The Old /New California Water Bond

from CA PUC

To great fanfare only available during a drought, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a compromise $7.5 billion dollar water bill that will face the voters in the fall. California is in the throes of the worst drought on record with 82% of the state in extreme drought conditions and mandatory water restrictions in place. Only the desert in the southeastern corner of California has seen rainfall during the last few weeks. Thought that rain was extremely heavy, rainfall in this arid region will have no impact on the water shortages and seriously low reservoir levels reported throughout the rest of the state.

In the spirit of never letting any disaster go to political waste the California legislature and Governor has shaken the dust off the 2009 water bond proposal and come to an agreement on the new bill with lots of little gifts for every water interest. $7.1 billion of the bill is new spending; the remaining $400 million is redirected from older bonds to new purposes. This is a reduction in the $11 billion for the 2009 and 2001 versions and an increase from the $6 billion originally proposed by the Governor. The water bill which can be read in its entirety at this link includes:

• $1.495 billion for ecosystem and watershed protection and restoration- repair and restore streams, wetlands and fish habitats. 
• $ 810 million for projects to improve regional water self-reliance, security and adapt to the effects on water supply from climate change.
• $725 million for grants or loans for water recycling for sewage and installation of advanced treatment technology projects for sewage treatment plants. 
• $900 million for projects to restore or protect groundwater that serves as or has served as a drinking water supply.
• $2.7 billion for water storage projects that improve the operation of the state water system, are cost effective, and provide a net improvement in ecosystem and water quality conditions as determined by the California Water Commission, a nine member board appointed by the Governor. Seven members of the Commission are chosen for their general expertise related to the control, storage, and beneficial use of water and two are chosen for their knowledge of the environment. 

The state legislators from the central valley expect that $2.7 billion for water storage will go to build two new dams. However, the hoped for dams face tremendous opposition from environmental groups. In addition, the life of old dams in California is limited and cannot reasonably be prolonged due to the eroding geology. The reservoirs on Lake Meade, Hetch Hetchy and the Stanislaus River are slowly becoming silted and will be in my lifetime vast bodies of mud. California might use this money to ensure the continued supply of water from the regions or those reservoirs.

Even in “normal” years, the water resources in California have become stretched. Water deliveries from some key water projects have been permanently reduced due to environmental restrictions, while other systems struggle with leaking pipes, and canals, aging infrastructure and other challenges. Sporadic wet years have encouraged the expansion of lands under cultivation even as the population has grown and all the slack in the system is gone. California appears to be experiencing longer periods of drought and needs to adjust to a future of changing rain and snowfall patterns.

California needs a rational management of all water resources available within the state to ensure water supplies for necessary human consumption (not green lawns) and appropriate agriculture that employs smart irrigation – shifting a large portion of the crops irrigated using flood irrigation to sprinkler and drip systems. It may not be reasonable to have rice farmers in California no matter how senior their water rights. Water cannot be used beyond what is sustainable and hard choices must be made. In addition California must manage its groundwater resources. Proper management and use of groundwater as nature’s reservoir used in a sustainable way is essential in developing a sustainable California.

USGS Poland 1977

California, water rights have generally been allocated on the basis of seniority. Senior rights-holders have more reliable and thus more valuable water supplies. Legally, some of these water rights holders actually hold long-term “contract entitlements” rather than “rights” to surface water; in these cases, they have contracts with federal or state agencies that run large water projects and hold the associated water rights. The federally-owned Central Valley Project (CVP) is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) that grants and negotiates contracts and most of the contracts will expire in the next 15 years. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) “owns” for the California state-owned State Water Project (SWP). However, what California does about their water crisis will impact the rest of the United States.

California grows $45 billion dollars of food a year. Some of the nuts and fruits they grow are only grown in California. Without irrigation, crops could never be grown in the arid and semi-arid lands of California where irrigation consumes more than 75% of the consumed water supply. The water rights system as conceived and administered in the western states was not designed to conserve water or to be sustainable. It was developed in a time when population was still sparse, water supplies were believed to be plentiful and development and growth was to be encouraged. This water rights scheme has resulted in non-sustainable use of groundwater and unsustainable agricultural practices in a state that no longer has any connection to their water resources. All the water comes from somewhere else, unseen. However, it may not be too late, but keep your eyes on Iran to see how this might play out. Well wishes to those in Napa recovering from the earthquake..

Running on Empty in California

Attached to a fast-tracked Senate jobs bill is a piece of legislation from California Senator Dianne Feinstein disguised as an employment program for California's Central Valley. California's Democratic Senator Feinstein has proposed legislation that would divert a large portion of California's public water supply to Southern California agribusinesses to allow the farms to plant. This is the beginning of the end. The short sighted measures to solve the loudest problem. Senator Feinstein has abandoned her environmental principals to try and help the agribusinesses that depend on reliable water deliveries by increasing the agricultural water allocation four fold in the next two years. However, this will not solve what is the fundamental problem. There is not enough water.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (Delta) is a natural estuary of more than 738,000 acres, the Delta is the key pathway linking the water transfers from northern to southern California. This is how more than 25 million people and 2.5 million acres of productive farmland receive their water. The Delta is a patchwork of nearly 60 islands and tracts surrounded by natural and man-made channels much of which is below sea level. The Delta relies on more than a 1,000 miles of levees to protect land and key infrastructure from floods and daily high tides. Delta levees prevent salty water from San Francisco Bay from intruding into the Delta and contaminating the fresh water that supplies communities and farms. The Delta waterways convey water from Northern California rivers to pumping facilities in the southern Delta.

The SWP was constructed in the 1960s and early 1970s by the Department of Water Resources. Construction of the CVP began in 1935 and various facilities were added in subsequent decades. Except for the construction of the SWP’s Coastal Aqueduct in the 1990s, no significant improvements have been made to either system in nearly 30 years. Modern day California exists because of massive water diversions and the water infrastructure built in the past. Although 75% of precipitation falls in the northern portion of the state, more than 75% of the demand for water is in the southern portion of the state. California’s elaborate network of water storage and delivery systems has allowed the state to meet it diverse and ever growing water needs year-round by storing and moving water when and where it is needed and mining irreplaceable groundwater supplies. Water demand has continued to grow

Only in drought years is the true stress on the system obvious. Precipitation varies widely from year to year. Multi-year droughts have occurred throughout the state’s history, as have devastating floods. In California varied climate it’s possible to have both floods and drought in the same year. California’s water system was developed over decades to address that variability and provide more reliable water supplies year-round. The original intent to smooth the variations in annual precipitation was corrupted to divert water to the most powerful. California has a long history of water wars over water rights and diversions. State officials recently projected that California’s population will reach 50 million by 2032 and 60 million by 2050. There simply is not enough water. California local water agencies have invested in water recycling, conservation, groundwater storage and other strategies to stretch supplies, but the demand has outstripped supply for over 50 years as evidenced by the groundwater usage in the central valley.

The truth is that California has been using more water than is renewably available to support the population, businesses and agriculture of the state and the majority of water, almost 80% goes to agriculture. For more than a half a century the Central Valley of California has been one of the most productive agriculture regions of the world. This has been made possible by the ample supply of water used for irrigation. The limit to California’s agricultural is water availability. Water available is a combination of surface water diversions and groundwater pumping. Approximately one sixth of the irrigated land in the United States is in the Central Valley (Bureau of Reclamation, 1994) and approximately one eighth of all groundwater pumped in the United States is pumped in the Central Valley. California uses almost 31 billion gallons of water a day for irrigation. Agriculture uses 80% of the water to produce 2% of the revenue. Either food in America is grossly underpriced, or California is misallocating their resources. This is 351 gallons of water a day for each agricultural dollar earned each year. While a portion of irrigated water is recharged to groundwater, some is lost and California does not have enough water available annually to keep up this usage level. It is too much demand for water and cannot continue. This is a misallocation of our water resources and to add an $11 billion bond to build more water infrastructure to try to squeeze a little more water out of the system will not change the fact that there is not enough water for this to continue, thought maintenance of the existing infrastructure is essential for continued life in southern California. The wealth of the giant agricultural ranches in California is based on the cheap water for irrigation and these agribusiness will fight to keep their wealth and the majority of the annual water flow of the state.

Water allocations in the state exceed the entire water budget available. The time has come for California to determine how much of it’s water can be allocated to agriculture in good years and bad and limit agriculture to the size that can be supported by allocated water.