Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
June 17, 2009
1. Top Items–
White House report warns of climate change effects
CNN
Water problems becoming more widespread
San Diego Union-Tribune
Prosecutors say NV water officials aware of fraud
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White House report warns of climate change effects
CNN-6/16/09
By Alexander Mooney
Man-made climate change threatens to stress water resources, challenge crops and livestock, raise sea levels and adversely affect human health, according to a report released by the Obama administration on Tuesday.
Farmers and workers in central
The nearly 200-page document on global climate change -- released by the White House science adviser and mandated by Congress -- does not include new research, but encompasses several recent studies on the effects of global warming over the last half century.
Among the report's key findings are an "unequivocal and primarily human-induced" rise in the Earth's temperature of 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 50 years, and a projection of more rapidly changing temperatures over the next several decades.
"It's not just a problem for the future," said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We're beginning to see the impact on our daily lives."
The continuing temperature rise is likely to spur a series of negative consequences for the Earth's energy supply, water, transportation, ecosystems and health, the study said.
"[The report] tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable," said John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser.
Among the study's specific predictions: Longer and more intense heat waves; increased heavy downpours likely to cause widespread complications such as flooding and waterborne diseases; reduced summer runoff, creating greater competition for water, especially in the West; rising ocean water temperatures that will threaten coral reefs; an increase in wildfires and insect infestations; and more frequent coastal flooding caused by rising seas.
The report is the first in almost a decade to break down impacts of climate change on regions and economic sectors of the
Authors of the comprehensive report said they hope it can serve as a valuable tool for policymakers and other Americans, such as farmers making crop decisions or local governments passing zoning restrictions in coastal areas.
The report comes as Congress debates a White House-backed climate change bill that seeks to reduce the
The bill cleared a key House committee vote in May and could be considered by the entire chamber within the next two weeks, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday.
The bill's future remains unclear in the Senate, where leaders are holding off advancing their own version of the legislation until it clears the lower chamber.#
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/06/16/climate.change.report/?iref=mpstoryview
Water problems becoming more widespread
New report highlights climate change effects
By Mike Lee
If misery loves company, county residents struggling to live with less water have plenty of friends nationwide.
Climate change and population growth are straining water supplies even in places where people historically haven't worried much about the resource. Cities from the Great Lakes to the
Concerns about the scarcity of drinkable water are prominent this week in
“Everywhere you look, you have some kind of water problem,” said Bradley Udall, director of the
The new assessment, a synthesis of various studies, is the federal government's first region-by-region look at the nation's vulnerability to climate change in almost a decade. It was compiled by leaders of science agencies, universities and research institutes as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“Warming of the climate is unequivocal” and “due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases,” the contributors wrote. The report highlights several climate-related threats that have been analyzed for years, including more wildfires and the loss of coastal land to rising oceans.
Jane Lubchenco, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the assessment shows “climate change is happening now and it's happening in our backyards and it's affecting the kinds of things that people care about.”
Water supply was placed first in the report because it's connected to agriculture, energy, human health and many other topics, Udall said.
Water-related challenges are different depending on the area of the country, but virtually every region faces major threats to water supply systems that already are stressed by factors such as population growth and aging pipes.
Nationwide, the report said, higher temperatures will boost demand for water at the same time that supplies are shrinking because of increased evaporation, decreased snowmelt, overtapped aquifers and other elements.
Drought will likely continue squeezing the Southwest, weather models show. But even in places such as the Northeast, where precipitation has risen in recent decades, the rainfall is coming more and more from storms separated by long dry periods. The Northeast lacks the infrastructure to capture all this stormwater, so much of it is lost to the ocean.
Also, the growing trend of downpours will lead to more flooding, erosion and stormwater pollution, while higher sea levels will worsen saltwater infiltration of aquifers.
One fundamental challenge is that water agencies have based their storage and delivery systems on historical rain and snow models that are increasingly irrelevant.
“These records are essentially out the window at this point,” Robert Renner, head of the nonprofit Water Research Foundation in
The gathering took a somber tone Monday when Peter Gleick addressed hundreds of water industry leaders. He is co-founder of the Pacific Institute in
“We are on a road to far more serious impacts from climate change with far less preparation and management than we should be and could be doing,” he said.
Gleick encouraged the crowd to upgrade monitoring of water consumption, set prices to encourage conservation, restructure water rights, and integrate climate change into plans for new storage and treatment facilities.
“We are running out of time,” he said.
The search for water is prompting communities nationwide to build desalination plants, tap brackish groundwater and purify wastewater for reuse. These strategies require lots of energy and money at a time when recession-weary customers can't afford to pay more.
“All the easy sources of water have been tapped,” said Richard Wheadon, an engineer in
While water officials search for answers, they're pressing their customers to conserve. In
Cutbacks also are the theme in
“It's certainly not business as usual,” Hunter said at the water convention.
“We go through droughts periodically,” Hunter said, “(but) they seem to be accelerating and getting deeper.”
Communities in the upper Midwest are taking a new approach to water consumption partly because of concerns about water levels in the Great Lakes, said Daniel Lynch, utilities director in
“I don't think we are ever going back to the point where people just wasted it,” Lynch said.#
Prosecutors say NV water officials aware of fraud
By Sandra Chereb
A northern
David Overvold, a project manager for the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, acknowledged to investigators that the practice "has been going on for a while," and he did nothing to stop it, court records show.
But Overvold maintained he never directly ordered any employees to "write-off" water, according to Robert Eric May, a special agent for the U.S. Interior Department's Office of Inspector General.
Overvold, the district's lawyer, Lyman McConnell and two irrigation district employees — John Baker and Shelby Cecil — were named in a 10-count indictment handed up in December 2008 by a federal grand jury in Reno. Cecil since has died.
Federal prosecutors accuse them of carrying out a scheme from 2000-05 to alter water delivery data to earn special "efficiency credits" that would entitle the district to more water and reduce a court-ordered water debt owed to the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe.
If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison for each of three counts of falsification of records and five years in prison for each of seven counts of false claims, false statements, and for conspiracy to defraud the United States. The men have said they are not guilty of the charges.
An irrigation district supervisor, Diane Baley, told federal agents she became aware of the water write-offs in 2002, when she noticed Fallon-area farmers placing unusually large water orders at the end of the season that were "mathematically impossible" to deliver at once without causing flooding or wasting water, May said.
The district delivers water from the Truckee and
Baley, a supervisory engineering technician, said she instructed employees to stop accepting orders that included write-offs, but she was later told by McConnell that the orders should be processed.
Baley, according to court documents, repeatedly expressed concerns to water district managers about the write-offs, and was once told by Overvold that it wasn't her problem and to mind her own business.
She said it was farmers who initially asked that their water deliveries be "written off" because they were led to believe by the irrigation district that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the century-old irrigation system, would reduce their water the next year if they didn't use their full allotment, the report said.
Baley added, however, that it was the district's responsibility not to allow it.
The interview reports were among a stack of documents filed by the government in response to allegations by Overvold's lawyer, Craig Denney, that the criminal case should be dismissed because of prosecution abuses.
Denney, a former federal prosecutor in
He also has maintained the case hinges on the word of disgruntled "ditchriders" — irrigation district employees who ride along the canals to ensure the safety of the earthen berms and record water meter readings.
In responding documents filed June 10, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Keller countered that Denney's claim is "wholly undermined by his own slicing and dicing of isolated statements of detailed interviews," and that the criminal charges are backed by numerous witnesses and evidence.
"The evidence is not limited to ditchriders," Keller wrote. "It is not even limited to TCID employees. Mr. Overvold admitted to knowing about and condoning the practice of writing-off water, and recognized the benefit in doing so."
Trial is scheduled for February 2010.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/16/state/n104750D66.DTL
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