest groups that oppose development have found that raising water issues is among the many bats in their bags available to beat back projects they find distasteful.
"Certainly from Newhall Ranch's standpoint, water was a key point that our opponents were focused on," said Marlee Lauffer, a spokeswoman for Newhall Ranch, a large-scale residential development in the works is Santa Clarita, north of
To get around the problem, Newhall Ranch's planners decided to forgo water supplied through the state and turn instead to supplies from an extensive water reclamation plant as well as water bought privately. Other developers, like Mr. Jenkins, have changed their landscaping plans to reduce water needs and planned for low-flow plumbing to placate water boards.
Mr. Schwarzenegger sees addressing the state's water problem as one of his key goals, and he is hoping against the odds to get a proposed $11.9 billion bond for water management investments through the Legislature and before voters in November.
The plans calls for water conservation and quality improvement programs, as well as a resource management plan for the delta. Among its most controversial components is $3.5 billion earmarked for new water storage, something that environmentalists have vehemently opposed, in part because they find dams and storage facilities environmentally unsound and not cost effective.
The critics also point out that the state's agriculture industry, which uses far more water than urban areas, is being asked to contribute little to conservation under the governor's plans. As more building projects are derailed by water requirements, the pressure on farmers to share more of their water is expected to grow.#
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