A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 11, 2009
2. Supply –
Desalination a key to coastal water strategy
San Diego Union-Tribune
Water shortage affects all
Get used to water conservation in San Diego
Water Wars Brewing
| KLAS TV |
Do exports of water-intensive crops hurt drought-prone
Miller-McCune Online
A wake-up call on water use
The Christian Science Monitor
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Desalination a key to coastal water strategy
Editorial
Of late, however, there finally has been good news on the water front. Last month, Poseidon Resources emerged from a six-year regulatory journey with the final permit necessary for its planned $300 million desalination plant in
The County Water Authority, meanwhile, has completed a feasibility study on building a 150-million-gallon-a-day, $1.9 billion desalination plant in
Unfortunately, there are two huge obstacles to this hopeful vision. The first is the nearly unconditional opposition to desalination by many environmental groups. Some appear to have a pragmatic understanding that desalination is a key to the state's long-term water strategy and solely want practical mitigation efforts. But for many, starting with Food & Water Watch, a Naderite nonprofit group, desalination amounts to an evil plot to simultaneously discourage conservation, kill off fish and promote corporate control of natural resources. Such groups and their high-paid lawyers will never stop fighting.
And they will be helped by the second big obstacle: the lack of a transparent, easily navigated bureaucratic process by which desalination projects can prove their viability and win state approval. The reason it took Poseidon six years to get the final go-ahead was that it needed input from or the endorsement of at least a dozen government agencies.
Plainly, it's time
Alas, there is a third potential obstacle to realizing desalination's promise: a possible lack of resolve on the part of everyone from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the County Water Authority to local water districts. Even if they face unfair attacks and legal dirty tricks, they must be resolute. The stakes are far too high for half-hearted advocacy.#
Water shortage affects all
Commentary By Rick Mercurio
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First, we ought to discard the political rhetoric.
In his Community Forum article of May 22 ("Where has all our water money gone?"), writer Paul Marx states he knows the real reason for our current water shortage: "left-leaning green politicians." He goes on to write that in actual fact there is an abundance of water, and "we are being lied to."
I see myself as both left-leaning and green, and I guess that makes those who believe as Marx does, right-leaning and brown. And wrong. Their premise seems to mock basic science, as well as a concern for our planet.
Marx wrote "water is by far the most abundant substance on the planet," and that "the real truth is that we have plenty of water ..." Water is plentiful, all right, if you are including the oceans and the ice caps. But fresh, usable water is becoming more and more precious and scarce as our population swells and Mother Nature withholds normal precipitation in our state and the
Humans have converged en mass in
But some folks think humans are entitled to all the water.
Forget fish. Forget other wildlife. Forget ecosystems that depend on natural water supplies to stay healthy.
Some aren't satisfied that humans have dammed virtually every free-flowing river, disrupting distribution of sand to our beaches and diverting vast quantities of water from one region to another. And when we alter nature, we usually pay a hefty price.
Humans continue to tangle with Mother Earth. Six-and-a-half billion people use up her water, over-fish her seas, pollute her skies and pave over her lands.
We have tipped the natural balance.
We need to think globally and act locally. We cannot keep allowing developers to build houses and strip malls over every meadow and hill, then import water, food and energy from far away. Some of us "greens" understand the concept of sustainable bioregions whose population ought to be shaped by the availability of local resources.#
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/06/10/opinion/mercurio/zd5deee74f706eb6b882575cd0005a5c7.txt
Get used to water conservation in San Diego
There's no quick fix to San Diego
By Doug Curlee
Every local Chamber of Commerce uses pictures of all that greenery to draw more and more people to live here, or at least visit here.
There are a couple of major problems with that.
Much, if not most, of that greenery is not native to
The millions of eucalyptus trees are just one example among many.
The other problem is that maintaining that lush greenery calls for water — a lot of water — and that’s something that is going to cost us dearly in the years to come.
In fact, it already does. Ninety percent of our water comes from either Northern California or the
After decades of fighting over where our water comes from, and how we are going to make sure
In fact, that the time for action has been here for years, and has been more or less ignored.
Action will require something that is in almost as short a supply as water is: Money.
Another bond issue?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he will go to the voters in 2010, and ask them to approve a $10 billion bond issue that he said would give
This comes at a time when
How likely are voters to approve such a bond measure, especially given that a set of initiatives designed to bring state spending under control were badly defeated at the polls last month? The only measure that passed was the one that denied legislators raises when the state budget is not balanced, a fair indication voters are fed up with the Legislature.
Many say the Legislature should have taken care of these water problems years ago, and they may be right.
Where would $10 billion be spent?
If we accept the idea that Northern California has the water, and Southern California needs it, then the obvious place to spend that money is in the construction of reservoirs, canals, pipelines, and perhaps most of all, some version of the
That canal, longtime residents will recall, was supposed to alleviate the problems of water transfer through the very fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The Delta is the hinge point of the whole State Water Project, a 1,600-square-mile area of dikes and levees smack in the middle of the state.
The Delta is old and crumbling. There is at least one levee collapse every spring, when
The
But even those who opposed the Canal last time realize it’s time to reconsider.
“It’s a tough time to bring the bond issue forward, but we can’t wait,” said Senate Minority leader Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto).
What benefit to
Anything that will bring more water to
The San Diego County Water Authority and its 26 member agencies are already taking steps to try to combat the severe water shortages we are soon going to be facing.
But what are those steps? Will they be enough, and will they arrive in time?
The
The San Diego Water Authority is underway on construction to raise the dam at San Vicente reservoir north of
But there may be more needed, in the way of reservoirs and dams.
Right now, if all the reservoirs in
(For clarification, an acre foot is the amount of water it would take to meet the needs of two families of four for one year — 326,000 gallons.)
That sounds like a lot of water, but we go through it pretty fast, especially in the hot summer days, when we all want to keep our lawns green and our flowers growing.
With our Northern California water supplies already cut by order of a federal judge, and the
We already know the City of
The city has allocated $756,000 to hire and put on the streets 10 “water cops,” which hardly seems enough for a city the size of
Other water districts are planning other measures, depending on what they see as their future water supply.
One thing is for sure: water is going to become very expensive both for the Water Authority to buy, and for customers to use it.
One of the major hopes for increased water supply in the future is desalination, the process of converting sea water into fresh water.
Poseidon Ventures in Carlsbad has all the permits it needs to begin building a $320 million plant that will provide 50 million gallons of water a day from the sea, but the company faces a raft of lawsuits from environmental groups, as well as the opposition of California Coastal Commission executive director Peter Douglas, despite the fact that the commission has approved the permits over his objection.
Douglas is known to have powerful friends in
The Water Authority is also quietly pursuing a plan for a much larger desalination plant at
But both of those plants are some ways in the future, even if they start building tomorrow morning.
For the immediate future, we can expect to feel the pinch of a decreased water supply. We will feel it where it hurts the most in the current economy: Our pocketbooks.
More than one person has remarked that it’s lonely down here at the very end of the pipeline.
It’s also about to get very dry at the end of the pipeline.
Water Wars Brewing
| KLAS TV-6/10/09 By George Knapp | |
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Persistently dry conditions over the past 10 years have made life miserable for businesses operating at Lake Mead and all along the
The marina operators on
The costs and losses have been enormous, and not just for them, but for all of us.
The shorelines may have moved, but
Kayser's family has operated marinas on
A few years ago, her family spent more than $1 million to move its entire marina from the
"Up until March, they told us it would stay equal. Then all of the sudden in April they told us it would drop 14 feet," she said. "This summer, we move, and then we start gearing up for the next move. We have a crew that does nothing but set up to move the marina."
Moving a marina isn't simple. Hundreds of anchors weighing three tons each must be picked up. Water and power lines must be extended. The costs are huge. "I could not even begin to tell you. Millions of dollars worth on one move alone. Cost us over a million," said Darla Cook with Forever Resorts.
The Callville Bay Marina hoped to offset business losses by rolling out its fleet of modernized houseboats for rent. There is plenty of water in the lake for the slick behemoths. The trouble is with smaller boats.
Dropping water levels mean boat ramps are high and dry. It creates a huge crunch on busy weekends or for lucrative fishing tournaments such as the U.S. Open Bass Tourney scheduled for later this year. It can take hours to get all the boats launched and big tournaments don't want that.
"So far they haven't cancelled, but they're talking about it moving it to
It's already happened to an even larger fishing tournament -- the FLW. This year it moved to
Licensed fishing guides like Vern Price know the loss of a tournament ripples throughout the economy. "First place is $100,000. Anglers come here from all over -- the
"These tournament and weekend boaters pump a lot of money into this economy. They buy food and lodging and when they're not coming, those who sell that and tax revenue are really in trouble," said outgoing Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.
Mayor Gibson has offered to help the lake-related businesses because the dropping water levels are not entirely a natural phenomena. They're also the result of a political decision, an agreement that keeps huge amounts of Colorado River water bottled up in
"Originally they were going to bring Powell up 15 and take us down 15. We could live with that. Then they changed it to take Powell up 30 and bring us down more. That's creating havoc," said Price.
The agreement, signed by seven states on the
The result is that Powell has risen by more than 30 feet in recent weeks while
"We're not asking for extra water, we're just asking for water that we normally get in October through January to give it to us now," he said.
The agreement was reached two years ago in response to conditions in 2005 that saw
"Not sure there's anything we can do. The negotiated agreements are what's driving the levels of the lakes," said Mayor Gibson.
The mayor says other entities that signed the pact are not likely to budge, but he acknowledges there is no practical reason why Powell couldn't release more water to help Mead.
The Bureau of Reclamation, in charge of federal water projects, agrees that Powell would not be hurt by releasing more water and even a few inches would be a great help to
"It probably will not be balanced in any given year in the future under the new guidelines, but overall, it will be a better balance," said Terry Fulp with the Bureau of Reclamation.
That's not much consolation on Lake Mead, where marina owners are wondering why
The person who signed the agreement on behalf of
The business owners recently met with Senator Harry Reid to see if he can help. Reid has called for a meeting later this month of all the key stakeholders to see if something can be worked out.#
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=10513103&nav=menu102_2
Do exports of water-intensive crops hurt drought-prone
Miller-McCune Online-6/10/09
Since the mid-1980s, this arid border region of
Container ships from
"Everything is done for economics," said Ronnie Leimgruber, an
Water is cheap for valley farmers, too: urban rates there are four times as high. It costs only $100 to irrigate an acre of hay in the desert for a year.
But what makes economic sense to farmers may not be rational behavior for
"This is water that is literally being shipped away," said Patrick Woodall, research director at Food and Water Watch, an international consumer advocacy group with headquarters in
Now, estimates of hay exports from
In 2008, the U.C. Davis data show,
Rice exports, then, soaked up about 1.1 million acre-feet of water in 2008, or enough water to supply the city of
By another estimate, with every pound of rice that leaves the U.S., about 250 gallons of "virtual" or "embedded" water used in growing and processing rice leaves along with it, according to "Water Footprints of Nations," a 2004 study from the Netherlands for UNESCO (The report spawned the Web site www.waterfootprint.com.)
But Tim Johnson, president and CEO of the California Rice Commission, said water statistics and the notion that rice is a "monsoon crop grown in the desert" don't tell the whole story.
"These are the same old arguments we heard back in 1990 when
Rice exports help bolster
"There's no other crop that does as much for wildlife in the West as rice," Johnson said. "The fullness of the discussion — not just how many units of water goes into an individual crop — is what's needed."
Research on virtual water trade is centered in Europe, where countries such as the
Worldwide, studies show, the countries most dependent on imports of virtual water are the
But organizations such as the France-based World Water Council caution that "countries can in some cases damage their environment by exporting virtual water."
The UNESCO research shows that
Recently,
"That is not our role," said Howard Conkey, a spokesman for the country's Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
As the drought deepened last fall in
The institute's report, "More With Less, Agricultural Conservation and Efficiency in California," estimated that such a shift would raise crop value by $5 billion and, at the same time, save 1.1 million acre-feet of irrigation water, an amount equivalent to what seven dams could provide.
Neither hay nor rice ranks in the top five
Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute, believes that if the drought "gets bad enough," politicians will start questioning how
"I think it's inevitable that the growing scarcity of water is going to force policymakers to come to grips with some of these issues like appropriate exports of water," Gleick said. "We need someone challenging the way water rights are allocated."
But Dan Putnam, an alfalfa specialist with the U.C. Cooperative Extension at
Alfalfa improves the soil in rotation with vegetables, he said, and it has a higher yield per unit of water than, say, walnuts or lettuce. Hay also produces more nutritional value, Putnam said, because of its importance to the dairy industry.
"If you take the viewpoint that only the highest-value uses of water should prevail, that's a policy of urbanization," he said. "A high-rise for lawyers in
Leimgruber, the
"I would rather use the water to grow a product we can sell to
http://www.miller-mccune.com//business_economics/trading-virtual-water-1279
A wake-up call on water use
A long-running resource issue finally trickles down to more consumers.
The Christian Science Monitor-6/10/09
Move over, carbon, the next shoe to drop in the popular awareness of eco-issues is the “water footprint.”
That’s the word in environmental circles these days. Just as the image of a heavy carbon foot made it possible for the masses to grasp the power of carbon-dioxide emissions, water footprint is the phrase now drawing attention to the impact of human behavior regarding water.
“H2O is the next CO2,” says Nicholas Eisenberger, managing principal of GreenOrder, a consulting firm that specializes in sustainable business. As a phrase, water footprint “will probably move more quickly through the public mind as it catches on,” he says, because water is more tangible than carbon.
Measuring how much water an individual, business, or government uses is a concept everyone can viscerally relate to, he adds, “because they put their hands on it every day, which is not the case, necessarily, with carbon.”
Why is “water footprint” coming to the fore now? And why does what is arguably humanity’s most vital resource need what some call a gimmick to connect people with its importance?
“You can’t control what you don’t measure,” says Laura Shenkar, principal of the Artemis Project, a water consulting firm. People take water for granted, she says, but the growing talk about climate change inevitably includes water. And recent droughts in the usually verdant southeastern
But causing people to take action on this issue isn’t necessarily going to be easy. One simple “wake-up” tool is the calculator at the website of the Water Footprint Network.
It asks questions about your diet and lifestyle and then churns out eye-popping “prints,” or water consumption estimates in the hundreds of gallons.
These figures include both direct use and indirect, or what’s known as “virtual water,” meaning how much H2O your Big Mac or Toyota Prius required all the way through the production chain – including growing the alfalfa that fed the cow that made the beef patty.
But calculators that return such large numbers that they convince people they’d never be able to live a comfortable lifestyle, “aren’t really helpful,’ says activist Alexandra Cousteau, who adds that she prefers to pursue projects that will “inspire and empower people.”
On June 8, the granddaughter of undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau will complete a 100-day global journey to expand awareness of the “interconnectedness of our hydrosphere.”
She and her team are chronicling critical water sites on five continents. “Expedition: Blue Planet” delves into crises such as the dwindling River Ganges in India and solutions such as a state-of-the-art Coca-Cola bottling plant in the Palestinian city of Ramallah (It’s the only multinational corporation in the West Bank.)
According to Greg Koch, director of the company’s Global Water Stewardship program, Coca-Cola (whose water brand, Dasani, is a sponsor of Ms. Costeau’s tour) eventually hopes to achieve “water neutrality” at its plants worldwide. (Water neutrality compares the amount of groundwater used with how much is returned to the earth through conservation measures.)
Agriculture uses about 70 percent of the global water footprint, while industry clocks in at around 20 percent.
But individual awareness and behavior is an important starting point in reducing one’s impact on the environment, says Alex Mayer, director of the Center for Water and Society at
Even small steps can make a difference. “Maybe even a calculator meter magnet on your fridge, so that every time you open the door or run the faucet, you’re faced with your own behavior,” he says with a laugh.
Nobody has to tell
“We’re always looking for ways to encourage people to change their ways with water,” says Bob Hayward, general manager of Lincoln Avenue Water Co. in Altadena, a water district of 16,000 users in the heart of
But now the district is asking customers to cut back an additional 20 percent. “They’re not taking that very well,” Mr. Hayward says with a sigh. Officials are hoping to inspire residents to switch from water-hungry gardens and lawns to plants that are more suited for arid locales.
What many people may not realize, notes Mr. Hayward, is that nearly 75 percent of residential water use in
Across southern
Adjacent to the “good” garden, a traditional one grows the thirsty roses and pansies favored by many homeowners in the region. Brochures show the differences in waste, water, and maintenance between the two gardens.
Sitting nearby with her 2-year-old daughter Lucy, Annie Bloom says she likes the water footprint idea and tries hard to keep hers down. When she bathes Lucy, she rarely fills the tub anymore, and sometimes, she adds with a laugh, she’ll even give her a bath in the kitchen sink. “That takes much less water.”
Even as the water-footprint concept is catching on, some think it’s just a start. “What’s good for water conservation may not be good for energy efficiency, for example,” says Cameron Wilson, a research analyst of environmental and building technologies with Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm in
Ultimately, he would like to see the discussion move beyond individual components in the ecosphere. If it has to be a catchy line, he says, “let’s try an ‘ecological footprint.’ ”#
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/06/10/a-wake-up-call-on-water-use/
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DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader’s services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news . DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of
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