California Closing in on Water Management Solution? Maybe Not...

Following up on this post, it seems I was overly optimistic about the California legislature's ability to address the state's growing water crisis. They've made almost no progress since I last posted on this, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

Lawmakers have been chewing over water legislation for weeks, unable to seal a final deal despite threats from the governor, weekend negotiating sessions and their own deep desire to disprove the widespread perception that they can't get anything done.

Unusually for California's legislature, the sticking points aren't all falling along partisan lines so much as aligning with regional interests.

Some Bay Area Democrats, who could be expected to back a leadership proposal, have withheld support over delta provisions they fear could ultimately cost local districts water.

Republicans, fiercely fighting some of the fine-print details, rolled out their own version of the bill Tuesday, frustrating Democrats who say they've already compromised enough.

The endorsement of some of the biggest players in delta and water politics has not even assured passage.

At this point, it's impossible to predict what form the eventual solution will take. Or even if any major changes will be approved. In the end it just proves the old adage that all politics are local, and none more so in California than water rights.

Water Conservation's Secondary Benefits

One of the often overlooked benefits to water conservation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, gets some coverage today. According to the Las Vegas Sun:

Energy experts across the country are starting to look at just how the nation’s water supply systems affect electricity consumption, the strain they put on grids and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from the treatment and transporting of water. It was one of the topics at the 2009 Water Smart Innovations conference held in Las Vegas this month.

About 25 percent of America’s electricity goes to moving and treating water, according to a 2005 California Energy Commission report.

One state is leading the way on dealing with this issue and will hopefully serve as an example for others to follow:

California passed a law three years ago that is aimed, in part, at the electricity burned to move and treat water. The legislation requires greenhouse gas reduction for water utilities, which have been instructed to make their operations more energy efficient and to incorporate renewable energy. With population growth, demand for water and water treatment are expected to grow. At the same time water treatment standards are expected to become stricter. That all adds up to a prediction that the energy demand for water will continue to grow significantly.

With climate change legislation looming on the horizon, southwestern states in particular will need to address this issue in the near future. Las Vegas could benefit greatly considering that the "amount of electricity used to move and treat water in Southern Nevada annually is enough to power the entire valley several times over."

Fortunately, managers of the area's water utilities are aware of the issue and working towards moving to more sustainable energy sources.

Henderson plans to have the first local wastewater treatment facility using renewable power. The city recently got federal funding to build a 4-megawatt solar installation to help power its wastewater treatment facilities and to install turbines in some of its downhill-sloping water pipes to generate electricity emission-free from the flowing water.

They've also acknowledged that new, mulit-billion dollar infrastructure projects aren't the only component of the solution and are encouraging residents to get on board and implement common sense water conservation measures. After all, less water used translates directly into reduced costs, reduced electrical use and generation, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Or as they put it:

Those changes could do a lot more good — in many more ways — than most people realize.

Drought Compounded by Population Growth

Two articles today highlight the contribution population growth has made in amplifying the drought in the southeastern United States from inconvenience to crisis. First up, the indispensable Peter Gleik from the Pacific Institute:

The amount of water in a river basin or watershed is fixed. It goes up and down with natural variability, and it may change over time due to climate changes, but water is a renewable resources and our use of it does not affect the amount we get next year.

...

In a recent paper, Richard Seager of Columbia and his colleagues analyzed the recent drought in the southeastern United States. This drought led to water use restrictions, depleted flows in the major river basins of the region, and growing political tensions over water sharing between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The authors of this paper concluded that the recent drought in the Southeast was not climatologically different from past droughts, but was felt more severely largely due to the growth in population in the region.

The Christian Science Monitor adds to the story:

Was the drought, which also seemed to extend laterally to the Southwest, the result of human-induced climate change?

A new Columbia University study concludes that, in this case, climate change wasn’t to blame. In fact, historically speaking, the drought wasn’t even among the worst of the dry spells that periodically grip the region — the most recent in 1998-2002.

Rather, water shortages in the region — at the height of the drought, Atlanta’s main reservoir dropped by over 14 feet — stemmed directly from increased demand on water. And the surging demand was driven by the rapid population growth of recent decades.

An article on Columbia University’s Earth Institute website paints the picture by numbers:

In 1990, Georgia, which uses a quarter of the region’s water, had 6.5 million people. By 2007, there were 9.5 million — up almost 50 percent in 17 years. The population is still ascending, driven largely by migration. However, little has been done to increase water storage or reduce consumption. There has been increased sewage discharge near water supplies, and vast tracts of land have been covered with impermeable roofs, roads and parking lots, which drain rainfall away rapidly instead of storing it.

So, what to do? Obviously we can't arbitrarily limit a region's growth, which leaves us to choose between massive infrastructure upgrades like new dams and all the economic and environmental costs associated with them, and increased efficiency measures to reduce water use per household and business. But is efficiency alone enough? According to the conservation organization American Rivers, it just might be.

In a report titled “Hidden Reservoir: Why Water Efficiency is the Best Solution for the Southeast,” it argues that “19th century approaches,” such as building more dams and creating more reservoirs, are not adequate to 21st-century challenges. They’re up to 8,500 times more expensive than simple “efficiency investments.”

They list nine measures which, taken together have already proven effective in other regions. Number five on the list?

Landscape to minimize water waste. 58% of urban water use is devoted to our lawns — spiking to as much as 80% in the hottest summer months — and studies have shown that 50%
of outdoor water is wasted – lost to the watering of driveways and sidewalks, evaporation, or
over-watering. Implementing smart irrigation practices including smart irrigation controllers can eliminate much of this waste.

So what's the payoff for implementing efficiency measures?

– Cary, N.C., increased water supply by 11 percent with efficiency measures alone.
– Tampa, Fla., has grown its per capita water supply by 26 percent with efficiency measures.
– Boston succeeded in reducing its overall water consumption by one-third while increasing its customer base by 2 million people. The result? Not needing to build a proposed dam saved the city $500 million.

The bottom line: municipalities and states can continue to grow and prosper within their current water supplies and without investing billions in costly and environmentally questionable projects by simply promoting and enforcing basic efficiency standards.

Water Management: A Growing National Issue

Lest anyone think that smart water management is only an issue for California or the West, these stories out today highlight that it truly is a national issue.

First up is a story out of Chicago, where groundwater resources are being stretched thin:

The Chicago region faces a long-term water shortage that could hit some outlying suburbs by 2015, much sooner than previously anticipated, according to recently updated studies.

Projections by the University of Illinois’ Illinois Water Survey show that water supplies that lie under Aurora, the state’s second-largest city, and Joliet soon won’t be able to keep up with population growth.

The deep aquifers are “not going to go dry, but it will become cost-inefficient to pump water from them,” said Josh Ellis, a water policy expert at the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based regional policy think tank. “2015 is the tipping point.”

Better planning and conservation measures — starting now, before water shortages become a crisis — could postpone that scenario, according to land use and environmental activists.

CircleofBlue.org reports on water issues facing the nation as a whole:

Americans have good reason to be concerned about the future of the nation’s supply of clean fresh water, according to state and federal research and resource agencies.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly online report produced by the Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, notes in its latest assessment that one-third of the continental United States is suffering abnormally dry or drought conditions.

Drought conditions grip more than half of the West, with little change from the same time last year. The hardest-hit areas include California, in its third year of a statewide drought, and Arizona, which has been experiencing abnormally dry or drought conditions since August .

Groundwater resources, which provide half of the country’s drinking water as well as irrigation for crops and water for industrial use, also are diminishing, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Groundwater Resources Program. The Ogallala Aquifer, the massive groundwater network that lies under the Great Plains and feeds water to more than a quarter of the region’s irrigated land, continues to be a significant concern.

“Basically the groundwater is being depleted of its resource,” said Kevin Dennehy, the USGS project coordinator. “It’s been happening for quite some time and it’s going to continue to happen. The removal of water from the aquifer is at a greater rate than water is being re-charged in the aquifer naturally.”

And the issues go beyond scarcity, touching on everything from agricultural productivity to the safety of our drinking water:

...as Circle of Blue reported last year, increased competition for water in the United States poses a growing threat to the American way of life. Scientists and resource specialists warned that freshwater scarcity was hurting farm productivity, limiting some regional economic growth, increasing business expenses and draining local treasuries.

The deteriorating condition of the Ogallala is a case in point. According to a June USGS report water from the aquifer is generally acceptable for drinking, irrigation, and livestock. But irrigation and leakage of nutrients down inactive irrigation wells is increasing concentrations of contaminants including nitrates deep in the aquifer, posing long-term risks to its safety as a source of drinking water.

Without 360 degree sustainable resource management, we could eventually end up in as much trouble as countries like India, where over drawing of the aquifer that supplies most of one region's agricultural irrigation is endangering that nation's food supply.

California Closing in on Water Management Solution?

There's potentially good news percolating up out of the morass that is California's legislative process. The governor's threat to veto up to 700 bills submitted by the legislature finally spurred some action from representatives, who are now possibly closing in on an agreement for managing California's scarce water resources. Of course it's not yet a done deal and as anyone with knowledge of the state's legislative process can tell you, there's still plenty that can go wrong. As reported in the Fresno Bee:

… Even if an agreement is reached, they’d still have to sell it to rank-and-file lawmakers, who will be lobbied hard by regional water districts and environmentalists — all of whom have different needs.

Outstanding issues appear to include policy proposals favored by Democrats to mandate conservation, set new rules for groundwater monitoring and crack down on illegal diversions of water.

Environmentalists, backed by Democrats, say the plans will “break the cycle of conflict and environmental damage that have plagued California’s water management system for decades,” according to a letter sent to leaders by a key coalition of environmentalists.

But Republicans, farm groups and some industrial water users oppose the plans as written, saying they would create a “vast new government bureaucracy.”

Unsurprisingly, there are some sticking points mentioned, though they seem to be over areas that (somewhat unusually for the CA legislature) are backed by common sense. For example, Democrats want to mandate conservation. Seeing as California is an arid state that gets hit periodically by drought and is facing an uncertain water future thanks to climate change, how is this controversial? Particularly in light of the successes individual cities like Long Beach have recently had, conserving 1.6 billion gallons of water this year, compared to last.

They also favor regulating groundwater use at the state level. Considering that:

California is the only state that does not regulate or even monitor groundwater use. Those with a well can pump all they they want, whenever they want, without regard for how it affects a neighbor -- even if the neighbor happens to be an entire city that depends on groundwater.

It would seem like managing underground aquifers, which are just as critical to California's future as its extensive system of surface reservoirs, also falls into the realm of common sense.

Last of all, they want to crack down on illegal diversion of water. Somebody please explain to me how that's controversial, because I would have thought that one a no-brainer.

Let's face it, if California is to remain an economic powerhouse, it needs to get smarter about water management. With population growth projected at around 20 million between now and 2050, water scarcity will only grow as a day to day issue, for residents and businesses alike. Unless we get a lot smarter, a lot faster.

The legislature is on the right track at the moment. Let's hope they're able to pull it off in a way that benefits all of us, without losing sight of the critical nature of the issue.

Dr. Peter Gleick Outlines Soft Path to Sustainable Water Supply

Speaking earlier this week at the Nobel Conference H20 Uncertain Resource, Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute presented a grim picture of our water supply, but went on to say, “I actually am optimistic about the future of water, if we do the things that we’re starting to do more aggressively, more carefully, and in a more widespread fashion.”

He outlined a “soft path” to a sustainable water system for the planet and its inhabitants through Smart Water Management. (The hard path involves expensive infrastructure upgrades.)

Steps along Gleick’s soft path include:

• Better define the water supply. That means thinking about wastewater as an asset. It means using rainwater harvesting to recharge depleted aquifers.
• Rather than looking for more water, use less. By Gleick’s calculations the U.S. is already using less water than it did for everything 30 years ago. It used to take 30 gallons of water to make a square inch of semi-conductor; now it takes 3-4 gallons.
• Consider distributing different water of different quality. Gleick’s prime example: It makes no sense to be flushing our toilets with high-quality drinking water.
• Price water properly: it's a human right, but it also has economic value and should be priced with both of those factors in mind.
• Protect our ecosystems, satisfying human needs as well as the needs of nature.
• Link energy management to water management: it takes a lot of energy to get the water we want, and it takes a lot of water to create energy. The two are inextricably linked.
• Address growth in a responsible way, with a focus on sustainability.

View Dr. Gleick's lecture here: http://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2009/about.php

Thanks to Dr. Craig Bowron, whose article for MinnPost.com was referenced in developing this post.

Ancient creature - once thought extinct - keeps New Zealand water pure

This is just neat.

Scientists feared ancient phreatoicids (pronounced "free-at-o-ik-ids") were extinct after they went missing from the scientific record for 60 years.

But a painstaking search has revealed all nine known species - and four new species - were living unnoticed in South Island pools, swamps and drains.

The 2-cm creatures play a major role in cleansing Canterbury's groundwater and keeping Christchurch's drinking water naturally pure.

Read more from The New Zealand Herald >>

Researchers Predict Megadrought in Southwest

Researchers from Princeton and Columbia universities report that the Southwest's drought could last 90 years. Their research shows a marked increase in climate temperatures and indicates that these temperatures will continue their climb.

The water level of the Colorado River, which supplies most of the region's water, has already dropped by 15%.

With water infrastructure uncomfortably stressed in the Southwest and elsewhere, we face tough questions: How long can the system support current demand, let alone development? How will our supplies be allocated? Clearly, we must focus on conserving the supply we have with water-efficient practices and technologies.

For more about this study, visit ABC News >>