Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
August 17, 2009
Lake Tahoe approaches natural rim; Truckee River flow slows
Nevada Appeal News Service
On the prowl for water-use scofflaws
L.A. Times
When it comes to our lawns, brown is golden
L.A. Times
MMWD meeting moved to Showcase Theater
Marin Independent Journal
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Lake Tahoe approaches natural rim; Truckee River flow slows
Nevada Appeal News Service-8/16/09
By Greyson Howard
As Lake Tahoe's water level drops to less than a foot from its natural rim the Truckee River is getting lower and slower with it.
Water stops flowing through Tahoe's dam into the Truckee River when the lake drops below its natural rim (6,223 feet in elevation) — an event that may occur this fall unless precipitation picks up, said Dave Wathen, hydrologist for the Water Master's Office in Reno.
Tahoe is currently .93 feet above the natural rim, at 6,223.93 feet.
“For the last three years we were hovering right above the rim, but this year we're probably going to hit the rim,” Wathen said.
As of Wednesday, 200 cubic feet per second was flowing through the dam, and that rate is decreasing by five to 10 cubic feet per second each day, Wathen said.
This year, early-summer storms helped, Wathen said, but now the wind associated with the unusual summer weather is accelerating evaporation on Tahoe, he said.
“It takes a lot of water to fill Tahoe; we'll need a pretty major winter to get out of this hole we're in,” Wathen said. “If it's another average or less-than-average winter, the chances of running low during the high demand season are much increased.”
Truckee River operators open and close dams to maintain a minimum flow of 500 cubic feet per second measured in Floriston, called the Floriston rate.
This year, Wathen said the Truckee isn't in danger of dipping below that rate until late fall, although operators are relying on other reservoirs earlier than normal.
“Now we are relying on daily changes at Prosser Reservoir, and we'll start supplementing more with Boca,” Wathen said. “When we run out we won't be able to make the Floriston rate, which we expect to happen in the end of October or early November.”
Bill Hauck of the Truckee Meadows Water Authority said he's also hoping for a good winter, but said the authority will have enough water to get the Truckee Meadows area into the next wet season.
“If I had a crystal ball I'd like to say we'll have at least an average year — that's all I'm hoping for,” Hauck said.
Things aren't bad enough, however, to dip into Donner Lake for drought supplies, he said.
“It's pretty much a typical year for this time of year on Donner Lake,” Hauck said. “Sometime in the fall we'll start making releases — we have to have two gates open by mid-November for flood control.”
He said the authority never has had to use Donner Lake for emergency drought supplies.#
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20090816/NEWS/908159985/1001/NONE&parentprofile=1058
On the prowl for water-use scofflaws
L.A. Times-8/16/09
By Esmeralda Bermudez
It was just after 9 a.m. when William Mims got busted in a Hancock Park driveway.
Slowly, he set down the gushing hose, which lacked an automatic shut-off nozzle, stepped away from the gray BMW he was washing and put his hands up.
"Hey, man, I confess. I confess. I was using just the hose," he told Kevin Cato, a Department of Water and Power water conservation officer. "I won't do it again."
Since June 1, Cato and about a dozen other workers -- water cops, as some residents call them -- have been on the prowl in search of lawn-loving Angelenos who don't know or don't heed the city's tightened water restrictions.
Nearly 700 citations have been issued to homeowners, apartment building managers, fast-food franchise owners, church clerks and Caltrans sites. Under more lax restrictions in place before June, the DWP even cited one of its own facilities.
"Everyone's fair game," Cato said.
Excuses abound as Cato appears in his fuel-efficient Prius, catching people with sprinklers raging and hoses flowing. They blame broken timers, clueless gardeners or -- as did Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was publicly chided in 2007 for excessive water use -- newly installed irrigation systems and water-loving gophers.
Try as they might, offenders can't hide the evidence. The precious commodity is already flowing down gutters and driveways, glistening off blades of grass and rosebushes when Cato rolls up.
"Some people look at me and say, 'Go ahead and write me up. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do,' " Cato said.
Most of the time, wrongdoers such as Mims rush to comply, and Cato, a 21-year DWP veteran, counsels and educates rather than reaching for his citation booklet. He leaves behind blue-and-white fliers that highlight a list of no-nos, such as using sprinklers any day except Monday and Thursday and washing down sidewalks and driveways.
Since the restrictions took effect, fewer than 30 water users have actually been hit with fines, which begin at $100 for a first offense. Most of the citations issued so far have been only warnings.
With water conservation officers patrolling only during regular business hours, some self-appointed water vigilantes have stepped in. They watch for mysterious puddles, broken sprinkler heads and after-hours hand-watering across neighborhoods and business strips. Then they send complaints -- more than 4,200 so far -- via phone, e-mail and most recently on Twitter.
"We've had a very high level of response and recognition that we're all in this together," said H. David Nahai, DWP general manager. "There have always been exceptions, either due to ignorance or other reasons, but we do try to reach them."
Higher water bills and confusion over new watering rules have driven some residents to surrender and let weeds and dirt take over lots, particularly in the San Fernando Valley where many lots are larger and temperatures hotter than in other parts of the city.
Concerned about property values in the area, Councilman Greig Smith recently introduced several motions to expand the sprinkler allowance to three days.
He also wants exemptions for fire-prone areas such as Porter Ranch.
"We've been talking for decades about greening L.A., so it doesn't make sense to put forth a policy that's going to make everyone's lawns go brown," said Matt Myerhoff, Smith's spokesman.
The water restrictions are prompting some property owners and garden clubs to ditch water-guzzling lawns for drought-resistant plant beds, mulch, cobblestone and rocks. Artificial-grass vendors, backed by a city rebate program, have also seen an uptick in business since water mandates took effect.
"You've got people in certain parts of the Valley sitting on half-acre lots and now they've been told, 'You can only water twice a week,' " said Duane Ruth, owner of a local distributor of Synlawn, an artificial grass. "You might as well tell them you're taking their house away."
The restrictions, which are tougher than in nearby cities such as Beverly Hills, Pasadena and Long Beach, are apparently paying off. Recent figures released by the DWP show water demand citywide reached a 32-year low for June, down 11% compared with the same period in 2008.
Los Angeles as a whole has done well in saving water in the last 25 years. The population has grown by roughly a million people, but total water use has remained the same.
Still, with the city about to enter its fourth consecutive drought year, officials plan to keep pushing the need to conserve.
In Van Nuys, Jerry Pollack hopes his newly planted Japanese maple survives it all.
Pollack, 80, said he is well aware of the ban on watering between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., but now and then he sneaks out to his front yard to quench the thirst of his trees and rosebushes.
One day recently, he got caught, hose in hand, and was written up by a water conservation officer. An attempt to explain his way out of it proved futile.
"Theoretically, I wasn't breaking the law," Pollack said. "I just didn't want my tree to die. I wasn't watering all over the place."
On his way back to DWP headquarters, Cato spotted his last violator before lunch break: St. Nicholas Cathedral along West 3rd Street. A brook of foamy water flowed from the church's gated courtyard down the road for several blocks.
Cato parked his Prius and sat still for a moment, looking up at the building.
"Forgive me, Lord," he said before stepping out of the car, citation book in hand, and heading toward the stream of water.#
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water-cops16-2009aug16,0,1812243,print.story
When it comes to our lawns, brown is golden
L.A. Times-8/17/09
By Emily Green
Opinion
You know it's the silly season when a member of the Los Angeles City Council weighs in on the importance of green lawns during a drought, as the 12th District's Greig Smith did several weeks ago.
Yet the council member's motion, which sought to reduce watering times but increase days of the week when watering could be done, exemplifies the frustration of homeowners across Southern California. "For more than a decade, we have had a policy of greening, not browning Los Angeles," Smith said.
It's poignant, this bid to find a water-savvy way to keep Los Angeles green. It cuts straight to the heart of the problem with the way we garden. It's color. We, in common with Smith, have been taught that green is good and brown is bad.
In fact, the opposite is true. In the high heat of summer, brown is good, and green, at least unlikely shows of it, is bad.
Add to that: Tan is good; yellow is good; orange, maroon, gray, aquamarine are all good too, for those are the colors of the buckwheats, sages, manzanitas and deer and canyon grasses of our native chaparral. Those are the colors of our native flora as its spring greens give way to the infinitely more subtle plant palette of California in summertime.
As we in Southern California grapple with the twin threats of global warming and a shrinking water supply, we have perhaps one last chance to understand the message of the tawny colors rising in the hills just beyond our sprinkler zones and drip lines. They tell us two things: First, that native plants have the good sense to become dormant from August through October, when heat is high and water is scarce. Second, we'd be well advised to plant gardens that follow suit.
Those smarter, more beautiful gardens could contain lawn, provided that we selected the right grass cultivars, watered less and allowed the plants to complete their natural cycles. That would include allowing lawns to become brown in summer.
Left to their own devices, the green lawns that we prize year-round would only be fleeting expressions of spring. As new-season grass grows, and spring becomes summer, that grass marshals its energy to push up seed-heads. This is true whether the plant is wheat, prairie grass or our own utterly beautiful California muhly grass.
That golden progress toward renewal is so synonymous with this country that it gave rise to "America the Beautiful" -- amber waves of grain and all that. Even in England, a land with the kind of rainfall that produced lawn culture in the first place, the rolling fields of Thomas Hardy's Dorset are blond, not green, in August. Anyone who strolls the Royal Parks of London in midsummer will be struck by how right the bathers lolling around the Serpentine look in that field of sunburned grass.
But asserting a preference for watery greens in the high heat of summer illustrates a distinctly American break from the ideal. Historically, what has been good enough for our anthem-writers and the queen of England has not been good enough for Southern Californians. We water ever more frantically to suspend our gardens in a forced approximation of perpetual spring.
And yet beyond green there are plants that made California the horticultural envy of the world, as explorers began sending our poppy seeds, coral bells and yarrows back to the Old World for domestication.
Yet while English and Dutch horticulturists tamed our state flower and our lilacs, many of the best of our native plants, specimens profoundly hooked into our dry climate, could not be moved. So pity those who can't grow white sage, Salvia apiana, whose silver foliage is elegant year-round, but which in summer tosses up 3-, 4-, 5-foot-long flowered spires. As the flowers fade, the stalks become shot with mauve, purple and maroon, drying on the those wildly expressive limbs. Not once in the year is white sage green, and not once in the year is it anything short of spectacular.
Much has been written about why we've jumped on the treadmill of green and lawns, my personal favorite being Virginia Scott Jenkins' "The Lawn: a History of an American Obsession." But the fact is, we didn't appreciate the environmental cost of that look when we first became addicted. Now we do, and our water agencies are moving from cajolery to bribes, with cash-for-grass programs in an effort to sell us on a new, more water-efficient ideal.
In that effort, they and we couldn't be luckier. California has one of the most diverse and resilient floras in the world. Just outside of our pruned and planted property lines, the wild hills tell us what's not only sustainable, but beautiful. And it's brown.
Emily Green blogs at chanceofrain.com and writes the weekly Dry Garden column for The Times. She is completing a book on water in the Great Basin Desert.#
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-green17-2009aug17,0,2020812.story
MMWD meeting moved to Showcase Theater
Marin Independent Journal-8/15/09
The Marin Municipal Water District board will tackle the controversial proposed desalination project in a meeting set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Showcase Theater of the Marin Center Exhibit Hall at 10 Avenue of the Flags in San Rafael.
Officials moved the meeting from San Rafael City Hall to the theater in order to accommodate what's expected to be a large crowd, as the board considers whether to continue to pursue desalination as an option for Marin's future water supply.
The board will consider selection and approval of a water supply project from among alternatives analyzed in an environmental impact report.
A decision on a desalination option is necessary before the water district could proceed with future steps such as permitting, design, construction or operation of a facility.
Critics have urged the board to pursue conservation measures outlined in a recent report by James Fryer of the group Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consumer organization.#
http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_13133316?IADID=Search-www.marinij.com-www.marinij.com
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