A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 12, 2008
2. Supply –
How serious is our water shortage?
Editorial
Climate change - wait 'til next year?
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How serious is our water shortage?
By Gerald Walson , president of the Bonsall Area for a Rural Community
Water agencies have been beating the drum lately urging users to reduce consumption in light of the water shortage we are experiencing.
Recently, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California ordered agriculture users that have signed onto the Interim Agriculture Water Program to reduce water use by 30 percent used in the last two years.
Noncompliance will result in considerable penalties that could triple the cost of their water allocation.
The Metropolitan Water District recently considered imposing water rationing on residential users, but rejected it for 2008.
Should this occur in the future, interim program users could face further reductions that can range as high as 90 percent. Interim Agriculture Water Program users have received discounted water in return for agreeing to reduce water use during declared water shortages.
In
Why conserve? What are the pieces of the water puzzle?
First, agriculture users represent only 6 percent of Metropolitan's demand. Interim Agriculture Water Program users represent only about 30 percent of that 6 percent demand. They represent less than 2 percent of Metropolitan's demand, proving its demand is overwhelmingly due to residential consumption.
Water agencies are asking the public to save 20 gallons a day, per person.
Since the average home uses about 748 gallons a day, this represents a savings of 7 percent. However, compliance will probably not exceed 50 percent, resulting in a savings of less than 3.5 percent.
Since housing development has been growing at around 1.5 percent per year since 1995, this represents an increased water demand ---- and where is all this "new water" coming from to support new developments?
Consequently, your conservation savings are going to support new development.
Clearly, residential users will never voluntarily reduce their water usage when they see that these savings are being passed on to developers. They will only conserve water when they perceive that these savings are beneficial to them.
How can Metropolitan and the County Water Authority justify new water connections for new developments in a "water emergency" when they are imposing water restrictions on existing users?
They need to assert their "emergency authority" and mandate that new-water connections be suspended during water emergencies.
We either have adequate water and there is no need to conserve, or we have a "water emergency" and we need to conserve, which requires suspending new-water connections.
They have failed to demonstrate how the consumer will benefit from conservation when water connections to new development continue in the face of a water shortage.
Who's benefiting from your conservation? Obviously, the developers!
*Gerald Walson is president of the Bonsall Area for a Rural Community and director Div. 1 Rainbow Municipal Water District.#
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/06/12/opinion/commentary/zf4a1903a8f0aa4448825745e00032924.txt
Editorial
Climate change - wait 'til next year?
There are two ways to read the U.S. Senate's defeat of a climate change bill. It was a wholesale dodge of global warming - or it was a bruising prelim in a fight that may bring environmental change next year.
Both takeaway messages are on target. No one expected the Senate to do much more than bloviate, ridicule and harangue the package to death. Republicans invoked $4-a-gallon gas to stir fears about the controls and even had a tag-team of clerks read the 492-page bill into the record for hours to wear down the backers.
It worked, at least for now. California Democrat Barbara Boxer, the floor manager for the package, noted that a combination of Democrats and breakaway Republicans fell short of the 60 votes needed to block a filibuster, though there were still enough to put the measure past a 50 vote majority. That's a milestone.
Final success, she suggested, must wait for a new administration, with presumptive nominees in both parties favoring an escalating limit on carbon emissions by midcentury. President Bush's threatened veto of the measure dampened chances this year. Also consider this: The debate has moved beyond global-warming denial, a caveman argument that no senator attempted to make in this past week.
The future fight may be a question of degree, not substance. Missing from this debate were serious talks about how fast and with what inducements the nation will curb its emissions. There are significant hurdles to negotiate such as a possible tariff on goods produced in nations without serious climate-change controls such as
The seriousness of this package can't be denied. It's sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman, the
This bipartisan support will be needed because the scale of the bill. It proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, chiefly carbon dioxide given off coal-fire power plants, refineries and factories, by 18 percent by 2020 and nearly 70 percent by 2050.
Industry would pay fees to emit greenhouse gases with the money going to develop green technology.
This shift is necessary, but it won't be painless. Foes of the plan predicted high gas and energy prices and hardship for industries caught in the changeover. The bill offers hefty tax breaks to soften the blow, a feature that its critics used as further evidence of its complexity and cost.
Give the bill's sponsors a bad-timing award for pushing the plan amid record-high energy prices. But time is not on our side with this issue. Each year, we wait will increase the damage to the planet and compound the complexity and cost of future efforts to slow climate change.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/12/ED7U116Q32.DTL
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