Instead of growing traditional, federally-subsidized acala cotton with heavily subsidized water, some farmers are planting premium quality Pima--a variety that attracts a higher price but is ineligible for subsidies.
Pima can draw as much as 25 cents more per pound than generic acala. According to the Union-Tribune, in 2008, California farmers planted 151,000 acres of Pima at a value of $227 million, versus 127,000 acres of acala which only brought in $100 million.
But the most impressive trend is away from cotton altogether. Overall acreage planted in cotton is down dramatically in the past decade, as growers turn to higher value crops like processing tomatoes. The drought is one reason for this change. However, several simultaneous developments show that a new way of thinking is emerging in the agricultural community.
First, the drought is forcing some farmers to buy water on the open market from their water rich neighbors) – at unsubsidized prices. Second, these higher water prices are leading to a significant investment in water use efficiency among agricultural water users south of the Delta. And third, in order to afford to purchase water and invest in efficiency, farmers are moving toward higher value crops.
What these farmers are doing in their fields illustrates what water wonks like me have been saying for years: when you reduce subsidies and let the price of water more closely reflects true costs, growers have a powerful incentive to plant higher value crops and to use water more efficiently.
In other words, the market rewards efficiency: Farmers who use less water can make more money.
Considering that California has hit peak water, and that agriculture consumes 80 percent of our water supply, this is big news.
But this big news has happened quietly.
Some Californians might be surprised to discover cotton farmers setting this example. Cotton has been the traditional bad boy of California’s crops. It has long been one of the top four water consumers, along with rice, alfalfa, and pasture.
But unlike the other three, cotton has no habitat value. Cotton is also chemically intensive, and is grown mostly south of the Delta, which means it uses some of the most high-impact water available. Federal subsidies for cotton and for much of the water used to grow it have helped exacerbate California’s water challenges.
Now the story is changing. The way these farmers are adapting proves that when you eliminate or reduce subsidies--which can act as incentives to waste water--California farmers adapt. These sophisticated businesspeople know that when they have to pay market rates for water, it makes sense to invest in efficiency.
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You’d be wrong. The quiet solution here is water transfers – a powerful tool that has been nearly overlooked in the superheated media coverage of water in the past year.
The federal government helped to facilitate 600,000 acre-feet of water transfers during 2009.. Many of these transfers were made by farmers with senior water rights and abundant supplies, selling to their water-short neighbors.
That’s a lot of water, especially during a drought. So why aren’t transfers getting more attention? And why aren’t more farmers embracing them?
One answer lies in the checkered past of California’s water wars.
When some farmers hear the phrase “water transfer”, they think of the fate of agriculture in the Owens Valley. A century ago, the City of Los Angeles secretly bought water rights in this Eastern Sierra valley and shipped it to Southern California through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. With no water left for local farmers, Owens Valley agriculture died.
The memory of Owens Valley still lingers. I know one farmer who is interested in selling some of his water. He told me, “I could conserve more water if I knew I could sell it.” Yet he is reluctant to step into the market because of pressure from his neighbors, who fear another Owens Valley.
But Owens Valley isn’t the only example of how water transfers work. The Palo Verde Irrigation District in California’s remote Southeast corner tells the other side of the story. Local farmers have signed a long-term agreement to sell some of their Colorado River water to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The agreement provides for up to 3.6 million acre feet over the 35 year life of the agreement. These farmers have found that selling some of their water in some years can generate revenue that helps them invest in their farms and stay in production. The agreement helps to provide a bit of security in a notoriously volatile agricultural industry.
I’dd like to see more farmers follow the Palo Verde model. Last year, senior water rights holders south of the Delta received nearly a million acre-feet of water. Some of that water went on the market. For example, the Westlands Water District alone purchased 165,000 acre feet in 2009 But a more robust water market could create incentives for more conservation among senior water rights holders and more supply available on the market for others.
Environmentalists have long supported carefully-designed water transfers as a voluntary solution in dry years.
Of course, these deals must be done right – by freeing up water through conservation, switching to less water-intensive crops or fallowing. Some past deals have been revealed as nothing more than scams in which sellers propose to transfer more water from streams, not water actually conserved. Some have been bold enough to try to sell non-existent “paper water”. And, of course, transfers should not be allowed to further harm the Delta or the state’s imperiled fisheries. Like any market, appropriate regulation is needed to make a water market work well.
Done right, water transfers can benefit everyone: they offer security to the farmers who sell the water, they provide a precious water source for farmers and cities who buy it, they provide an incentive to increase investments in efficiency, and they can reduce pressure on the environment.
Water transfers work – particularly during dry years. Let’s start drawing more attention to this quiet solution.
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These stark numbers reveal how severe California’s groundwater overdraft problem is.
What happened to all of the water? Most of it was pumped out and used for irrigation. But because this groundwater has been drained out faster than Mother Nature can replenish it, wells are starting to run dry.
Think of some Central Valley irrigators as the guy who writes too many checks on the family bank account. After a string of bad checks, the bank simply shuts the account down, and the rest of the family members are left in the lurch. In the case of groundwater, the overdraft is depleting one of the most precious resources we have in our semi-arid state. California has hit peak water. We have run out of rivers to tap and dams to build. With a finite water supply, we can’t afford to squander groundwater too.
That’s why, as in all Western water conflicts, people are quick to assign blame. Some say the drought caused the overdraft. It’s true that three dry years have exacerbated the problem, but the NASA data goes back six years. Some say that the problem is caused by Endangered Species Act rulings that cover salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, and smelt, but those opinions were only released within the last year. They are not responsible for this trend.
No, groundwater overdraft is a problem with deep historical roots. Indeed, California has been here before, and each time we have arrived here for the same reason: the near absence of groundwater regulations in much of California. It’s time we learned from our mistakes and tried a new approach.
The new, satellite-based NASA data illustrates a problem that began with a simpler form of technology: the centrifugal water pump. The first such electrical pump was installed in California in 1907. Within two decades, overdraft was a recognized problem across California.
These new pumps were so successful that by the time the Central Valley Project was created, one of its aims was to deal with groundwater overdraft. The CVP brought more water into the valley, but it also prompted farmers to bring more land into production, and groundwater was still pumped to make up the difference.
Again, the State Water Project was touted as a solution to the overdraft problem. And yet again, more water was hauled in, more land was brought into production, and groundwater pumping continued apace.
Now we are facing the limits of groundwater once more. And as in the past, some agricultural interests are hoping that state or federal taxpayers will bail them out by building new dam projects – projects that they could not hope to pay for themselves.
But instead of hanging our hopes on costly new infrastructure, it would be more effective, affordable and more equitable for Californians to simply put some rules on the books.
No one regulates groundwater pumping across most of the Central Valley. Landowners can pump as much water as they want from their well--or dozen wells for that matter; there’s no limit.
In the American West, California and Texas are alone in not having groundwater regulations. Conservative states such as Arizona and Nebraska have long recognized the need to regulate this resource, to prevent a classic tragedy of the commons.
This lack of rules seems premised on the assumption that groundwater is not connected to surface waters, and that groundwater is essentially infinite. Both of these assumptions, of course, are wrong. Excessive groundwater pumping can drain our rivers and dry up wetlands. And the NASA report underscores that this is a very finite resource.
It’s true that much of Southern California has groundwater rules, and some groundwater banking rules apply in the Central Valley, but for the vast majority of the vast Central Valley, it is a free-for-all, where a Wild West mentality still prevails. If you see your neighbor pumping as much water as they please, you want to get your share before it’s gone.
And indeed, if current practices continue, it will be gone someday. When people pump more water than is naturally recharged, we call it groundwater mining. At this point groundwater becomes a non-renewable resource, and eventually wells run dry or it becomes too expensive to pump from dramatically lower groundwater tables.
Groundwater in California has for too long been out of sight and out of mind. But at some point, the current groundwater bubble will pop – with the predictable impacts that come with the collapse of unsustainable bubbles in other areas of our economy.
California has two options when it comes to groundwater. The first is to continue on the current course until we run out of groundwater and the agricultural community must rapidly adjust to jarring changes. The second option presents a much smoother path into the future – the development and implementation of a groundwater program that manages this resource for the long-term.
Such a program could include limits on long-term overdraft, efficiency measures, realistic water pricing, water transfers from water-rich farmers, transitions to higher value crops, retirement of drainage-impaired lands, reducing ongoing contamination, and investments in alternative economic tools, like solar energy, that can generate jobs and profits while using less water. In urban areas, capturing urban stormwater and storing recycled wastewater can also help us manage our groundwater more sustainably.
The new package of water legislation that passed the state legislature last month is the first action in decades nudging the state toward the second course. By creating a state-wide groundwater elevation monitoring program, the law will help create a comprehensive database for this critical resource. This information can help spur action to manage groundwater in a more sustainable way.
It’s time California learned from our checkered groundwater history and embraced the sustainable option. All of us--farmers, homeowners, urban businesses--will benefit.
]]>This data comes not a moment too soon. For more than a century, California approached water supply the same way: it found a new river to tap, poured a lot of cement, and built dams, canals, and pipelines. Now, however, California has run out of new rivers, and climate change has begun to shrink the ones we have already tapped. We have hit peak water, and the old ways of doing business won’t work in this new era.
But even in this time of constraint, one river keeps growing: the virtual river. The virtual river consists of the combined water supply potential of conversation, water recycling, improved groundwater management, and urban stormwater capture.
Researchers keep increasing their estimates of how much water we can draw from the virtual river while still going about the state’s business.
A report by the Pacific Institute, Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future, for instance, found farmers could save 19 times the amount of water returned to the environment through the Delta smelt ruling--4.5 to 6 million acre-feet each year--by adopting irrigation technologies that come from the efficiency tributary of the virtual river. This is far more than previously thought.
In addition, NRDC has been studying the potential of the virtual river for some time, but our recent report, A Clear Blue Future: How Greening California Cities Can Address Water Resources and Climate Challenges in the 21st Century, also found that we had previously underestimated it. Our new analysis concludes that:
That’s right, a water source that actually yields more than we previously thought. You can’t say that about the Colorado River these days.
As California has come to grips with our water shortage over the past several years, innovators--something our state is rich with--have been busily creating the next generation of water efficiency technology. Their ingenuity is paying off, and it will continue to do so.
Remember when compact florescent light bulbs gave off a light like something from a German U-boat? Now they provide a warm glow, just like an incandescent bulb, and they’ve become ubiquitous in hotels, offices, and homes. Or remember when hybrid cars were only visible at the occasional car show? Now you can’t drive across the Bay Bridge without seeing a dozen.
Advances in the CFLs and hybrid design have helped us dramatically cut back on our energy use. The same is happening with water conservation technology as well.
Smart irrigation systems that use satellite data to adjust flows are beginning to replace the more water-intensive drip systems in the agriculture sector, especially at vineyards. Waterless urinals are becoming common sites at public buildings, and low-flow toilets and efficient appliances are routine purchases for homeowners.
We don’t know where the next technological breakthrough will be. Maybe it will be something like this nearly waterless washing machine, which uses just a cup of water. Or maybe it will be this air washer, which won an Index Award. I won’t try to pick a winner here, but I do know the race is on.
Yet in order to get these innovations spread across the state, we need to do three things.
1. We must recognize that we have hit peak water. I believe this is happening. I hear it in the conversations I have across the state with water managers and policy makers.
2. We have to set aggressive efficiency targets. California led the nation in establishing and meeting rigorous energy efficiency goals. We are beginning to do the same with water. The California legislature just passed, and the Governor signed, a water bill that calls for reducing per capita water use by 20 percent by 2020. Targets like this are especially good as spurring innovation, because rather than mandating specific practices, they encourage people to continually discover better and cheaper ways to reduce water use.
3. We have to set aggressive targets for additional tools. The legislative focus on efficiency is terrific, as this is the largest potential source of “new” water. However, there is also enormous potential to squeeze new supplies from urban stormwater, groundwater cleanup, and wastewater recycling. All of these are technologically driven tools that provide ample opportunity for innovation.
Climate scientists suggest that California is likely to be drier in the future – shrinking the amount of water in our rivers. On the other hand, these new reports and the promise of ongoing innovation suggest that the Virtual River is one source that can keep growing. If we continue down this path--accepting that we have hit peak water and setting increasingly aggressive efficiency targets--the virtual river will become California’s biggest source of water for the 21st century.
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One of the most significant of those issues is how South of Delta water agencies would divide the cost of any new Delta conveyance facility. Specifically, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has agreed to pay for 25 percent of such a project - leading to a simple question: Who would pay the other 75 percent?
An interesting article from the Voice of San Diego gives a sense of what that debate might center around. The era of cheap water is over. Rates for water users are already on the rise. One line is particularly interesting.
If a $10 billion canal is built to route water around the beleaguered 738,000 Sacramento Delta, Metropolitan (the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) expects to pay about $2.5 billion of the cost. That would require a 15 percent rate increase.
Let's unpack those numbers a bit.
The cost of any Delta conveyance solution - which could include some combination of strengthening existing levees, a Delta canal, a pipeline or a tunnel - could cost tens of billions of dollars. In just the last few months, DWR and water user estimates of the potential cost of a canal have risen from $5-$10 billion to $6-$12 billion, but those numbers will likely increase.
DWR, for example, is now starting to evaluate seriously the possibility of building a tunnel under the entire Delta to move water. $20 billion is a reasonable planning number for a conveyance solution, but no one knows for sure.
If such a facility is built, it may not generate additional water supply - just a less vulnerable existing supply. Some water users have suggested that a canal would allow a return to the record water diversions earlier in this decade. We don't buy that. Restoring a healthy Delta will require water, no matter how the Delta is plumbed.
The Delta reform legislation passed on November 4 requires that all of the costs - including environmental review, planning, construction, maintenance, mitigation and operations -- for any Delta facility must be paid for by those who would receive water from it.
This is a major step forward in establishing the "beneficiary pays" approach to water financing that NRDC has supported for more than a decade. As a result of this requirement, water users south of the Delta will be focusing great attention to the development of a new Delta plan.
MWD's offer to pay 25 percent of the cost of a Delta conveyance facility is based roughly on MWD's share of total Delta diversions. Who would pay the other 75 percent of the costs is a big question -- as that share might reach $15 billion.
There are two obvious options:
Central Valley Agriculture: Central Valley agricultural interests have long resisted efforts to get them to pay full cost for the facilities that they would receive water from. The Central Valley Project is one of the nation's most generously subsidized pieces of infrastructure. And farmers have been quite clear that they will not pay the cost of proposed new dams that they strongly support. Given the amount of revenue generated per acre-foot of water used in this sector, there are real economic limits to the ability of agriculture to pay billions - let alone more than ten billion - for a Delta canal, pipeline or tunnel. In fact, some agricultural interests are already saying that agriculture will be unable to pay their share of the costs of a Delta canal.
Silicon Valley: The Santa Clara Valley Water District receives about half of its water from the Delta. But their 250,000 acre-feet of contracts with the CVP and SWP are about 1/6 of the maximum SWP deliveries to MWD. It's hard to imagine that this part of the state will pay more than a proportional share of a Delta fix.
Those two options appear unlikely as the source of 75 percent of the cost of a Delta facility. Of course, Met - and Southern California ratepayers - could agree to pay more. However, local water agencies are already finding that their customers are suffering from sticker shock when they open their water bills.
This is just one of the major financing questions that the new Delta Council and other agencies must wrestle with during 2010. The answers to these questions will be essential to help craft the right plan for the Delta, and to ensure that the plan is implemented. After all, the CALFED program - which was eliminated by the legislature in the water reform package - failed to resolve the financing problem. It's one major reason why that effort failed.
Our understanding of Delta issues has changed dramatically in recent years. Finding solutions is going to require everyone to rethink old positions in light of new developments. For example, in recent years, NRDC has revised our thinking on Delta conveyance issues. For water users South of the Delta, these new developments will require a clear-eyed evaluation of what a Delta conveyance solution would cost, what specific water agencies would get from it, and what they would pay for it.
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This process is confronting a question that has enormous implications for the future of California's water: How does a water agency that was built upon last century's tools--dams, canals, and other forms of concrete--adapt to the age of water conservation and efficiency?
How Met answers this question will shape its future and likely influence other water agencies around the state and the country.
You see, Met is the single largest urban water agency in the United States. It is also the juggernaut behind some of the most ambitious water projects of the 20th century, from tapping the Colorado River to hauling Delta water down the Central Valley and lifting it 2,000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains.
Met has been such a powerhouse that some local agencies call it Mother Met, and they don't always mean it fondly. Met was created to import water and was one of the nation's most powerful water forces during the last century.
But the 20th century has passed, and California has entered the era of peak water. Traditional water development has over-taxed our rivers - as shown by the closure of California's salmon fishery. And climate change is expected to reduce the amount of water in our rivers. The only river left for California to tap into is the Virtual River, the one made up of conservation, water recycling, improved groundwater management, and urban stormwater capture.
Met may be famous for building monolithic projects, but California's water future will be more decentralized. Developing the water supplies of the future means installing millions of low-flush toilets, high efficiency dishwashers, washing machines, smart irrigation systems, groundwater clean up facilities, rainwater capture systems and water recycling plants. Together, these decentralized investments will render more useable water than Met's traditional 20th century water supplies.
Can an agency accustomed to colossal water works be a leader in an era of dispersed strategies? Met member agencies are actively debating this question right now, trying to figure out how the agency can remain relevant.
I see two possible futures for Met:
In this scenario, Met would remain the steward of last century's water strategy. It could keep making its money selling imported water from the Delta and the Colorado, even as those sources dwindle, and it could continue to maintain the massive systems its uses to transport the water.
Some local agencies would be happy to see Met stick to the same old routine, because they would be free to become the leaders in developing the emerging 21st century water tools. Over the years, Mother Met has been a strict parent, and some agencies are eager to break out on their own. If Met pursues this scenario, it will slowly shrink in significance and what happens at the local level--programs like conservation, recycling wastewater and capturing stormwater runoff from city streets--will rise in prominence.
In this scenario, Met would use its 20th century strength-- running complex infrastructure---in the service of 21st century conservation efforts.
The future may be more decentralized, but decentralized doesn't mean isolated. Local water conservation efforts will still require cooperation. Say your city has enough water to meet residents' needs, but your neighboring community doesn't. Maybe your neighbor would finance conservation efforts in your city if you agree to share your water. But how will it get from one place to the other? That's where Met's pipelines come in.
Or imagine your city has a first-rate wastewater treatment facility, but you don't have anywhere to store the water in the winter when irrigation use is lower. Your neighbor has extra groundwater storage, but again, how will the treated water get to the storage area? Met's pipelines.
Regional cooperation is a key to squeezing water out of the Virtual River, and Met can facilitate that exchange.
I get the sense that the agency itself wants to evolve into Met 2.0. For example, Met's Local Resources Program is already providing up to $250 per acre foot to help finance locally developed supplies, such as groundwater and wastewater recycling. Still, within the greater water community, I get lobbied from both sides: from those who believe the future of Met lies with the Virtual River and from those who say Met should butt out of local conservation efforts.
In short, what is at issue here is whether Met will be the steward of the monolithic legacy of 20th century water development or the leader in the efficiency-based water strategies of the 21st century?
Hey, it may not get the airtime of a helium filled UFO-shaped balloon, but in my world, the Met Integrated Regional Plan process represents Must See TV.
Tell me what you think Met should or will become.
]]>SB 7x 1 (Simitian, Palo Alto), which is known in water circles as the "Delta governance" bill has many important provisions. It creates a new Delta Stewardship Council, with the responsibility to coordinate existing agency efforts into a comprehensive plan. Such a coordinated approach has long been recognized as essential - and has long eluded water reformers. For example: future land use decisions in the Delta should incorporate flood risks; ecosystem restoration should be coordinated with expanded floodways and strengthened levees; and water supply planning should provide the water needed by the Delta ecosystem.
The bill creates a new Delta Conservancy to work with local landowners to restore Delta habitat and a reformed Delta Protection Commission to help regulate Delta land use and advocate for Delta communities. All of these programs are important. A coordinated approach will give us a fighting chance to plan for the Delta's future. Without such an approach, we would simply be leaving the Delta to be shaped by rising sea levels, subsiding Delta soils and earthquake faults.
However, from our perspective, the most important provisions in the governance bill are a number of stronger legal protections for the Delta ecosystem. Here's a run down of the most significant new protections in the legislation.
This bill accomplishes something that environmentalists have sought for decades. It requires the State Water Resources Control Board to do a public trust analysis of how much water is required to restore the Delta.
Back in 1986, a state judge ordered the board to determine the Delta's flow needs pursuant to the state public trust.--a longstanding legal requirement for protecting California's water resources. The public trust dates back to British common law, and even Roman law. It reflects the fact that California's water resources are owned by the public, and held in trust by the state government. But even with the court order, the State Board failed to make this determination. They have tried and failed, mostly because of opposition from water users and governors who pulled the plug.
The new legislation mandates that the State Board do this analysis--a legislative command it has never had before. It also sets a firm nine month deadline for the Board to complete this fact finding process. Once completed, this finding will guide the work of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process. The alternative to this approach was for the BDCP process itself to suggest how much water is required to meet the Delta's needs. We strongly believe that this determination should be done by the State Board, rather than the water users and water projects that run the BDCP process.
This law also requires that the State Board impose the new flow standards that will result from this process on any new Delta water conveyance facility, as a part of what is known as a "change in point of diversion" authorization.
Over the past few years, NRDC has criticized the BDCP process for not committing to meet the state's highest standard for restoration in the Delta. After all, if the state is going to write a formal restoration plan for the Delta, it should meet its own top benchmarks -- those set by the Natural Communities Conservation Planning Act. These standards call not just for preventing extinction, but for helping wildlife species to recover and restoring the ecosystems they depend on. This new law requires that the BDCP meet these NCCPA standards.
For the past 40 years, the state's unwritten policy has been, "Let's pump more water from the Delta next year." With few exceptions, largely driven by droughts, past decades have seen a steady increase in diversions and a steady decline in the health of the Delta ecosystem.
Federal courts have ordered California to decrease its reliance on the Delta. Federal agencies have ordered that too in the Biological Opinions to protect Delta fish species. But now, with this legislation, the state itself has proclaimed a new policy of reducing reliance on the Delta. The reform package includes measures to achieve that, including increased conservation. (My colleague Doug Obegi will discuss the conservation bill in a future post.)
The new legislation says that if any new Delta conveyance facilities are built, they won't be paid for by the taxpayers. Rather, they will be paid for by those who would receive the exported water. We have long supported this "beneficiary pays" approach to water projects. This approach provides a welcome measure of fiscal discipline. When you have to bear the costs yourself, you have a strong incentive to build the smartest, smallest, most efficient system possible. But when you expect the general public to up the tab -- well, that's where water boondoggles start.
The bill requires the BDCP to evaluate a full range of alternatives to a peripheral canal. It also requires the analysis of a full range of facility operations. Some water users have suggested that the BDCP should analyze only alternatives that would dramatically increase diversion, excluding alternatives that would maintain or increase current protections.
The bill creates a new Delta Watermaster at the State Water Board, with the responsibility to ensure that legal requirements regarding the Delta are fully enforced. There is a long history of failure of agencies to comply with requirements in the Delta. The Watermaster provides a new focus on enforcement.
For committed water wonks, here is a list of some of the legislation's additional Delta protection measures.
Some have suggested that the governance bill somehow greases the skids for a peripheral canal and an increase in diversions from the Delta. The provisions above, however, represent a comprehensive set of new legislative requirements designed to protect the Delta, while encouraging the development of a plan to provide increased water supply reliability for the state.
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This list now includes the following:
Environmental and Fishing Groups
Water Agencies
Business Leaders
Read that list again. Over the past several decades, fights among these groups have spilled through state and federal courtrooms, as well as the halls of the state capitol, the nation’s capitol, state and federal agencies and the White House – not to mention your morning paper. The fact that such a diverse and growing list can come together around ambitious legislation holds out hope that, contrary to our collective reputation, water interests can behave like responsible, problem-solving adults.
It’s important to note that the new version of SB 68 (now known as SB 1-7x) was released just last Friday. Some of the groups above have not completed their review of its provisions. However, all of these groups have either supported SB 68 or encouraged the legislature to pass a comprehensive package of bills. Many of these groups testified on Monday in support of Senator Steinberg’s legislation. Some of these interests are also watching carefully to see how a few remaining issues will be resolved. (In fact, so is NRDC. I’ll write separately about a remarkable debate about whether or not to waive the constitutional prohibition against wasting water.)
Want another sign that something interesting is going on? Take a look at this story in The Economist. It states, in part, that “Westlands’ Mr Birmingham feels that many environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy, have become “genuinely interested in working with water agencies.” That’s something you don’t hear every day. Suffice it to say that NRDC and the Westlands Water District have disagreed about many things over the years – frequently before a federal judge.
California’s water wars are regularly marked by periods when lawyers retreat to their trenches for a legal war of attrition. These skirmishes are too seldom halted by moments of cooperation. The growing support for state water reform legislation does not indicate that peace has broken out. But perhaps it is a sign that a truce is possible -- giving us time and breathing room to develop workable solutions to meet the legitimate needs of the environment, fishermen, farmers and urban residents.
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I believe the same trajectory holds true for water, and here in California, we have hit peak water.
Yes, water is a renewable resource, but it is not infinitely so. There is only so much water you can take out of system before you reach limits. In California, those limits take a variety of forms, but they all mean the same thing: on nearly all major river systems in the state, we are taking less water than we used to.
In the San Francisco Bay-Delta, we hit the limit when the entire ecosystem collapsed and the salmon fishery was closed because too much water has been diverted to agriculture and urban users.
Along the Colorado River, we hit the limit when drought settled on the Colorado Plateau and other states objected that California was taking much more than its rightful allotment of river water.
Along the Klamath and Trinity Rivers, the rights of Native American nations to a healthy salmon fishery have played a role in the realization that we have hit limits on these North Coast rivers.
Along the Owens River, we hit the limit when Los Angeles diverted so much water that dust storms from a dry Owens Lake threatened the health of local residents.
We have hit similar walls on the San Joaquin River, the Mono Lake Basin and more. Look at a map of California and you will see that every major watershed has been tapped. We have hit -- or passed -- peak water on each of these rivers.
A century ago, historians wrote about the closing of the American Frontier, but here in California we hung on to a frontier mentality regarding water -- we never felt constrained by the boundaries of what our rivers could provide. Those days are over. Peak water means that the hydraulic frontier has closed as well.
Interestingly, this is not a controversial idea within California's business and urban water communities. Although they may not yet use the term peak water, they are already planning for its reality.
If you look at the water management plans of cities like Los Angeles or the San Diego region or the Southern California business community -- you'll see that they are preparing to meet their needs without diverting more water from the state's rivers. This represents a major change in direction. (The exception to this trend is the agricultural sector, which hopes that billions in taxpayer subsidies for new dams will enable them to squeeze a few more drops from California's ailing rivers.)
This is where the concept of the Virtual River comes in. The Virtual River is where we must turn now that the real ones are tapped out. It consists of the combined water supply potential of conversation, water recycling, improved groundwater management, and urban stormwater capture. These tools can provide more water than we ever exported from the Bay-Delta, the largest single source of water for California in the late 20th century. The Virtual River can be California's biggest source of water for the 21st. It can also improve our water quality, decrease energy use and decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
Just as energy efficiency is the solution to peak oil, the Virtual River is the solution to peak water.
As inspired as I am by the water managers and businesspeople who realize this, California has to take it to the next level. This is where the provisions of SB 68 (Steinberg) come in. That bill includes provisions that recognize California has hit peak water. Specifically, the bill calls for:
This bill is coming at a critical time. We have passed peak water -- and climate change will further reduce supplies from our rivers in the future. As currently drafted, SB 68 shows that California can adapt to this reality and tap into the plentiful waters of the Virtual River.
]]>Last Friday, in the closing hours of the legislative session for the year, the California legislature was unable to pass an extraordinarily ambitious package of water reform legislation.
The closing day of the legislative session was made more dramatic by the release of a revised package of legislation that was shaped, in part, by discussions among several stakeholders, including NRDC and other environmental groups, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Westlands Water District and the LA Chamber of Commerce.
All of these groups, with the exception of Westlands, also supported three additional bills, which together formed the most ambitious package of state water reform legislation in the past quarter century. The package was a bold attempt to implement the recommendations of the Delta Vision Task Force, which were designed to chart a new course in the Delta and for California water policy.
The final bill consolidated five separate pieces of legislation, including AB 49, a water conservation bill that is co-sponsored by NRDC. The package contains a number of measures crucial to using our precious water resources more fairly and efficiently, restoring our iconic salmon fisheries, and providing a more reliable water supply for farms, cities, and ecosystems. In particular, the bills will:
Unfortunately, the final package failed to pass the legislature on the last day of session on Friday. That failure was largely due to a lack of time (the final package was released on Friday morning) and disagreements over a $12 billion water bond and proposed subsidies for agricultural water supply dams. Nevertheless, the developments of the past few days mark an historic moment in California water policy. Although the failure of that package is disappointing, we believe that it has set the stage for what we hope can be a breakthrough next year.
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The Dutch are the world's leading experts in fighting back the seas, and the engineers I heard speak have come to San Francisco to work with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. The BCDC is just the right agency for the Dutch to partner with, because it is helping to lead a regional effort to plan comprehensively for adapting to climate change along the shores of San Francisco Bay.
These same Dutch engineers might be able to help California think about a comprehensive plan for the other half of this needlessly bifurcated estuary - the Delta. But astonishingly, there's a major obstacle to developing such a partnership: there is no California agency for them to work with.
There is no Delta agency tasked with creating a comprehensive program to cope with sea-level rise by addressing the three key issues in the Delta: ecosystem health, water supply, and in-Delta issues like protecting farms, residents and infrastructure from growing flood risks. It's quite astonishing that no such state agency exists, despite the fact that:
Simply put, there is no one at the helm in the Delta. The Bay-Delta may be one single ecosystem, but politically it is divided into dozens of parts. Unlike in the Bay, there is no Delta agency with jurisdiction broad enough to make it an appropriate partner for collaborating with the Dutch.
In significant part, the new package of governance bills that I have written about here is designed to address this problem. These bills would create a Delta Stewardship Council charged with writing and implementing a comprehensive plan to address sea level rise and how it will impact the Delta ecosystem, water supply, communities, agriculture, and infrastructure.
Once this council is in place, our Delta can start applying the lessons about sea-level rise that the Dutch have learned from their delta.
I have seen many of the Dutch flood-control techniques first-hand. A few years ago, I traveled to the Netherlands and went out into the fields around Rotterdam to see how this lowland country--where more than two-thirds of the population lives below sea level--was protecting itself.
The Dutch have been known for centuries for their sea barriers. But it wasn't until a devastating storm surge from the North Sea drowned more than 1,800 people in 1953 that the Netherlands seriously committed to modernizing its flood control systems.
At the start of the process, the Dutch adopted a key concept. To figure out how strong to build the defenses, they accounted for the cost of damage if the defenses failed. So, for instance, the levees around Rotterdam--vulnerable to sea-level rise and one of the largest ports in the world--are designed to stand up to a flood that you would only see once every 10,000 years.
A panel recently recommended that for the core of their flood system, the goal should be a risk of one flood each 125,000 years. A quieter, more rural area might require defenses against a once in a 250-year flood. This level of protection stands in stark contrast with many parts of the US, including the Delta.
Considering that the US Congress recently ordered the Army Corp of Engineers to upgrade New Orleans hurricane protection to the once-in-100-year level, the United States could learn a lot from the Dutch. The San Francisco Bay-Delta, in particular, lies at the heart of much of California's economic vitality, so there are a great may reasons to develop a comprehensive plan for the Delta.
What I learned from my time in the Netherlands was that highly effective flood solutions exist, some of which could be easily adapted to our Delta. For example, four lessons hold great potential for our situation:
These are just a few of the lessons we can learn from the Netherlands. But if no one in the Delta is on the receiving end, the lessons will be lost.
This is why we should pass an ambitious package of governance bills. Delta communities, its environment, and the Delta economic engine deserve to be protected from sea-level rise just as much as the San Francisco Bay and as the Rhine Delta. With the creation of a Delta Stewardship Council, the Delta could have a fighting chance. Without such an agency.....
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Senator Wolk asserts out that some water interests have been less than eager to involve the Delta's farmers, fishermen, teachers, business leaders and local officials in some current planning efforts.
Instead, the Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Reclamation and a small group of water agencies south of the Delta have long dominated Delta discussions. Those agencies depend enormously on water from the Delta and must play an important part in discussions about its future. However, Senator Wolk suggests that these interests need to make room at the Delta table for the residents who live in and own most of the Delta.
For instance, the DWR and other agencies involved in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process are contemplating large-scale habitat restoration in the Delta and the construction of an enormous Peripheral Canal in the Delta. An ambitious restoration program is certainly necessary to restore the Delta's health, and the uncertain future of the Delta suggests that a thoughtful new approach to conveyance in the Delta is required. But any process planning the future of the Delta would be wise to provide a significant role for those in the Delta.
The reality is that local governments in California have a great deal of power when it comes to developing major new projects in their backyards--including the power to bring them to a grinding halt. Residents of the Delta realize this, and they want their voices to be heard.
The simple fact is that water planning efforts will only succeed if the Delta community is involved. Large-scale changes will require cooperation from a long list of local interests - levee reclamation districts, land owners, the Port of Stockton, county and city governments and many others. Without their assistance, an ambitious program could take years, perhaps decades, longer to complete.
I was speaking recently with an elected official about this situation. I asked him, "What would happen if Caltrans came to your city and said, 'We're planning to build a major freeway through your community, but you're not welcome to join our planning process.' How long would it take for such a project to be built?" He replied, "It would never be built. Local governments are too strong to be rolled by state agencies."
Words to the wise.
It's certainly true that involving the many interests in the Delta will take effort. It may take more time in the short term. However, in the long term, it will help ensure that California develops a better plan for the Delta - and that the plan can actually be implemented.
As Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
]]>Late last week, the California Legislature released a package of five major water reform bills (find links to each bill here). Like many others who work on water issues, I'm still combing through them. But I can already sense that this is an opportunity to lift California out of our current water crisis and into an economically and environmentally sustainable future.
Why is this happening now? For starters, the state finally has a budget, and lawmakers are turning to other pressing issues. What is interesting is that water has now risen to the top two or three priorities of our legislature.
Three things are driving this new sense of urgency:
Today, it's a challenge to find anyone who believes that the course of California water policy over the past decade will be sustainable in the future. This emerging reality has prompted some high-level reaction. In September of 2006, the governor and the legislature commissioned the Delta Vision Task Force to write an ambitious new plan for the future of the Delta. That plan was completed and submitted to the legislature in December of 2007. In February of 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger also announced that he wants California to decrease per capita water use 20 percent by 2020.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President pro Tem Darrel Steinberg responded to these developments by convening a small legislative working group. After lengthy discussions within that group, Bass and Steinberg released a package of five heavily amended water bills. The package includes cost-effective measures for conserving and using California's water more efficiently in order to achieve the governor's water conservation goal. NRDC and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are co-sponsoring this legislation, which is being carried by Assemblymembers Mike Feuer and Jared Huffman.
The package also takes the bold and much-needed step of proposing major reforms to the state's water agencies. The Delta Vision Task Force concluded that "governance reform" is required to resolve issues in the Delta because the California's current fractured and antiquated agencies are simply not up to the job. The bills would create a new Stewardship Council to manage the Delta, require the development of a comprehensive Delta plan to address ecosystem, water supply and flood management issues, establish a new Delta Conservancy to implement restoration projects, and strengthen the powers of the Delta Protection Commission to regulate inappropriate land use in the Delta.
As I study the bills more closely, I'll have more detailed recommendations for improvements. But I welcome this opportunity for reform.
You see, we really can change the way water management works in California. I have seen it before, although not on such a sweeping scale. Back in 1992, Congress passed the
Central Valley Project Improvement Act to make the project more responsive to the environmental and economic needs of the state.
The CVPIA changed the landscape pretty substantially. Prior to the law, the Bureau of Reclamation claimed it did not have the authority to protect endangered species. Now we have two new federal biological opinions requiring the CVP to protect Delta species listed under the ESA (see my colleague Doug Obegi's post about this here). Today, no one at the Bureau questions the need to protect these vanishing species. The law was also designed to promote water transfers. Today, there is a thriving water transfer system among agricultural water agencies south of the Delta.
The package of five bills before the legislature has the potential to have an even bigger impact - but on a broader set of water issues.
AB 49, for example, could make water conservation strategies--things like smart irrigation controllers-- business as usual. And all Californians would benefit from agency reform that allowed the resolution of difficult Delta issues.
These times don't come around too often. I hope our lawmakers seize the moment.
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