California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 6, 2009
2. Supply –
Water users put on notice
Ventura County Star
There's another threatened species-humans
S.F. Chronicle
You'd think water would be a basic right
Sacramento Bee
H2O shortage has officials around county looking to groundwater as source
San Diego Union-Tribune
County launches study of aquifers from Angwin to American Canyon
Napa Valley register
Ukiah water crisis looms
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
City restricts fountain to conserve water
Marin Independent Journal
Wastewater recycling may benefit both sides of the border
San Diego Union-Tribune
Tucson rainwater harvesting law drawing interest
Associated press
Much of the world is desperately short of fresh water. Are future water wars inevitable?
Macleans.Ca
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Water users put on notice
Higher bills may be coming
Ventura County Star-7/5/09
Opinion
For months, the warnings to conserve water have been issued. Now, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is putting some teeth into its pleas.
Last week, the giant water agency, which supplies water to a large portion of Southern California and Ventura County, put the region's water purveyors on notice: Cut back distribution by 15 percent or pay a hefty penalty.
MWD's message reinforces the severity of the drought California is experiencing. After enduring two years of below-average rainfall and snowmelt runoff at only 66 percent of normal, the state is facing its worst water shortage since 1991.
In addition, a court order to protect the endangered Delta smelt has reduced the amount of water pumped from Northern California.
Eric Bergh, resources manager for Calleguas Municipal Water District, told Star reporter Zeke Barlow that if local water agencies exceed their allotted amount of water, the cost will be significant.
Water purveyors pay $796 per acre-foot of water. If they go over their water limit, the cost of an acre-foot will go to $2,513. If a water purveyor exceeds its limit by more than 15 percent, the cost of an acre-foot of water will rise to $4,135. It's likely these costs would be passed on to customers.
We must all bear the burden of living in what basically is a desert and in a state where water supplies are unpredictable. This continuing challenge of maintaining adequate supplies of water for homes, agriculture and businesses has already forced local water districts to begin — with mixed results — aggressive water-conservation campaigns.
Many Ventura County cities have also passed, or are considering passing, ordinances that restrict water use. For example, Simi Valley prohibits watering during the day. Thousand Oaks may limit residents to watering lawns just three days a week, from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m.
Water agencies offer many water-saving programs such as rebates for installing low-flow toilets and showerheads and hotlines to report wasteful water use.
Water conservation doesn't have to be painful. Probably the biggest and easiest way for most to conserve is to reduce the amount of water used on lawns.
Other easy water-saving tips are: Don't hose down sidewalks and driveways; don't run half loads in the washing machine and dishwasher; don't take long showers; and don't let that leaky faucet continue to drip.
Californians should always take care to conserve precious water. However, there's nothing quite like higher water bills or fines to reinforce the message.
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/jul/05/water-users-put-on-notice/
There's another threatened species-humans
S.F. Chronicle-7/5/09
R. William Robinson and Ralph E. Shaffer
Opinion
For Californians south of Tracy's water delivery pumps, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger's recent ruling on the delta smelt has transformed 2009 into both the best of times and the worst of times.
Despite what some view as a victory for 20 million residents dependent upon delta water, Wanger's decision to delay imposition of permanent pumping restrictions merely lengthens litigation and threatens further damage to the state's once-vibrant economy.
Because of another opinion protecting salmon, most of the state's water users still face rationing. In December, Wanger imposed a draconian order curtailing pumping of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the California Water Project for shipment south.
In late May, responding to a lawsuit by western San Joaquin Valley water agencies challenging that ruling, Wanger agreed with Westlands Water District lawyers that the limits he had at first supported needed revisiting. He ordered federal authorities to justify the limits they had placed, and which he had at first accepted, on diverting water to the state aqueduct. Those restrictions were intended to protect the delta smelt.
Apparently bowing to the argument that people were being harmed by an unreasonable concern about the welfare of a fish, Wanger instructed the feds to consider more than the impact pumping would have on the endangered delta smelt.
Under his new ruling, the government must also calculate the effect that a reduced allocation will have on the millions of Californians dependent on the delta for residential, industrial and agricultural water. To date, pumping restrictions have denied Southern California water agencies about 1.1 million acre feet, worth approximately $330 million.
That expense will fall on the ratepayers. Water companies and districts still must meet the obligations on their bonded indebtedness. They are expected to sell the water that the judge denied them. That means customers will pay more and receive less water. Stand by for breathtaking rate increases.
Wanger's latest ruling might give hope to residents and farmers, but the case is not over. The delta smelt is not alone. In June, the National Maritime Fisheries Service favored the delta's salmon with a ruling that will surely be appealed.
Thirty water agencies have joined a lawsuit to overturn the salmon protection plan. Already, at least a dozen related cases involving fish and delta pumping are working their way through federal and state courts. Furthermore, the longfin smelt is seeking a similar court accommodation. The California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously in March to protect that smelt under the state's Endangered Species Act.
Until Wanger reversed his position, the trend was clear but not very bright for another endangered species - humans. While people clamor for water and local water districts impose rationing and send out water cops to ticket folks who waste water brushing their teeth, lines of those other "threatened" species - the smelt and salmon - are assembling before federal courthouses.
As the feds prepare to justify the drastic pumping restrictions that they wish to impose to protect the fish, critics complain that their regulations - referred to as a biological opinion - are based on a combination of skewed science and junk science, creating a rigged evidentiary record. The scope of Wanger's evidentiary record was limited, covering state and federal pumps. That misguided approach denied millions of Californians access to a water supply that they had grown accustomed to.
Wanger's reversal indicates that he may now insist on a balance between the interests of wildlife and that of humans. If the feds are able to convince Wanger that the limitations he previously accepted are justified, the fish might yet win. In fairness to the fish, however, Californians should ask if water agencies have failed to acknowledge that we can't have unlimited population and commercial growth.
Our water supply is finite. We erred 50 years ago when Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown allowed the state's limited water to irrigate a virtual desert in the western San Joaquin Valley. It was also a mistake to allow unlimited development in Southern California.
But practical politics dictate that a compromise solution regarding the delta must be reached. Already, several bills are pending in Sacramento, and an arrangement is necessary to guarantee larger springtime flows of California aqueduct water to the Central Valley and Southern California.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/05/INGV18H0TP.DTL
You'd think water would be a basic right
Sacramento Bee-7/5/09
By Peter Asmus
Opinion
In the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, about 1 million poor people pay up to 30 times more for water of dubious quality brought to them in old tanker trucks than middle-class citizens pay for clean and safe water provided by the local public water utility via standard household connections.
Some may be shocked by these disturbing disparities in the developing world, but a lack of access to safe, affordable and clean water is also an issue in California, particularly in the Central Valley and along the Central Coast. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is sucked from contaminated groundwater sources. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their bill.
While the arid West – including California – has always suffered from more severe water challenges than the rest of the country, experts claim 36 states will experience local or regional water shortages over the next five years. Spain is also facing an extreme water crisis, with some wondering whether the Sahara Desert will cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. And droughts seem to have become a permanent way of life in Australia.
Society appears to face a global crisis in water supply as one in six people – more than 1 billion humans – do not have adequate potable water to meet their most basic survival needs. These facts have spurred efforts to enshrine the human right to water at the United Nations and in the national constitutions of countries such as South Africa and Ecuador.
Interestingly enough, the prime opponent of guaranteeing a human right to water on the international stage at the United Nations has been the United States, which, by the way, is also opposed to a human right to housing and food. It is this political dynamic of our federal government opposing human rights to water that makes Assembly Bill 1242 by Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos, so interesting. The bill is moving through the California Legislature and a key vote is scheduled Monday.
"The language included in AB 1242 is typical of that used by organizations and campaigns around the world declaring a legal human right to water," said Jeff Conant, international research and communications coordinator for Food and Water Watch, one of the sponsors of the legislation. He went on to say that it would be up to state and local agencies to figure out how to "operationalize" this concept.
On the international stage, much of the discussion about a human right to water is wrapped up in the legal mechanics of treaties and policies at the United Nations. Patricia Jones, program manager for the environmental justice program of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, favors the concept of an "International Bill of Human Rights" that would be comprised of direct obligations and treaties that would make the human right to water both explicit and implicit. World Health Organization activists have been working on similar ideas but focused more on trying to stop the spread of endemic diseases, requiring regional governments to commit to the human right to water to receive funding for water projects.
"From a legal point of view, there most definitely is a human right to water, which is part of the right to an adequate standard of living," argues Thorsten Keifer, a human rights expert with Bread for the World, a 50-year-old German nonprofit organization. "The question of how such a right to water can finally be recognized is a very good one as there is nothing like an agreed-upon check list for recognition of implied or new human rights in international law."
From his vantage point, the right to water is not at all at odds with goals of efficiency, reduced water use and effective pricing. "The right to water does not mean that water should per se be for free, but that it should be affordable for all people," he said. "That the human right to water means that everyone should have access to water free of charge is a common misconception – propagated by a handful of activists – that has really interfered with discussions on the issue for far too long. Everyone who can pay should pay!"
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1998955.html
Going to the well
H2O shortage has officials around county looking to groundwater as source
San Diego Union-Tribune-7/5/09
By Angela Lau
Water officials across the county are looking skyward, seaward and inward to scrounge up enough drinkable H2O to supply their customers.
Just beneath the ground's surface, from Oceanside to the border and from the coast to Interstates 805 and 15, are groundwater basins that few cities have explored because the water is mostly brackish – slightly salty, like V-8 juice – and limited in supply.
Because groundwater needs to be desalinated, local water officials have always found it easier and cheaper to import fresh water from the Colorado River and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which together provide almost 90 percent of the local drinking water.
But the drought and the court protection of the delta smelt, a tiny fish that lives in the delta, are changing attitudes toward groundwater.
"It is absolutely a viable source," said John Liarakos, spokesman for the San Diego County Water Authority.
Last year, groundwater supplied 2 percent of the county's 692,000 acre-feet of water, Liarakos said. An acre-foot can keep two households of four going for a year.
The water authority hopes that by 2020, local cities can produce enough groundwater to supply 6 percent of their needs, Liarakos said.
In April the water authority, the county's water wholesaler, gave cities an extra nudge toward tapping their aquifers. It announced a Level 2 drought alert and cut supplies to its 24 member agencies last week.
In September, the water authority will raise the cost of water 18 percent, from $766 an acre-foot to $905. Most member agencies already are raising rates to cover the increased costs and control how much customers use.
That is why interest in groundwater has surged.
San Diego has launched a $2.5 million to $3 million study to find out if pumping groundwater is worth the expense.
The Otay Water District is researching whether to team up with the Sweetwater Authority to extract more groundwater. Sweetwater's customers have been using fresh groundwater since 1950, and a decade ago began using desalinated, brackish groundwater.
Oceanside, which also has been desalinating groundwater for drinking, is considering increasing its number of wells.
Cities such as Escondido that do not have large water tables are hoping to share their neighbors' groundwater. Escondido is eyeing San Diego's San Pasqual Basin, but San Diego is not ready to share.
One of the reasons for groundwater's popularity is that it is cheaper to desalinate than seawater because it is less salty.
Brackish groundwater has 1,500 to 4,000 parts per million of salt, compared with 33,000 parts per million for ocean water, 600 to 700 parts per million for water from the Colorado River and 500 parts per million for water from the delta, said Wes Danskin, a research hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, which studies the region's groundwater supply.
Desalinated groundwater costs 23 cents per gallon, cheaper than water sold by the water authority, which will cost 28 cents per gallon in September, said Mike Garrod, the Sweetwater Authority's engineering manager.
Desalinated seawater costs 31 to 34 cents per gallon, according to Poseidon Resources, which is building an ocean-water desalination plant in Carlsbad. Poseidon, however, has agreed to sell its water at 28 cents per gallon to contracting cities.
The cheapest source of water is fresh groundwater, which costs only 4 cents per gallon, but it is not always present in local aquifers.
Groundwater tastes just like imported water, uses less electricity to distribute because it is pumped closer to home, and is always in the ground, drought-proof, Garrod said.
"It is absolutely worth it," he said.
Sweetwater produces 2 million gallons of fresh groundwater and 4 million gallons of desalinated, brackish groundwater per day to supply 30 percent of the agency's average daily production of 21 million gallons. Its customers live in National City, the western portion of Chula Vista and the unincorporated area of Bonita.
Oceanside began pumping brackish groundwater from beneath the San Luis Rey River in 1994. It provides 20 percent of the city's water, said Lonnie Thibodeaux, Oceanside's water utilities director.
Oceanside is studying whether to drill wells closer to the coast and extract saltier water to expand its groundwater supply.
As for San Diego, some residents used groundwater before the city began buying water in the 1930s, said Marsi Steirer, the city's deputy director of water resources and planning.
In 2008, the city opened its first groundwater well, which cost $200,000 to build, downstream of San Vicente Dam. The water produced is being used by city residents.
In the next five years, San Diego expects to drill more wells along the San Diego River watershed; in the San Diego Formation Basin, in the southwestern part of the city, south of Interstate 8 and north of state Route 905; and in the San Pasqual Basin, along Santa Ysabel Creek upstream of Lake Hodges.
The growing interest in groundwater concerns the San Diego County Farm Bureau and the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club. Both are worried that overdrafting – the process of extracting groundwater beyond the aquifer's ability to sustain itself – could affect farmers and wildlife.
But county water authority and Sweetwater Authority officials said no municipality would be foolish enough to deplete its aquifers.
"We don't want to pump out more than Mother Nature puts in," Garrod said.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/05/1m5ground213211-going-well/
Where's the water?
County launches study of aquifers from Angwin to American Canyon
Napa Valley register-7/6/09
By Mike Treleven
Napa County wants to find out what it knows and what it doesn't about its underground aquifers, and is drilling through the data to get a clear assessment of the water supply under the heart of the valley.
Napa County has hired an engineering firm, Luhdorff & Scalmanini of Woodland, to go through the groundwater data and try to paint as full a picture of the water supply as possible from what might be sketchy information. The project is expected to take between seven months and a year and cost around $230,000.
What the engineers find could result in policy changes. Maybe the county will have to drill monitoring wells or ask private landowners if they would volunteer information or allow their wells to be monitored.
Jim Lincoln, chair of the natural resources committee at the Napa County Farm Bureau and vineyard manager for Beckstoffer Vineyards, said people get really nervous when you start talking groundwater, even studying groundwater. "They believe the next logical step is groundwater regulations, and that frightens a lot of people," he said.
But Lincoln said he believes the more information available, the better. "If there had been better information in the MST (Milliken-Sarco-Tulocay) and Carneros, maybe we could have made better land-use decisions," he said.
Lincoln believes sharing information and landowners working together is critical to helping solve their underground water problems in the MST, where the county and property owners are considering building a recycled water pipeline for agricultural uses and other options. "Their wells are not doing so good and they see working together is helping," he said.
Lincoln said that if a continuous picture of the county's groundwater situation had been maintained since the 1960s, when vineyard plantings began to intensify, it probably would have resulted in better planning and conservation of water.
"I see this (first phase) as positive. Everyone just needs to be careful of people's property and water rights. But we can't be afraid of information," Lincoln said.
Felix Riesenberg, principal water resources engineer for Napa County Public Works Department, said there is a lack of understanding of the current groundwater conditions up and down the valley.
"This particular effort is not to quantify, but is effort to understand the behaviors of the ground water basins," Riesenberg said.
He said some people are concerned about an overdraft — when more water is removed than is replaced in an underground aquifer. "That does not seem to be the case in the main Napa Valley basin," he said. "But every so often there seem to be issues in very specific locations."
Riesenberg said it is clear that MST is a deficit groundwater area, and that information is sketchy in Carneros — where there is a push to obtain recycled water. "We hear about Carneros, but it is hit or miss. They have issues from time to time and yet we don't have any data out there," Riesenberg said.
With a comprehensive study, "in the future the county can address issues more proactively. The goal is to improve our overall groundwater knowledge in the county. "People fear management (of groundwater), but that is not what this is about at this point.
The underground aquifers the county is focused on include the main basin on the valley floor, Carneros, MST, American Canyon, Angwin-Deer Park area, Pope Valley and Chiles Valley. "Primarily we want to look at areas where there are populations and developed agriculture," Riesenberg said.
"If you don't know what is going on, you won't know if you are having a problem later on," Riesenberg said. "We need to know the history to make a sound decision."
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2009/07/06/news/local/doc4a516d3bed5bb362237055.txt
Ukiah water crisis looms
Santa Rosa Press Democrat-7/4/09
By Glenda Anderson
Ukiah's water supply could be crippled when Russian River water levels begin dropping in coming weeks, city officials say.
Water flowing from Lake Mendocino into the Russian River can be reduced starting Monday from 75 cubic feet per second to 25 cfs to save water for fall salmon runs. Officials at the Sonoma County Water Agency, which controls the summer releases, said Thursday they would try to delay the reductions as long as possible.
When the river level drops, the sub-surface flows that supply two of Ukiah's major wells could all but disappear, according to city officials.
The wells supply 4.9 million gallons of the 5.2 million gallons the city currently can supply each day.
The city Thursday asked customers to cut their water use in half in preparation for potentially dramatic declines in the water supply. But they stopped short of mandatory rationing, for now. The city already prohibits washing cars, sidewalks or other hard surfaces in a manner that allows runoff.
"If everyone will conserve over these next few weeks, we think we probably can get through it," City Manager Jane Chambers said. The goal is to limit water use to 50 gallons per person per day, she said.
Meanwhile, Ukiah workers are scrambling to get a new well tested and hooked up to the system next week. Another well is being drilled but isn't expected to be on line until August.
Officials had hoped the new well would begin supplying 1.4million gallons a day on Monday, but the well needs to be disinfected and tested for bacteria. On Thursday, a 260-foot gap remained between the well on Gobbi Street and the hydrant that will serve as a temporary inlet to the city water system.
Later in the week is a better bet, said Alan Jamison, city treatment plant supervisor.
Even with the new well, residents still face a serious crisis if the underground river flow that feeds the existing water supply dramatically declines.
Normally, the city's 15,500 residents use up to 6 million gallons a day in the summer, most of it for irrigation purposes.
Voluntary conservation efforts have decreased consumption to just over 3.7 million gallons a day, but that's still more than would be available if the two river-fed wells fail.
"This is a supply-and-demand issue. We may not have the resources to sell," Chambers said.
No one really knows what will happen to the water supply when the river level drops, but it's not expected to be good. The river will be at its lowest since the wells were drilled and three years of drought already have drawn down the underground aquifers, Chambers said.
"We're in conditions we have never encountered before," Chambers said.
One unavoidable result will be higher costs for customers.
The city will need to recoup the cost of the two wells — estimated at about $2 million — along with revenue lost because of water conservation efforts, Chambers said.
"Water rates will have to go up," she said.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090704/ARTICLES/907049952
City restricts fountain to conserve water
Marin Independent Journal-7/5/09
Novato city officials said they are turning off the spray feature of a fountain at Arroyo Avichi Park, next to Rancho Elementary School, for the rest of the summer in order to conserve water.
Officials said the spray feature will be closed as of Tuesday.
http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_12760039?IADID=Search-www.marinij.com-www.marinij.com
Every drop counts
Wastewater recycling may benefit both sides of the border
San Diego Union-Tribune-7/6/09
By Sandra Dibble
Amid birthday picnics, brisk morning strolls and visits to the botanical garden, visitors to Tijuana's largest public park might not notice the radical change that has taken place: The trees, plants and grass are being irrigated with treated wastewater.
After years of planning, Tijuana's water-reuse program was launched last month in the city's fast-growing eastern end. Every day, 470,000 gallons are piped to the sprawling Morelos Park, a green oasis surrounded by parched hillsides packed with small houses.
"For every drop of that recycled water that we use, that's one less drop that we have that we have to carry from the Colorado River," said Hernando Durán, head of the Baja California Public Service Commission in Tijuana.
Although it will take years to develop, the program marks the start of what authorities say is an important effort to use treated wastewater in the city, reducing the city's dependence on the Colorado River, which is the source for 90 percent of the region's drinking water.
The project is the result of an effort by the state to expand sewage treatment in Tijuana. The aim is to clean up discharges into the ocean and eliminate the cross-border contamination that plagues San Diego beaches when it rains.
Named for the purple pipes that carry reclaimed water, the project is known as Proyecto Morado, or Purple Project. For now, it involves only a small portion of Tijuana's flow of treated wastewater, most of which is discharged into the Pacific Ocean. But by 2013, the state hopes to find ways to reuse as much as 20 percent of the treated effluent.
The construction of two new treatment plants in eastern Tijuana, one of which began operating in March, is central to the plan. Their operation not only launches the water-reuse project, but will serve to decrease the pressure on Tijuana's overburdened main sewage treatment plant at Punta Bandera. With the new plants' operation, the discharge that flows down the Tijuana River channel toward San Diego will also become cleaner.
While off to a modest start, Tijuana is one of few cities in Mexico exploring water reuse, said Jose Luis Castro, a Monterrey-based researcher at the Colegio de La Frontera Norte.
Other Mexican cities with water-reuse programs include Monterrey, Chihuahua and the Baja California capital of Mexicali, where the state utility sells untreated wastewater from its Zaragoza Treatment Plant to a thermoelectric plant, which treats the water and uses it in cooling towers.
Baja California's work on water-reclamation projects reflects the interest and hurdles faced by U.S. states and cities that also draw drinking water from the Colorado River. The city of San Diego has two reclamation plants and 80 miles of purple pipe, but it does not have enough irrigation customers to buy all the water that it can treat.
Until now, Tijuana has had several small water-reuse projects – the Real del Mar Development near Punta Bandera uses treated water in its landscaping, as does the Campestre Country Club. But opening the three-mile purple pipeline connecting Morelos Park to the new Arturo Herrera Plant is seen as the first step in a broader effort to find uses for treated water.
At full capacity, the Arturo Herrera Plant will treat the sewage of about 265,000 people to advanced secondary level, clean enough for irrigation. The state is building a similar but smaller plant, La Morita, near Tecate. It should be completed by the end of the year.
Until last month, Morelos Park relied on well water for its landscaping. Park officials say they have adapted easily to the change, and staff members say they hope to draw more water to expand the landscaped area.
"For our green areas, this is a magnificent thing," said Alberto Palacio Bórquez, director of the park's nursery and landscaping, who toured the treatment plant with fellow employees.
Next year, the state expects to extend piping down the Tijuana River channel – where gravity carries it toward the city's Rio Zone and the international border – first for irrigation of public spaces, but potentially to sell to businesses.
In 2011, the public service commission plans to begin pumping a portion of the treated water to the Mesa de Otay district for use in school campuses, parks, traffic circles, sports facilities and industry.
But while applauding the efforts, some say not enough work has been done in securing uses for the water, and ways to deliver it.
"Who's going to pipe that water from where it is to the industrial parks? That's very costly," said Oscar Romo, coastal training director at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve in Imperial Beach and a longtime activist in Tijuana sewage issues. In addition, he said, "You need to create a market, and the creation of that market is perhaps the biggest challenge."
No matter what the reuse market, opening the plants spells important improvements for the coastlines of San Diego and Tijuana.
Baja California has also taken steps to make sure large discharges of treated water from the plants down the Tijuana River don't spill into the United States and harm the federally protected saltwater estuary in Imperial Beach. Mexico has spent $6 million to ensure that does not happen, said Doug Liden, an environmental engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Diego.
The state has built a system to capture the treated water before it can cross into the United States and pipe it for discharge into the ocean several miles south of the border.
Although cross-border flows have virtually stopped during dry weather, sewage-contaminated water from Tijuana has continued to hit the Tijuana estuary and San Diego beaches during and after heavy rainfall. But with the new plants, "even during storm events, you're going to have better-quality water, when it does cross the border," Liden said.
Tucson rainwater harvesting law drawing interest
Associated press-7/6/09
By Arthur H. Rotstein
Long dependent on wellwater and supplies sent hundreds of miles by canal from the Colorado River, this desert city will soon harvest some of its 12 inches of annual rainfall to help bolster its water resources.
Under the nation's first municipal rainwater harvesting ordinance for commercial projects, Tucson developers building new business, corporate or commercial structures will have to supply half of the water needed for landscaping from harvested rainwater starting next year.
Already, the idea has become so popular that at least a half-dozen other Arizona communities are looking to emulate Tucson's approach.
"What we learned frankly is that we're wasting a lot of water. It's been our tradition here to shove it into the streets and get rid of it as soon as possible," said David Pittman, southern Arizona director of the Arizona Builders' Alliance.
Rainwater harvesting is also catching on nationwide, with Georgia, Colorado and other states legislating to allow or expand use of various types.
From Portland, Ore., and Seattle to San Francisco and Austin, Texas, voluntary rainwater harvesting is irrigating plants or being used in other ways instead of merely falling onto roofs, parking lots or pavement and being drained into sewers as wastewater.
"There's only so much water. Unfortunately, Americans are terribly, terribly wasteful with water, and we're running out," said Tim Pope, who builds harvesting systems in the San Juan Islands near Seattle and heads the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association.
Water supplies from the Colorado River are likely to diminish from effects of global warming and increasing demands from other states in the West. And groundwater is carefully managed to prevent overpumping the water that supplies the 1 million people who live in growing metropolitan Tucson.
That makes conservation and rainwater harvesting all the more important.
Largely rural Santa Fe County in New Mexico has required harvesting using cisterns or similar water-collection structures, pumps and drip irrigation for commercial and residential development since last year.
It had allowed passive harvesting, by which runoff is channeled into soil from rooftops, parking lots and the like.
That's the approach Tucson's commercial ordinance takes, though active harvesting is allowed too.
Landscaping needs account for about 40 percent of water use in commercial development and for about 45 percent of household water consumption, "so there is huge potential," said Tucson City Council member Rodney Glassman, who spearheaded efforts to achieve the ordinance.
Rainwater harvesting holds particular appeal in the desert because of the combination of drought conditions and limited sources.
Glassman, a first-term councilman, campaigned in 2007 for rainwater harvesting in new commercial development and systems that capture water from washing and bathing in new homes.
Last year, Tucson's water utility delivered more than 131,000 acre-feet of water, including 26,000 acre-feet of reclaimed wastewater. According to Glassman, experts estimate more than 185,000 acre-feet of rainfall is available per year.
An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to cover an acre a foot deep or supply about two households for a year.
Glassman, who holds a doctorate in arid land resource sciences, said he noticed "a giant disconnect between the need and desire for water conservation and public policy at the local level."
Passing the rainwater harvesting ordinance "makes conservation the rule rather than the exception," he said.
In addition to adopting the harvesting ordinance, Tucson's City Council also approved another measure requiring a plumbing hookup in new homes so that wastewater from washing machines, sinks and showers may be sent to separate drain lines, if homeowners want, at an additional expense. Those lines can be connected to irrigation systems.
Glassman brought developers, architects, environmentalists and ecology advocates together, who eventually proposed a law calling for 50 percent of landscaping needs for new commercial projects to come from rainwater.
"We ended up with a compromise, a practical solution that results in 50 percent less water that has to be diverted from our city water system that has to go on desert plants," Tucson developer George Larsen said. "Nobody thinks it's perfect, but everybody winds up thinking it works."
A remodeling project at a Target big-box store on Tucson's northwest side reflects the kind of changes the rainwater harvesting ordinance will bring.
Its parking lot and garden borders are being re-landscaped and incorporate some of the ordinance's elements even though it isn't yet required. The plan features 300 mostly native trees, such as palo verdes and sweet acacias, planted in depressed areas amid the 620 parking spaces. Shrubs also will be grown along the site's border areas.
Rainfall will run off from the asphalt into the soil strips, sloped lower than the parking bays.
"The more that you can depress areas, the more water that you're going to retain," said Eric Barrett, the project's landscape architect. He said the site previously had only about four native trees and some palm trees and one bank of oleanders, with no water retention.
"Now it'll hold 15,000 cubic feet of water, which equates to roughly 112,200 gallons per rainstorm."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hK53Xv7zL1JzOH4-eCD_VXkX-T3AD998CNMG0
Water fights
Much of the world is desperately short of fresh water. Are future water wars inevitable?
Macleans.Ca-7/6/09
Every few days, another farmer commits suicide in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, the agricultural heartland. Many, according to Australian evolutionary biologist Tim Flannery, haven't had any water in almost four years—in places, the allocation of irrigation water has been cut to zero.
Their farms have dried up, leaving a dusty, wind-whipped scrubland. Cattle bellow from hunger through the night. "Despair is an enormous problem," says Flannery. "There is no sign the situation will ever improve." Government has compiled a suicide watch list.
The world's flattest, driest and most vulnerable inhabited continent is gravely low on water. The "Mighty Murray"—Australia's Mississippi—is on the verge of collapse: in places, children can hop over it. National production of rice has fallen from a million tons annually to 21,000 tons last year, contributing to soaring global food prices. Cotton and citrus are also crashing.
The problem is now creeping into the cities. Earlier this year, the national water commissioner announced that, as of 2010, he could no longer guarantee security of supply of water for critical use to Adelaide, says Flannery, author of the acclaimed book The Weather Makers. "That's Australia's fifth-largest city." Two years ago, the prime minister urged Aussies to "pray for rain—literally, and without any irony."
Australians, proudly "sunburnt" according to the hackneyed national myth, have withstood long dry spells before. But the current seven-year drought has come to be known as "the big dry." It is the longest, hottest and most devastating in the country's history. To Flannery, Australia, the world's 15th-biggest economy, is a climate canary, learning first the hard lessons on the limits of water in an era of shifting weather patterns. He reckons the western U.S. may be hit next.
The crisis in Australia is an extreme version of shortages hitting the U.S. Southwest, Israel and North Africa, focusing attention on what may be the most immediate environmental crisis facing the world: shortages of water. Far more than oil, our societies run on water. And unlike oil, there is no substitute for it. Yet an increasing body of evidence suggests there simply isn't enough to support future population and economic growth, not to mention waste born of years of abundance in places like Canada, one of the world's biggest water consumers.
From Tofino to Tucson, hydrologists, limnologists and government officials are reporting similar climatic trends: a longer dry season, less snow, more rain and earlier spring melts. "Half the annual flow of the Fraser now occurs nine days early," says Steve Litke of the Fraser Basin Council, a Vancouver NGO that studies the health of the massive watershed—home to two-thirds of B.C.'s population.
These shifting climate patterns are changing "where, when and how" water falls and flows, eroding our ability to manage water for large populations, says Meena Palaniappan, with the San Francisco-based Pacific Institute.
Take California: snowpack from the Sierra Nevada mountain range provides the bulk of its water. But even the most optimistic climate models are showing a 30 to 70 per cent reduction of the Sierra Nevada snowpack by the second half of the century. This year, snowfall in the mountain range was down to about two-thirds of normal.
By 2050, California's population will have grown to 60 million, up from 36 million today. The "exploding" human population in the U.S. Southwest and its shrinking clean water supply are clearly on two "colliding paths," acknowledges Pat Mulroy, the outspoken head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She oversees Las Vegas, the most vulnerable metro area on the continent, still "very much in the throes of an ugly drought" now entering its ninth year.
By contrast, Canada, with 20 per cent of the world's freshwater resources, and less than one per cent of its population, looks like the Saudi Arabia of water. China, for example, has less than half Canada's supply and 40 times as many people. Still, scientists warn that Canada is facing a distribution problem: 80 per cent of the country's water resources are locked in the north, while 80 per cent of the population is packed along the U.S. border.
Freshwater is scarce in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, says David Schindler, one of the country's top water scientists. There, he adds, lakes were retreating even in the 20th century: the wettest century of the past millennium, according to tree-ring fieldwork done by the universities of Arizona and Regina. Schindler predicts a likely mid-century return to '30s-era, "dust-bowl" conditions—yes, even in Manitoba, land of 100,000 lakes—noting a 30 to 85 per cent reduction in summer river flows in the previous 30 years.
As aquifers under Beijing, Delhi, San Antonio and dozens more cities with mushrooming populations dry up, some experts suggest the era of cheap, easy access to water is coming to an end. Palaniappan calls it "peak water": the point when demand outstrips renewable supply, and resources trend ominously downward. Humans, she says, are extracting and polluting it faster than it can be replenished.
"In the developing world, more than 90 per cent of all sewage, and 70 per cent of industrial waste, is dumped untreated into surface water," says Robert Sandford, Canadian chair of the UN Water for Life initiative, noting that 75 per cent of the river water flowing through China's cities is unfit for drinking or fishing. This summer, Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., which supplies nearly all the water for Las Vegas, fell to 43 per cent capacity.
The Scripps Institute of Oceanography has given it 50-50 odds of surviving to 2021. Levels on the Sea of Galilee, the largest freshwater source in Israel—locked into year five of a devastating drought—have fallen to within inches of the "danger line." Last year, Atlanta came within 90 days of running out of water.
The economic impact of water scarcity is grim: in the past two years, new power plants in four U.S. states, as well as several dozen commercial and residential development projects in California, have been cancelled because developers weren't able to secure long-term water supplies.
This summer, as California approaches its fourth year of drought, up to 30,000 workers will be laid off in its 650-km-long Central Valley, the country's agricultural engine. Economic losses could top a half-billion dollars. In Australia, they've surpassed $20 billion.
As droughts and crises multiply, academics have begun grappling with the darker question of whether such shortages will push citizens—and even countries—into hostile factions of water-rich and water-poor.
By mid-century, some of the world's most populous, troubled regions are predicted to be dangerously water-scarce, including southern and central Asia, the Middle East and northeast Africa.
This spring, a landmark report compiled by 24 UN agencies warned of a near future marred by war and conflict over water, sparked by so-called water bankruptcies.
But while it is newly popular to suggest the world's next resource wars will be fought over water, and not oil, researchers at Oregon State University have found reason for optimism. Of the 1,831 documented disputes over freshwater resources in the last 50 years, 67 per cent were co-operative, while only 28 per cent resulted in conflict.
The Indus Commission, a water sharing treaty between India and Pakistan, not only survived two wars, but, in the middle of one, India made treaty payments to Pakistan, says study author Aaron Wolf. Shared water can act like an "elixir," bringing warring sides to the table to co-operate, he says.
Often, however, this looks like "asymmetrical co-operation," where terms are dictated by the stronger side, says former water engineer Mark Zeitoun, who teaches international development in Britain. Consider the Nile basin, often cited as an example of multilateral co-operation over shared water resources. A 1959 agreement grants Egypt 87 per cent of the river's waters, and Sudan the remaining 13 per cent.
Ethiopia, whose highlands supply 86 per cent of Nile water, receives nothing (Egypt has threatened to bomb Ethiopia should it attempt to build a dam). After a decade of "co-operation" under the auspices of the CIDA-funded Nile Basin Initiative, regional hegemon Egypt retains its 87 per cent stake. Ethiopia still gets nothing.
Tensions are rising as shortages intensify, says Zeitoun, noting simmering water conflicts along the Tigris and Brahmaputra, and intra-state conflicts in China's Yellow Basin and the Basra region of Iraq. Two Pakistani provinces, Punjab and Sindh—the last in line for the Indus water before it reaches the sea—are routinely at odds over water.
In Sindh, many fishers and farmers reliant on the rapidly declining delta ecosystem have simply given up and fled to cities—water refugees. In Darfur, where rainfall is down 30 per cent over 40 years, evaporating water holes and disappearing pasture helped push farmers and herders into civil war.
History has clearly shown that we solve water shortages through trade and international agreements, and not by picking up a gun. The shortfalls that await us, however, have no historical precedent. You can't buy water from a country that is afraid it is not going to have enough for its own people.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/06/water-fights/
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