A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 4, 2009
2. Supply –
Rancho California Water District seeking federal dollars
The Press-Enterprise
Desalination facilities planned for the county
The Union-Tribune
Ag and Water: Making Do with Less
KQED
El Nino brewing, raising O.C.’s chance for wet winter
Orange
Summer water picture brings '70s flashback
Marysville Appeal-Democrat
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Rancho California Water District seeking federal dollars
The Press-Enterprise-6/06/09
By Jeff Horseman
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The Rancho California Water District is seeking up to $20 million in federal stimulus money for a long-range project to boost the use of recycled water while reducing dependence on costly imported water.
The Temecula-based district applied for the money earlier this year; $20 million is the most the district can get, said MWD Director of Planning Perry Louck.
He said the district hopes to hear whether it will get any stimulus dollars later this month.
The money would help construct the district's water reclamation project, a three-phase, $141 million plan officials say will meet local water needs through 2050.
Rancho Water District serves more than 130,000 people in a 150-square-mile region consisting of Temecula, parts of Murrieta and nearby unincorporated areas.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California supplies more than half the district's water. Faced with a long-term drought and water supply problems, MWD this spring announced 10 percent supply cutbacks to its clients, a move that forced Rancho Water to consider mandatory water restrictions and supply cuts to agricultural customers.
The first phase of the reclamation plant calls for building a 48-inch pipeline to transport raw water from the MWD's aqueduct system to
The $28 million pipeline would store an additional 10,000 acre-feet annually of untreated water during the low-demand winter months.
One acre-foot equals the amount of water needed to supply two families for a year.
Louck said the district is waiting the completion of a federal environmental study before sending the project out to bid. Construction is expected to take two years, he said.
Phase two would convert the water system in Temecula Valley Wine Country to use untreated water for crops and vineyards instead of potable water.
The $57 million conversion would allow less-expense nonpotable water to be used for irrigation.
The third phase involves building a $56 million desalination plant to lower the salt content of recycled water from Eastern Municipal Water District.
Rancho Water cannot use this water because its salt content exceeds state standards.
About 16,000 acre-feet a year of recycled water is expected to be made usable through the plant.
Phases two and three are dependent upon the Rancho Water securing recycled water from Eastern Municipal Water District in Perris.
Those discussions are ongoing, Louck said.
The plant could bring other side benefits.
A brine disposal system would be needed for the plant, and an established system could lure businesses seeking to get rid of their brine, Louck said.
And by retaining more local water, Rancho Water can cut back on its emissions from pumping activities, he added.#
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_swater07.4a2c816.html
Desalination facilities planned for the county
Projects set to tap the ocean for water
The Union-Tribune-6/07/09
By Michael Burge
With a large-scale desalination plant approved for the
If planned desalination facilities go forward, nearly one out of every five gallons of the region's tap water will come from the ocean by 2020.
Besides Poseidon Resources' envisioned plant in
The second project would take a decade and nearly $2 billion to complete. It would likely begin as a smaller complex and gradually expand.
“If they go ahead with (the full-sized version), it will be the biggest seawater desalination plant in the world,” said Tom Pankratz, editor of the Water Desalination Report and an industry consultant.
The largest saltwater desalination complex under development is a site in
While desert nations in the Middle East and elsewhere have long depended on desalinated seawater,
In
Aside from analyzing the Camp Pendleton prospect, the county water authority has teamed up with the International Boundary and Water Commission to explore the idea of building a plant in Rosarito Beach, about 15 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It probably has the biggest concentration of desalination experts in the
The first desalination plant to successfully demonstrate the reverse-osmosis technology in wide use today was installed in 1969 at the Stardust golf course in
Sudak was the reverse-osmosis engineering manager at the time for San Diego-based General Atomics, which pioneered the field of reverse osmosis. In general, the method involves using specialized membranes to filter salt, impurities or other substances out of water.
“A number of other companies started membrane manufacturing as a result of” General Atomics' advances, said Gerry Filteau, president of Separation Processes of Carlsbad, a company that Sudak founded in 1980.
Local membrane manufacturers include Hydranautics in
But it's only coincidence that
The region gets nearly 90 percent of its water from Northern California and the
Those supply lines are crimped by ongoing drought in
“It's significant because it shows you've run out of alternatives,” Pankratz said.
Seawater desalination is a logical step for the
“The fact that there's no large groundwater basin limits our opportunities,” he said. “We have very limited sources – you have recycling, you have conservation and you've got the ocean.”
While ocean-water desalination has the biggest potential, two local water agencies –
Sweetwater desalinates 3.8 million gallons a day and has teamed up with the Otay Water District to explore boosting that amount.
The city of
“Ideally, you want to find those locations where there's the highest water quality that you can bring up and utilize,” said Marsi Steirer, deputy director of water resources and planning for
The county water authority projects that at least 89,600 acre-feet of the region's supply – 10 percent of total demand – will come from the ocean by 2020.
If the
The water authority began looking at the base as a potential site for a desalination facility after a possible marriage with the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station fell through. San Onofre was attractive because it has an existing system for drawing in and expelling ocean water.
Bob Yamada, the authority's water resources manager, said a desalination plant offers the base several benefits, “one of which would be a core water supply or emergency water supply.”
Yamada said his agency would build an outfall to discharge salty water from the desalination facility, and that base officials could use the same pipe to discharge wastewater.
A major issue would be the seawater intake system, which is also the most controversial aspect of Poseidon Resources' project in
Yamada said the county water authority is considering subsurface intakes for the proposed complex at
The method, which uses pipes or wells buried beneath the ocean, avoids sucking in marine life because seawater is filtered through sand and rock on the ocean floor. The sand also acts as a natural pretreatment agent for the desalination process by preventing large particles from entering the pipes or wells.
If the county water authority decides to go with the open-intake option, Yamada said, it would use the latest technology to reduce environmental harm.
The agencies are working under the umbrella of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which addresses border issues. They are hoping to take pressure off the Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states and
Issues such as how large the project would be, who would pay for it and how the water would be distributed have yet to be worked out, said David Fogerson, a senior engineer for the county water authority.#
Ag and Water: Making Do with Less
KQED-6/06/09
By Sasha Khokha
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Does climate change spell doomsday for
That’s what Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in an interview, soon after President Obama appointed him Secretary of Energy.
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he told the Times in February. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in
For another perspective, I called UC Davis ag economist Richard Howitt, who focuses on water and
“That’s a highly inaccurate statement,” Howitt said. “Steven got carried away. Brilliant man, but he doesn’t know anything about
Howitt’s models show climate change will likely lead to a 25% reduction in the state’s water supply over the next 50 years. He says that will likely mean some rough times ahead for farmers, but certainly not the end of
In fact, Howitt says if
“As income increases, people eat more
Of course, that means if you were to fly over the Central Valley in 50 years, you’d probably see fewer emerald-green islands of crops like rice, alfalfa, and cotton–and more fields of wheat and flexible crops like canning tomatoes, which can be planted seasonally and according to demand.
“This will, of course mean that we have less slack in the system than we do now,” says Howitt. “We’re going to have to be much better at applying water, look a little more like
Engineers who specialize in irrigation technology have long looked to drought-stricken countries for models. The folks who developed the Pure Sense software I discuss in my radio story have collaborated extensively with farmers in
Howitt also says no matter how efficiently farmers apply water, they have to figure out how to more efficiently move it around the state. Rather than just fighting over smelt, salmon, and pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Howitt thinks farmers could be more efficient if we plumb water east to west (currently the two major water systems in
Howitt says that would create incentives for farmers in relatively water-rich areas, like the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, to sell water to farms with good soil but less water–like the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, home to the some of the largest and wealthiest farms in the world.
Tricking plants into yielding more with less
Meanwhile, the idea of "dry farming," like what the folks at
Some researchers are taking this concept to places where it doesn’t rain so much. The idea is to control irrigation to stress the plants to the point where they think they’re starting to die, which triggers the plant's genetic imperative to produce more fruit.
David Goldhamer, who advises
A sprinkling of history
I also visited David Zoldoske, at the Center for Irrigation Technology at
“I think the thing to remember here is there is no silver bullet. There is no reservoir or canal or any other technology or engineering feat that’s going to solve this problem. We’re going to have to use every tool in the toolbox. It’s going to take multiple feats of engineering elegance so we can solve this problem. And it’s still possible that we’ll fail. And I don’t want to be saying that we will fail. We need to be very focused on this. It’s going to be a long journey. We won’t solve it over night.”#
http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2009/06/06/ag-and-water-making-do-with-less/
El Nino brewing, raising O.C.’s chance for wet winter
Orange County Register-6/08/09
by Gary Robbins
After three straight years of below average rainfall, there may finally be some good news ahead. News of the soggy kind.
The U.S. Climate Prediction Center says in a new advisory that an El Nino of undetermined size appears to be forming in the equatorial Pacific.
The natural, periodic climate change usually produces wet winters in
Past El Ninos also have led to flooding, mudslides and strengthened some storms to the point where they generated huge waves that damaged the
“Conditions are favorable for a transition for ENSO-neutral to El Nino conditions during June-August 2009,” the advisory says.
In simplest terms, sea surface temperatures become unusually warm in the eastern equatorial Pacific during El Nino, a phenomenon that can vary greatly in intensity.
This warming sets off oceanographic and atmospheric chain reaction that can make winter storms stronger, especially when the northern jet stream dips south.
Forecasters should have a better idea by mid-summer whether the El Nino now brewing along the equator is going to become big.#
Summer water picture brings '70s flashback
Marysville Appeal-Democrat-6/07/09
By Thomas D. Elias
We are starting to see the summer water picture for
That's right, chances are much of the rest of
Bolinas isn't often first with anything. But because it has no access to supplies from the state Water Project, the federal Central Valley Project or the San Francisco-owned Hetch Hetchy reservoir system and aqueduct, Bolinas uses only local supplies.
Before the unexpected late-season rains, the key Bolinas reservoir was at risk of running dry before the next rainy season, likely to start in November or December.
So Bolinas adopted
The Bolinas rules are now in abeyance, but they were only a little bit tougher than what many other places might soon be seeing, despite a few late rains.
In the Central Valley, cities like Folsom and
But the most visible water-use reductions might be coming soon in
Despite heavier than usual rains in February and March, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has not backed off proposed water use restrictions involving a tiered pricing system punishing consumers and businesses that fail to conserve even beyond today's levels, which see average use down almost 15 percent from the levels of the 1960s.
"The level of severity of this drought is still severe," he said. "We have to move quickly."
No one can be sure whether Villaraigosa's plan is not at least partially motivated by politics. Just reelected to a new four-year term as mayor, he may run for governor next year. If so, he'll be the only Southern Californian in a crowded field running for an office that's been held exclusively by
Among today's likely candidates, even ex-Angeleno Jerry Brown, the current attorney general, is now a confirmed Northern California resident based in Oakland, where he served two terms as mayor.
No
A vigorous approach to water rationing by Villaraigosa can only help him in the north, where Southern California is viewed as a profligate water waster - even by people who use unlimited water during droughts because their homes don't feature water meters.
Vigorous is surely an accurate term for what Villaraigosa has instituted: sprinkler use limited to twice a week, with a likely cut to once; no hosing of sidewalks or parking areas; water use in decorative fountains and ponds only if they feature a recirculating system; no washing cars with hoses without a self-closing shut-off device; no watering lawns between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and fines for allowing excess water to flow onto sidewalks, driveways, streets or gutters. If things get worse, there would be no refilling of swimming pools and spas.
All this implies imposing a "water cop" system like that employed in the '70s, when water department or water district inspectors roved widely looking for violations.
The ultimate penalty for repeated offenders would be a water supply cutoff.
That's the immediate water future for much of
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/water-78337-use-california.html
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