Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
January 30, 2009
2. Supply –
Upfront: Water, water...everywhere
The Marin Pacific Sun
Drought puts pressure on ground water: Overdraft a problem
The Lemoore Advance
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Upfront: Water, water...everywhere
But nary an unsalty drop to drink—the desal debate reaches end game
The Marin Pacific Sun – 1/30/09
by Peter Seidman
The Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) is about to sit down and wrestle with some hard facts as it begins the end game in the environmental report process for a proposed desalination plant.
With all the information and investigation the district has received, it's time for district directors—as well as district residents—to decide their water future. The first step is finishing the environmental review for the proposed plant. The review process that has led up to this point began in 2007. After numerous discussions, meetings, workshops and wrangling, the final report is ready for the district to consider.
The report comes at a time when it's clear, and perhaps somewhat ominous, that the cautionary note sounded for so many years still rings true: Residents and businesses in the district's 147-square-mile jurisdiction, which stretches from Sausalito to Novato, use more water than the district can supply when the next drought hits. The North Marin Water District serves Novato. That leaves MMWD supplying the bulk of the population in the county, about 190,000 people.
The ominous note about water supply is evident in the "water watch" statistics the district compiles. For the week ending Jan. 25, the seven reservoirs that supply water for district customers held 42,846 acre-feet of water. That's 54 percent of the reservoirs' capacity. The average capacity for the same date is 79 percent. Last year, the reservoirs were at 77 percent of capacity. Some cause for concern then, but by the time April rolled around, enough rain had fallen to preclude rationing.
And it's entirely possible, statistically, for rains to pelt Marin in the latter part of the rainy season this year, bringing the reservoirs up to average capacity or more. Longtime Marin residents can remember a year when it seemed the seasonal rain spigot was rusted shut; very little precipitation fell for most of the year. Then the sky opened up in what was called the "March Miracle."
But even if the rain does start falling in a more statistically average way, the county still is caught in a water deficit that natural rainfall within the county cannot ameliorate. And it's a situation that nations all over the globe face. It's not a theoretical hypothesis when water experts say the next great crisis in the world will focus not on oil supply—but water supply.
In Marin, rainfall supplied the needs of residents who, for the most part, thought little about supply and demand and water deficits—until 1976. That's when a "drought of record" hit—the worst water deficit since the district formed in 1912. Until that point, virtually all the water the district supplied came from the Lagunitas Creek watershed in West Marin. When the two-year drought hit in 1976, water customers came face-to-face with what a water deficit really meant. By the time that drought ended, district customers cut their consumption by about 65 percent.
People who lived in Marin at that time know how many bricks it takes to fill a toilet tank; that was one of the ways people cut their water consumption. Low-flow toilets were an oddity back then. District residents also learned to wash their dishes in pails and use the gray water to water their plants. People took pride in short showers, and in keeping a bucket in the shower to collect more gray water. Lawns were left to turn brown in the summer. Washing cars in the driveway became an exercise in determining how much water a sponge could hold. No more hosing down the car—or the driveway. To ensure supply, the district built a temporary pipeline across the Richardson Bay Bridge for an emergency connection.
That drought experience led the district to consider any and all alternatives, on the supply side as well as the demand side, including the proposed desalination plant.
All options focus on one stark fact: Water supply in the next drought will not meet demand unless the district and its customers take action. After the drought in the '70s, the district took a look at various possibilities. On the demand side, the situation reached an all-time high consumption rate of 33,000 acre-feet a year, leading the district to place a moratorium on new water connections, which the district lifted in 1993. The district has a host of conservation programs in its arsenal, and a good success rate; among the various conservation efforts, the district helps customers with drought-resistant landscaping and maximizing landscape watering schedules to use a minimum amount of water. About 30 percent of water use in the district goes for irrigation. The district also instituted tiered rates and recycling programs for large users in northern San Rafael. Those efforts, along with building the Soulajule Reservoir, expanding Kent Reservoir and importing as much water as possible from the Sonoma County Water Agency's Russian River supply, helped ease the deficit, but the numbers are still alarming.
The district now estimates that after all the demand-side programs and customer compliance, customers have reduced their annual consumption to about 31,000 acre-feet per year. (An acre-foot can supply three single-family homes in Marin for a year.) An overview of the supply and demand picture shows that district customers have cut their consumption by 25 percent from levels in the 1976-77 drought. But an increased population and what the desalination plant environmental report calls "demographic changes" have pushed water demand to nearly the levels reached in the late 1980s. The report also notes that "reliable water yield" of the district's West Marin reservoir system and water supply from Sonoma both have declined.
The conclusions are stark. When the next drought that matches the severity of the 1976 event hits, unless new sources of water can flow into the district and conservation can be increased, rationing levels in the worst of the drought "would approach the same 65 percent reduction level that was required 30 years ago," according to the district. That's not going to be easy considering that district residents already have reduced their consumption by 25 percent. They would need to reduce consumption another 65 percent on top of that. This time, bricks in the toilet just won't work. Water savers like low-flow appliances already have appeared on the market, and the district has boosted them as part of its conservation incentive programs.
That doesn't mean, however, the district has thrown up its conservation hands. District officials remain committed to expanding conservation efforts wherever possible. As evidence, the district plans to invest more than $40 million in the next 15 years to advance the conservation front, an effort that could reduce water use by another 10 percent. By the time district customers use conservation rebates to replace inefficient appliances, install better irrigation systems, etc., they will have spent an estimated $120 million on conservation efforts over the next 15 years. That's a lot, even for critics who say district customers should increase the effort before expanding supplies of new water.
Desalination is a technology spreading quickly around the world. In 2006, desalination capacity globally was about 10 billion gallons a day, according to a report issued by the National Academy of Sciences. In the United States, desalination is on the rise, but it still accounts for only .01 percent of municipal and industrial water use. But it is becoming an increasingly mainstream option for water districts in California. The Bay Area Regional Desalination Project is a proposal the four largest water suppliers in the Bay Area are considering. The Contra Costa Water District, East Bay Municipal Utility District, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and Santa Clara Valley Water District received grant money to investigate a regional plant that could be built in Contra Costa County. Some have suggested that Marin could join a regional effort and pipe desalinated water into the county. The problems associated with laying pipe across the bay, however, make that prospect almost as daunting as building a desalination plant here.
The district hasn't focused solely on desalination. Recently, the district took another look at its reservoir and pumping system. It determined that with an investment of about $6 million to its delivery system on Mt. Tamalpais, the district may be able to gain as much as 1,000 acre-feet a year. The increase would come from strategies such as positioning a pump deeper in Alpine Lake and improving the system that feeds Alpine.
That 1,000 acre-feet a year is about one-third of the current water deficit. But it's no cause for jubilation. Currently, district customers use about 31,000 acre-feet per year. In a drought, however, the district estimates that it will be able to reliably supply just 28,000 acre-feet a year in the first year, then even less in successive years. And those numbers will worsen unless the district increases its supply—or residents decide they can accommodate massive lifestyle changes. A water deficit that's now estimated at 3,300 acre-feet in a drought will increase to 6,700 acre-feet by 2025. Gaining 1,000 acre-feet a year helps, as does conservation, but it can't meet projected demand in the next drought, a conclusion easily drawn from the desalination environmental report.
With limits on the amount of practicable conservation and on the amount of water the district can squeeze from its reservoirs and recycling programs, only a few options remain. A variety of reasons restrict those options: Regulation prevents the district from raising the level of dams; salinity restricts the amount of water that can be recycled; and the county has no usable water table to store supply.
The district receives about 25 percent of its supply from the Russian River. But that amount could be reduced if the Sonoma County Water Agency cuts its flow to Marin because of increasing demand in Sonoma County, drought and environmental constraints that could limit the Sonoma agency. Even if a substantial increase in Russian River supply were possible, new piping infrastructure must be constructed to take the flow from Sonoma to the North Marin Water District, which relies on Russian River water, and then to MMWD. Even under the best construction scenarios, the prospect for increasing the supply of water from Sonoma County to MMWD remains uncertain. And a drought isn't going to wait.
That's why desalination is called the only "sure-fire" solution to water supply in Marin. But that certainty carries a price. The construction cost of the most likely option under discussion is about $105 million. The plant could process about 5 million gallons of water a day through reverse osmosis. The district could build a plant in phases, starting with a plant that can process 5 million gallons per day and expand in phases to produce 15 million gallons per day if needed. (An alternate solution made the rounds recently: a smaller desalination plant that would provide water just to San Quentin, the largest single consumer in the district.)
Water from the desalination plant would be more expensive than current water supply, but taking into account cost estimates of increasing supply from Sonoma County, the two options would be in the same ballpark.
District residents may get a chance this year to taste the urgency of the issues. The district has instituted a procedure that calls for 10 percent rationing when storage on April 1 is less than 50,000 acre-feet. When storage on April 1 drops to less than 40,000 acre-feet, the district will call for 25 percent rationing. And that's just a start if a real drought hits, like the two-year drought in 1976-77. Current storage level is at 42,846 acre-feet.
The district has scheduled a meeting Feb. 4 at 7:30pm in the San Rafael City Council chambers to consider certifying the environmental report for the desalination plant project.
Even if board members accept the report, it doesn't constitute a go-ahead. The plant proposal still requires board approval to proceed to construction.
Three decades after the drought of 1976-77 district residents face an even more urgent prospect of drought rationing, unless new water sources flow in Marin or they embrace a rationing ethic that would change the face of life here.
It could happen—either way. #
http://www.pacificsun.com/story.php?story_id=2825
Drought puts pressure on ground water: Overdraft a problem
The Lemoore Advance – 1/29/09
By Judy Finney
Residents of Kings County walk on water. It's part of an aquifer that provides the vast majority of drinking water to area residents and water to many farms and ranches with irrigation supply. It lies beneath the ground.
Despite the recent rainy weather, a two-year drought has left above-ground storage facilities at some of their lowest levels. Plus, increased population and environmental demands mean groundwater is declining at a great rate in Kings County.
This could cause problems for everyone.
According to Don Mills, general manager of Kings County Water District, the current snow pack is at about 30 percent of what it should be. The Sierra Nevada Mountains provide the water that eventually ends up flowing onto local farms to grow crops and also replenish ground water.
"The local overdraft is sad," Mills said.
Mills said area growers and cities are using ground water at the highest rate in recorded history, and it will probably only get worse because of the lack of precipitation in the mountains. Right now, he estimated, groundwater overdraft north of the Kings River is at about 200,000 acre-feet per year and south of the river as much as 400,000 acre-feet per year.
Mills said this pattern of drought is nothing new to California. He researched records detailing the past 42 years and found only two years that were considered average, with four out of seven being dry, two wet and one average.
Growth in population and environmental restrictions are what makes this pattern so difficult now, according to Mills.
Stratford-area farmer Bill Stone echoed Mills' words.
"Everybody is going to pump all the water they can," Stone, who farms as Stone Land Co., cultivates 10,000 acres of cotton and other field and row crops. "That means more and deeper wells."
Stone estimated crops need about 30 inches of water per year to be successful, which costs about $250 per acre. He said most farmers are working on irrigation efficiency, including the use of drip-irrigation systems.
"Drip-irrigation systems don't add that much more water to the crop," Stone said. "It's just more efficient. We still have to turn on the pumps to get the water into the system."
Stone and Mills are also concerned the state will try and tack on additional fees for the use of surface and ground water, just making it that much more expensive.
Stone relies on Westlands Water District to provide above-ground water through the California Valley Project canals. This year that's probably not going to happen. Sarah Woolf, spokesperson for the huge water district that includes 30,000 Kings County acres to the west, said they expect zero allocation this water season because of the drought and environmental restrictions. The district has already fallowed 200,000 acres to save water.
Woolf said the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District is already rationing water and things will probably only get worse. She estimated the cost to sink a new well to be $500,000 to go 1,000 feet deep.
Another concern is ground subsidence. As more water is pumped from the underground reserves, the ground will compact and sink. After this has happened, even in a wet season, the ground water may not be replenished because there may not be any room for it. Areas on the west side of the Valley have suffered large amounts of ground subsidence -- or a shifting downward of the ground surface -- in past years, resulting in changes to farming methods, road damage. There is even a fear it could affect the landing strips at Naval Air Station Lemoore.
The city of Lemoore is already preparing for the greater demand on ground water. According to David Wlaschin, director of public works, some wells have been lowered and, as of early January, there was 15-30 feet over the top of the pump bowls. Wells are 700 feet deep, with water standing at 200 feet. Wlaschin said the city will do all it can to encourage water conservation. Residents and businesses use 3 million gallons of water per day in the winter and 11 million gallons per day in the summer. Wlaschin felt the city will be able to handle another long, dry, hot summer.
Dairies have always been reliant upon ground water for their cattle. Local dairyman John Droogh said an average milking cow drinks 30 gallons of clean, fresh water per day, and that must be pumped. He has already drilled a new well because of the dropping water table. Droogh called the current situation of little or no surface water available to irrigate crops and replenish ground water, and the raising costs of getting to that water, "Scary."#
http://www.thelemooreadvance.com/articles/2009/01/29/news/doc498242a57bcef629716309.txt
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