Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
February 24, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Opinion:
The state may experience a water shortage this year. Residents have no choice but to use less and pay more for it.
Experts cite lower threshold for warming crisis
Associated Press
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Opinion:
The state may experience a water shortage this year. Residents have no choice but to use less and pay more for it.
By William Patzert and Timothy F. Brick
William Patzert is an oceanography research scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. Timothy F. Brick is the chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
Last March, after a series of cold winter storms, the snowpack in the
But after a record heat wave in the early spring, it was as if the winter's big storms had never happened. Only about 40% of the snow's water content -- far less than usual -- ended up in rivers and reservoirs. The parched ground quickly absorbed some of it, and more evaporated because of the high temperatures.
If the same things happen this year -- and they may well despite the recent rains --
The vanishing Sierra snowpack could be a symptom of climate change, and it's not the only one. Downstream, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the hub of
In an attempt to avert water shortages for consumers and businesses, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California depleted its water reserves last year at the rate of 523 million gallons a day. But that can't go on indefinitely without the tap running dry.
The way Californians have been using water is simply not sustainable. We have no choice but to use less and to pay more for it.
The West was settled during an unusually wet period in its history. Today, we're alarmed by a three-year drought, but there is ample geologic evidence of previous droughts measured in decades.
In
In
The region has not experienced the reality of water limits and widespread mandatory conservation for nearly a generation. We have never squarely faced the future. Water projects built
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brick24-2009feb24,0,3291692.story
Experts cite lower threshold for warming crisis
Associated Press – 2/24/09
The Earth won't have to warm up as much as had been thought to cause serious consequences of global warming, including more extreme weather and increasing threats to plants and animals, says an international team of climate experts.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the risk of increased severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels. The
Now, researchers report that "increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks starting at less than (1.8 degrees) of additional warming above 1990 levels."
"It is now more likely than not that human activity has contributed to observed increases in heat waves, intense precipitation events and the intensity of tropical cyclones," concluded the researchers led by Joel Smith of Stratus Consulting in
Other researchers, they noted, have suggested that "the likelihood of the 2003 heat wave in
The new report, in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes just a week after Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science at
Carbon dioxide and other gases added to the air by industrial and other activities have been blamed for rising temperatures, increasing worries about possible major changes in weather and climate. Carbon emissions have been growing at 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from the 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, Field said.
Co-authors of the report include Stephen H. Schneider of Stanford, Michael Oppenheimer of
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/24/MNGR1632GS.DTL
Drought Adds to Hardships in
New York Times – 2/21/09
By Jesse McKinley
MENDOTA, Calif. — The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.
With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year’s losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.
“People are saying, ‘Are you a third world country?’ ” said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. “My community is dying on the vine.”
Even as rains have washed across some of the state this month, greening some arid rangeland, agriculture officials say the lack of rain and the prospect of minimal state and federal water supplies have already led many farmers to fallow fields and retreat into survival mode with low-maintenance and low-labor crops.
Last year, during the second year of the drought, more than 100,000 acres of the 4.7 million in the valley were left unplanted, and experts predict that number could soar to nearly 850,000 acres this year.
All of which could mean shorter supplies and higher prices in produce aisles — California is the nation’s biggest producer of tomatoes, almonds, avocados, grapes, artichokes, onions, lettuce, olives and dozens of other crops — and increased desperation for people like Agustin Martinez, a 20-year veteran of the fields who generally makes $8 an hour picking fruit and pruning.
“If I don’t have work, I don’t live,” said Mr. Martinez, a 39-year-old father of three who was waiting in a food line in
In Mendota, the self-described cantaloupe center of the world, a walk through town reveals young men in cowboy hats loitering, awaiting the vans that take workers to the fields. None arrive.
The city’s main drag has a few quiet businesses — a boxing gym, a liquor store — and tellingly, two busy pool halls. The owner of one hall, Joseph R. Riofrio, said that his family had also long owned a grocery and check-cashing business in town, but that he had just converted to renting movies, figuring that people would rather stay at home in hard times.
“We’re not going to give up,” Mr. Riofrio said. “But people are doing bad.”
Just down the highway in Firebaugh, José A. Ramírez, the city manager, said a half-dozen businesses in its commercial core had closed, decimating the tax base and leaving him to “tell the Little League they’d have to paint their own lines” on the local diamond.
The situation is particularly acute in towns along the valley’s western side, where farmers learned on Friday that federal officials anticipate a “zero allocation” of water from the Central Valley Project, the huge New Deal system of canals and reservoirs that irrigates three million acres of farmland. If the estimate holds and springtime remains dry, it would be first time ever that farmers faced a season-long cutoff from federal waters.
“Farmers are very resilient, we make things happen, but we’ve never had a zero allocation,” said Stephen Patricio, president of Westside Produce, a melon handler and harvester. “And I might not be very good at math, but zero means zero.”
While
Federal, state and local officials paint a grim picture of a system taxed as it has never been before by a growing population, environmental concerns and a labyrinth of water supply contracts and agreements, some dating to the early 20th century. In addition to the federal water supplies, farmers can irrigate with water provided by the state authorities, drawn from wells and bought or transferred from other farmers. Such water may not always be the best quality, said Mark Borba, a fourth-generation farmer in Huron,
“But it’s wet,” he said.
Richard Howitt, the chairman of the agricultural and resource economics department at the University of California, Davis, estimates that 60,000 to 80,000 jobs could be lost — including in ancillary businesses — and that as much as $2.2 billion in crop and other losses could be caused by restrictions on water and the drought, which he called “hydrologically as bad as 1977 and economically as bad as 1991.”
“You’re talking about field workers, processing handlers, people packing melons, trucking hay, sprayers, people selling tractors, people selling lunches to people selling tractors,” Mr. Howitt said. “And in some of these small west-side towns, it’s going to hit the people who are least able to adapt to it.”
One of the hardest hit areas is the farmland served by the Westlands Water District, which receives water exclusively from the Central Valley Project and distributes it to 600,000 acres in
“Everyone’s trying to go down fighting,” Ms. Woolf said. “But there will be significant companies that will go out of business, as well as families that have been farming for generations, if it doesn’t get better.”
The outlook for things getting better quickly is dim, despite forecasts of rain this week. Last month,
Lynette Wirth, a spokeswoman for the United States Bureau of Reclamation, said water levels in all federally managed reservoirs in
“There’s been no meaningful precipitation since last March,” Ms. Wirth said.
Farmers, of course, are also dealing with issues unrelated to rain, including tight credit from banks and recent court decisions meant to protect fish that have limited the transfer of water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which feeds snowmelt to farmbound canals. Many farmers refer to a “man-made drought” caused by restrictions.
At the same time, environmental groups say they also fear a range of potential problems, including depletion of the valley aquifer from well pumping, possible dust-bowl conditions in areas of large patches of fallow ground and concern about salmon and other species. “It’s a tough year for the environment, and people,” said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. #
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22mendota.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
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