Water: Upbeat first assessment of year’s supplies



The rainy season isn’t over yet, but California farmers already have reasons to be optimistic about the 2011 harvest.

A torrent of early winter storms and higher-than-expected water left from 2010 prompted federal regulators Tuesday to issue an upbeat first assessment of the year’s water supplies.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the sprawling network of pipes and pumps that bring water to Central Valley farmlands and some urban customers in the Bay Area, expects to deliver as much as 100 percent of the water supplies requested.

“The new year starts with an encouraging water supply forecast, thanks to the precipitation delivered by Mother Nature,” David Hayes, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/18/BARH1HARF6.DTL#ixzz1Bh1HaBxh

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California water wars focus on Salton Sea, Colorado River pact

HOLTVILLE, Calif.

The evaporating Salton Sea is the flashpoint for the latest dispute in California’s water wars, testing an uneasy alliance of farmers and city dwellers to wean the state from reliance on Colorado River water.

California officials agreed in 2003 to stop taking more than its share from the Colorado, ensuring that Arizona and Nevada don’t get shortchanged. The plan’s centerpiece called for shifting enough water from the agricultural Imperial Valley to serve nearly 600,000 San Diego area homes.

The huge farm-to-city water transfer threatened California’s largest lake . More than 200 feet below sea level, the Salton Sea survives on water that seeps through the soil of Imperial Valley farms.

For seven years, the solution has been to pump enough water into the Salton Sea to offset what was lost to San Diego. The 350-square-mile lake is evaporating at a rate of roughly 450 million gallons a year, but the thinking was to prevent the San Diego transfer from hastening its demise.

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Expert urges agriculture water use changes

An expert says small changes in agricultural irrigation practices could eliminate wasteful water use.

Delta Watermaster Craig Wilson says in a report being presented to the State Water Resources Control Board next week that California should crack down and aggressively enforce the state’s ban on wasteful water use.

The Los Angeles Times reports Tuesday that Wilson proposes broader enforcement of the state Constitution’s “reasonable use” doctrine rather than current case-by-case enforcement.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/11/state/n054733S81.DTL#ixzz1AkUIlw4h

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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La Niña may reduce California water allocations

Despite an unusually wet October and weekend storms that deposited more than 10 feet of snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada, the state next year expects to deliver about one-quarter of the water requested by agencies that depend on the California Aqueduct, state hydrologists said Monday.

By definition the estimate is preliminary and certain to change as the rainy season wears on. But experts at the Department of Water Resources say that “strong” La Niña conditions are likely to offset this fall’s deluges.

“We’re off to a good start for this year’s precipitation … but La Niña could mean dry conditions later in the (water) year … especially in Southern California,” Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin said in a conference call with reporters.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/22/BAP21GFSFK.DTL#ixzz169RXDztC

REGION: Inland leaders explore remedies for uncertain water supplies

Twenty-eight years ago, Northern California voters killed a bond issue that would have paid for a canal to carry water from the big rivers in the north to fast-growing Southern California.

The Peripheral Canal, as it was called, is still being debated, and now officials are talking instead about building tunnels to carry the water more than 40 miles underground at a cost that could top $14 billion. The tunnels would carry supplies under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the pumps that feed the California Aqueduct.

The Delta may be hundreds of miles from Inland water taps, but its aging levees, declining fish populations and water pumping limitations have Southern California water purveyors again looking for a big fix.

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Look to Alaska to solve our water problem

A few years ago while visiting Alaska an article in the Soldotna newspaper about water caught my eye. Soldotna is a city near the mouth of the Kenai River. The Alaskans had offered for a second time to provide the lower 48 with massive amounts of fresh water.

The suggested plan was to sink three giant pipes into the Pacific to carry billions upon billions of gallons of fresh water from the Kenai to Northern California.

The Kenai is a mighty river that drains much of the summer snow and glacial melt of central Alaska into the Cook Inlet where it becomes useless through salination. The pipes would carry the fresh water without pumping as the water inlet would be above sea level and the outlet would be slightly lower just above sea level. California, Arizona and Nevada in particular would have all the fresh water needed. Remove just the California straw from the Colorado and the river would become healthy in short order.

Washington could use some of the touted “stimulus” money to finance a project that could put thousands of Americans to work building the pipe and placing it on the ocean floor. The money would be repaid with interest by the ratepayers in California, Arizona, Nevada and every other state that would benefit by this abundance.

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Bell’s problems become issue in Water Replenishment District of Southern California races

None of the four candidates for two seats on a regional board are from Bell, but that isn’t stopping two challengers for a regional water board from making comparisons between the two.

In part, it’s because of votes earlier this year by the Board of Directors of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California to give back to directors their credit cards and allow them to travel internationally without board approval.

Those votes may be more problematic for one-term incumbent Sergio Calderon, 33, of Maywood, because he supported both. He’s running against Antonio “Tony” Monroy, 49, a South Gate businessman who is trying to make hay on both of those issues.

Division 4 includes the cities of Bell, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Cudahy, Downey, Huntington Park, Maywood, Montebello, South Gate and Vernon as well as sections of Monterey Park, Los Angeles and Walnut Park.

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First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans

UCI-led team cites global warming, accelerated cycle of evaporation, precipitation

Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.

“That might not sound like much – 1.5 percent a year – but after a few decades, it’s huge,” said Jay Famiglietti, UC Irvine Earth system science professor and principal investigator on the study, which will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He noted that while freshwater is essential to humans and ecosystems, the rain is falling in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons.

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Water Management: The Path to a Better Future

Last year, I read a Wall Street Journal report that water managers in 36 states expect shortages by the year 2013. Why? The reasons are complex, but in a nutshell, the supply can’t keep up with the demand.

The world’s population tripled in the 20th century, and according to the World Water Council, the use of renewable water resources has grown six fold in that timeframe. Within the next 50 years, the world’s population is expected to increase by another 40 to 50 percent. This population growth – coupled with industrialization and urbanization – will result in an increasing demand for water. But overall, little has been done to address this crucial issue. Consider the Clean Water Act of 1972. Although it was put into place to create an era of technological innovation in the United States, the promise is still largely unfulfilled. More progress has been made in Europe, with the EU Water Framework Directive, but there is still much to be done.

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Comment: The way to deal with “shortages” is with market pricing. That is, privatize water.

Water worries arise

A lack of water into the Inland Empire could dampen future land developments and job growth, industry experts said Thursday at an annual water conference.”Without an adequate water supply, we will struggle with bringing in new jobs, development, construction and investments into the community,” Otto Kroutil, Ontario Development Agency director, at the San Bernardino County Water Conference.

Although the city has an adequate supply of water, the tides may turn with another population boom, Kroutil said.

“All this has to do with the ability to grow,” he said.

Read more: http://www.sbsun.com/business/ci_15762767#ixzz0wXL3hv7z

From Paper to the Real World: Stopping Illegal Water Diversions in California

Elliott Rector, Legal Intern, EDF

On June 29, the California State Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee approved SB 565, an encouraging first step towards reforming the illegal use and diversion of water in California. This important bill will next be taken up in the Appropriations Committee, possibly next week.

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TragerWaterReport Comment: The best way to reduce the diversion of water is to privatize all water. That way, people would guard their supplies. In a similar fashion, people who own their own homes take care of them much better than, say, people forced to live in government housing, such as the infamous Cabrini Green in Chicago.

Water demand could exceed supply by 2050

Even without climate change, much of California is at high risk of water demand exceeding supply by 2050, according to a report released this month.

The National Resources Defense Council commissioned environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech to perform an assessment of water supply and demand under future climate and growth scenarios. Much of the United States could face water shortages, but water sustainability is at extreme risk in the Great Plains and the southwest United States, according to the analysis.

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Study: 14 States At Severe Risk Of Water Shortages

Water shortage risks will hit a very large percentage of all U.S. counties by mid-century, according to a major new TetraTech study released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The county-by-county analysis looks at how water supplies could be jeopardized in the more than 1,000 counties facing water sustainability problems. The analysis shows a 14-times increase in the number of the most severely threatened U.S counties. The extent of U.S. agriculture at risk was outlined during the news event.

Fourteen states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas — were identified as facing the greatest overall at water-related risks, including limitations on water availability as demand exceeds supply.

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