California growers put forth water alternative

SALINAS, Calif. — A new water quality plan by the California Farm Bureau Federation offers an alternative to a state regulatory proposal that some growers have called punitive and costly.

At issue is the expiring conditional waiver of waste discharge requirements, up for a five-year renewal March 17. In California, the waiver shapes policy on the runoff of pesticides, fertilizers and fumigants from irrigated farming.

The federation submitted its plan Dec. 3 to the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board on behalf of the Ag Working Group. More than a dozen growers’ organizations from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz form the group. Supporters include two grower-shipper associations and Western Growers.

Growers took steps to advance water quality under the prior waiver, the state’s draft order says, but stricter verification is needed. Agriculture, it says, is responsible for 78% of nitrate pollution in groundwater — water that finds its way into hundreds of drinking wells in the region.

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Water Shortage Threatens Livelihood For Many In The Imperial Valley

Some experts say there is a fifty per cent chance that Lake Mead, the giant reservoir behind the Hoover dam, could dry up in the next few decades. That grim gamble is a sobering possibility for us here in San Diego since Lake Mead stores Colorado River water, a prime source of water for much of southern California.

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Perchlorate in drinking water more detrimental to infants than expected: study

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — Infants who drink water containing low levels of the chemical perchlorate face a greater health risk than previously believed, a new study suggests.

In the study, researchers looked at ground drinking water slightly contaminated with perchlorate in several cities in Southern California, the Press Enterprise said Saturday.

The study shows that infants who drank water slightly contaminated with perchlorate had a 50-percent chance of developing poorly performing thyroid glands, the paper said, quoting Dr. Craig Steinmaus from California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and lead author of the study.

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Proposed rules seek to clear agricultural pollutants from waterways; study says Central Coast water most toxic in state

Aiming to clean up some of the most toxic water in California, regional water quality officials are considering new rules to control polluting runoff from agricultural fields.

Growers say the regulations are too burdensome, and countered last week with a proposal to have an industry-backed coalition tackle water quality problems.

Environmentalists say neither plan does enough to protect water supplies.

After more than two years in development, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board will consider adopting the new regulations in March.

Executive Officer Roger Briggs said board staff sought to create a plan that would be practical and hold people accountable.

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SunPower Solar Systems Planned for Two California Water Agencies

SunPower Corp. (Nasdaq: SPWRA, SPWRB) today announced that it is building solar power systems for the Fallbrook Public Utilities District (FPUD) in San Diego County and the San Juan Water District (SJWD) in Placer County. Both systems are using high efficiency SunPower technology to maximize solar power generated on site, and are expected to be operational in the first half of 2011.  

The purchase of the system for FPUD will be financed using low-interest Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds (QECBs) available as a result of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). At the 8-acre site, SunPower is designing and building a 1.1-megawatt ground-mounted solar power system using SunPower solar panels, the most efficient solar panels on the market, with SunPower™ T20 Trackers. The trackers rotate the panels to follow the sun, increasing energy capture by up to 30 percent over conventional fixed-tilt systems, while significantly reducing land use requirements.

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Oil and Water Don’t Mix with California Agriculture

KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

From the “Petroleum Highway” — a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 — you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the Temblor Range.

Fred Starrh, who farms along this industrial front, has seen firsthand what can happen when agriculture collides with oil. On an overcast February day, he drives his mother-of-pearl Lincoln Town Car down a dirt road through his orchards. Starrh Farms has 6,000 acres of pistachios, cotton, almonds and alfalfa. Starrh proudly points out almond trees planted 155 to the acre with the aid of lasers and GPS. At the edge of his land, he pulls up beside 20-foot-high earthen berms, the ramparts of large “percolation” ponds that belong to a neighbor, Aera Energy.

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Bay Delta conservation plan loses support

On the heels of the withdrawal of support for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan by Westlands Water District, the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority has voted to suspend continued funding for the plan. 

The authority, which serves 29 member agencies throughout the Bay-Delta, and other public water agencies that rely on water supplies pumped through the Delta, have invested almost $150 million and more than four years toward the plan’s development. It’s estimated it will cost another $100 million to complete the plan, according to the authority. 

According to the agencies, federal regulations have reduced California’s public water supplies by more than a third in the past three years and now the Department of the Interior is proposing even more regulatory restrictions.

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Ontario schools to receive recycled water for landscaping

An agreement with the Ontario-Montclair School District will allow two schools in the Chaffey Joint Union High School District to install an underground pipeline for recycled water for its landscaping needs. 

Ontario-Montclair staff received a request from the Inland Empire Utility Agency to allow the Chaffey district to use land on the Arroyo Elementary School site to install pipelines that will provide recycled water to the Dorothy Gibson and Valley View high school sites. 

“The recycled main service point of connection for the two (schools) is in a cul-de-sac on Corona Avenue so there is no way of making that connection unless they pass through the Arroyo school property,” said Craig Misso, OMSD’s director of facilities planning and operations. 

According to state Education Code, districts are authorized to use other agencies property if it is approved by their board. 

The agreement approved at OMSD’s Nov. 18 board meeting reads OMSD will “provide easement to CJUHSD for the construction, operation and maintenance of underground pipeline for the purpose of conveying recycled water and necessary fixtures and appurtenances …”

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Desalination still on back burner for Marin after votes

Not coming to a tap near you soon: desalinated water. 

Despite voters’ approval this month of Marin Municipal Water District incumbent candidates who supported studying desalination, and a ballot measure to allow that study to happen, the reality of taking bay water and de-salting it for domestic use in Marin remains murky. 

“What we said from the beginning of the campaign is that desalination is not on the table because of current demand patterns,” said David Behar, the water board president who won reelection. “That has not changed.”

In April the water board voted to suspend further investigation of a desalination plant until it can get a better handle on declining water demand. 

Water usage in the county continues to stay low: it has dropped 15 percent in the past two years. An extended rainy season, combined with conservation, have helped lessen the demand.

The struggling economy also means less office space is being used and fewer homes are occupied, which has led to a high number of water accounts that show zero water use.

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Oceanside hopes to produce more of its own water thru desalination

Plans to make Oceanside less dependent on costly imported water by expanding the city’s desalination program have taken on a new urgency as city officials warn of ongoing water-rate increases. 

A consultant hired by the city three years ago has completed a report recommending that Oceanside proceed with the next step toward expanding its desalination operations with a goal of providing up to half of the city’s water needs from local sources, said water utilities director Cari Dale. 

“The importance of local supplies is going to be thrust into the forefront,” Dale said. 

The City Council earlier this month put off making a decision on a proposal that would raise combined water and sewer rates for a typical homeowner from $96.30 a month to $104.14 starting in early 2011 and to $112.38 a month in July. The council will reconsider the increases Dec. 8. 

Meanwhile, water officials said more increases are likely to follow because the Metropolitan Water District is raising the price of the water it sells the San Diego Water Authority, the regional agency that in turn sells water to Oceanside and other cities and water agencies.

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La Niña this winter means dry weather

Last winter was a soaker. 

Now water managers worry about drier than usual weather across much of California through March. 

What gives? 

Last winter delivered a strong El Niño, the official designation for the climatic phenomenon typically associated with balmy temperatures and plenty of rain for many parts of the Golden State. This winter is on track to bring a strong La Niña – effectively the opposite phenomenon that can mean cooler, dry conditions, especially in Southern California.

It is the first time in more than three decades that a strong El Niño and strong La Niña occurred in back-to-back winters, according to climate data. The last time the robust “boy” and “girl” arrived in consecutive winters came in the mid-1970s, with an El Niño in 1972-73 and La Niña in 1973-74. The previous switch happened in the mid-1950s.

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Hinkley chromium clean-up could take more than a century

HINKLEY • The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board will be deciding soon if an expansion to the treatment of the chromium 6 water plume in Hinkley will be put into place, but residents probably won’t see the results in their lifetimes.

Pacific Gas and Electric is proposing to expand its current operation of injecting the chromium 6 tainted water with ethanol to convert it to the less dangerous chromium 3. In a feasibility study done by the water board, the ethanol treatment would probably take about 150 years to restore chromium 6 levels to the naturally occurring levels of 3.1 parts per billion.

The feasibility study done by the water board shows that the removal of the chromium 6 tainted groundwater will take more than 100 years, even with the most effective treatment.

PG&E is currently injecting ethanol into the plume in order to convert the chromium 6 into chromium 3, which is much less toxic. The company pumps contaminated water out and sprays it onto alfalfa plants so that it will not be spread through the air. PG&E also injects clean water as part of the program to cleanse the groundwater.

The expanded program will include increased pumping and will occur over a larger area, said Lauri Kemper, assistant executive officer for the Lahontan water board.

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New reservoir to save water from escape to Mexico

Nearly a month after water filled the Warren H. Brock Reservoir near the Arizona-California border for the first time, the project’s builders got the news they wanted: It didn’t leak.

So, they pulled the plug and let all the water out.

Emptying the reservoir, dug out of the sand dunes about 25 miles west of Yuma, was as much a part of the final construction test as filling it and watching for leaks. This reservoir was built to be in motion: Get the water in, wait a few days, get the water out.

The $172 million project is an attempt to seal decades-old leaks in the Colorado River‘s water-delivery system by capturing the dribbles lost downstream to Mexico when farmers in Arizona and California don’t take water they ordered, usually because rain filled the need.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/11/28/state/n101810S80.DTL#ixzz16ipr6nxJ

Population, immigration, and the drying of the American Southwest

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The looming water crisis in the American Southwest – and the role of immigration-driven population growth – is the topic of a paper published this month by the Center for Immigration Studies and authored by New Mexico journalist Kathleene Parker.

The paper, “Population, Immigration, and the Drying of the American Southwest,” online at http://cis.org/southwest-water-population-growth, explores the link between the possibility of the potentially catastrophic economic and environmental water crisis and the fact that the Southwest is the fastest-growing region of the world’s fourth-fastest-growing nation – a growth rate earlier cautioned against by various presidential commissions. It also looks at how that growth rate is driven by historically unprecedented immigration – legal and illegal – into the United States, the world’s third-most-populous nation after China and India. Immigration is responsible for more than half of the population growth in the Southwest this past decade, and nearly all of the growth in the largest southwest state, California.

Such high immigration has happened absent discussion or acknowledgement of its impacts on population or limited resources, such as water. Parker presents evidence that indicates there is insufficient water for the region’s current population, much less the larger future populations that will result if immigration continues at its present high rate.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/29/3218296/population-immigration-and-the.html#ixzz16inTPvbZ

Dan Walters: Water still on agenda for Brown

During the campaign, Jerry Brown was fairly vague on what he would do as governor, especially on how he would resolve the state’s chronic budget problems.

“It will evolve,” one of Brown’s pet phrases from his first governorship, was the unspoken credo of the campaign for his second.

There was, however, a notable exception to Brown’s vagueness – water. He published a fairly specific policy paper on water, reflecting his own extensive experience with its complicated politics.

As governor three decades ago, Brown attempted to complete the State Water Plan that his father launched in the 1960s. The system that gathers water from as far north as Mount Shasta and transports it as far south as San Diego had – and still has – one troublesome choke point: the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/28/3216216/dan-walters-water-still-on-agenda.html#ixzz16imhnmap

What lurks beneath: Bay Area’s battle with invasive species in ballast water

CROCKETT — Twenty feet below the water line, in the bilge of a cargo ship unloading raw sugar at the C&H factory, scientists are testing a high-tech weapon in the fight against invasive aquatic species.

A special ballast water treatment system is purifying the water that whooshes through a pump from the Carquinez Strait into the Moku Pahu, a double-hull bulk carrier that ferries raw sugar from Hawaii to California.

The ballast water balances the ship as the system removes organisms thinner than the width of a hair. If the treatment system performs as expected, it will join a handful of emerging technologies that represent the shipping industry’s best hope for meeting a state deadline to remove exotic species from ballast water discharge — or face stiff penalties.

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California looks for a way to save the delta, quench residents’ thirst

Nearly three decades after a proposed delta bypass was killed by voters in a divisive initiative battle, the idea is back in vogue.

Pumping water from the delta’s southern edge has helped shove the West Coast’s largest estuary into ecological free fall, devastating its native fish populations and triggering endangered species protections that have tightened the spigot to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California cities.

The mounting delta problems, along with the potential threats of a rise in sea level and a major earthquake, have turned the attention of state and federal agencies to an “alternative conveyance”: either a canal or, more likely, a 40-mile water tunnel system that would be the nation’s longest, some 150 feet beneath the delta.

Read more: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2010/11/29/1387624/california-looks-for-a-way-to.html#ixzz16h8ZZgEK

A good year for state water — so far

The agency that manages much of the state’s water supply will fill 25 percent of the amount requested by downstream agencies for 2011 — a big improvement over last-year’s lowest-ever allocation of five percent.

The figure, likely to be revised upward through the year ahead, represents the state Department of Water Resources‘ “initial allocation” to the water agencies it serves.

“We’re off to a good start for this year,” the department’s director, Mark Cowin, told reporters in a conference call Monday. “Precipitation stands at 165 percent of average, primarily because of an extremely wet October.”

There is reason for caution, he said.

“We are experiencing strong La Niña conditions in California,” he said. “This could mean drier conditions later in the year.”

Still, it looks like a good year on for the State Water Project, which stores and delivers water and is an important source of supply for much of the state.

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Viewpoints: Peripheral Canal can aid fish habitat

By John McCamman

In 1965 the director of the Department of Fish and Game, Walter T. Shannon, presented his annual report to the Fish and Game Commission. In that report, he noted the “significant accomplishment” of selecting the peripheral canal “as the best method of transporting water from the north to the south across the Delta.”

This conclusion was the product of the “Delta Fish and Wildlife Protection Study,” a joint federal-state project that evaluated alternatives to enhance wildlife protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In fact, that report concludes that the peripheral canal is “the only opportunity to both protect and enhance these resources.”

There has been no change in that position, or in the relative benefits of the peripheral canal when compared to other options for the export of water since that time.

If the state and federal governments continue to export water from the Delta, the fishery agencies’ obligation is to ensure that those exports will do the least damage, and may provide an opportunity to conserve and enhance natural communities, including the fish, wildlife and habitat that are a part of those communities.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/21/3199366/viewpoints-peripheral-canal-can.html#ixzz169gus7kw

California issues 25 percent water delivery forecast

California water officials on Monday announced a 25 percent delivery forecast for customers who depend on the State Water Project.

The projection is preliminary, and usually increases over the course of winter. It primarily concerns urban areas in the south San Francisco Bay Area and in the Los Angeles-San Diego metro areas, which depend on the State Water Project for a significant share of their supplies. It has no bearing on the Sacramento area, except as a general guide to statewide precipitation amounts.

The allocation announcement is the first of the year and reflects a conservative approach that is customary for the Department of Water Resources. Even so, it is far better than last year’s initial forecast, which was just 5 percent.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/23/3205512/california-issues-25-percent-water.html#ixzz169U3ReXL