$11 Billion in Water Bonds: Follow the Money
Governor Schwarzenegger traveled to Fresno County Monday to sign the centerpiece of last week’s package of water bills—an $11.14 billion bond measure that would pay for new dams and reservoirs and a sweeping program of conservation, water recycling and drought relief projects.
The governor appeared at a Friant Dam press conference with state Senator Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, author of the bond initiative. Schwarzenegger said he’s hopeful that the bond, along with other measures in last week’s comprehensive water agreement, will put an end to the “holy water wars” pitting Northern v. Southern California and among cities, agriculture, fishing communities, and environmentalists.
The the governor signed the bond bill amid criticism that last-minute negotiations added more than $1 billion in earmarks designed to win support for the measure.
See our map, prepared by KQED editor Dan Brekke, for a detailed breakdown of where the $11.14 billion in bond money is supposed to go.
View Where Would the Money Go? in a larger map
View Where Would the Money Go? in a larger map
When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?
Exposed turbine intakes and the "bathtub ring" at Lake Mead. Photo: Craig Miller
You can see a slide show of the retreating waters at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and listen to my radio feature from The California Report. Also, The American Experience will rerun its documentary on Hoover Dam, Monday night on most PBS stations.
The Las Vegas Sun has a digital clock on its website, counting down to a theoretical doomsday when the city's principal source of water would go dry. Wagering on that question may not have found its way into the sports books on the Strip–but it did become a lively pastime among engineers and hydrologists, when a report emerged from San Diego's Scripps Institution, with a dire forecast. The paper, by climate physicist Tim Barnett, put the odds at 50-50 that Lake Mead, the giant reservoir behind Hoover Dam, would reach "dead pool" by 2017. That's the point at which the dam shuts down and neither hydroelectric power nor water emerges from it.
The Barnett study "definitely raised eyebrows throughout the basin," admits Terry Fulp, deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado Region, which operates Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. As it turns out, Barnett was a bit pessimistic. Subsequent work by him and others revealed that he overestimated the evaporation rate at Lake Mead, and omitted inflows below a certain point on the river.
The bottom line, according to Balaji Rajagopalan at the University of Colorado: Doomsday is not quite that near at hand. But that doesn't mean it's not on the horizon. "After 2027, the demand increase outpaces the supply decrease," Rajagopalan told me in a recent interview. "And that’s why much of the risk explodes from 2027 to 2057."
All of these studies are couched in probabilities, much in the same way that the Corps of Engineers talks about a "100-year" flood. Rajagopalan says: "Even in our study, we have a 50% risk [of dead pool], but that occurs in 2057. And that makes a big difference in terms of water managers, what they can do."
One of those managers is Pat Mulroy, who directs the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Her constituents rely on Lake Mead for 90% of their water, so she says she's not inclined to wait around for a consensus. "I mean, during the entire period of the ‘90s when we were bickering with our friends in the lower basin over surpluses, there was zero probability that the drought that we’re currently in was going to happen," Mulroy told me. "I’ve lost confidence in probabilities."
The Bureau's Fulp says the Colorado system leans heavily on the huge water storage capacity of Lake Mead and its sister reservoir upstream, Lake Powell. "We’ve known for decades that this system is highly variable and that’s why so much storage was built." When filled to capacity (which it was, more or less, 10 years ago), Lake Mead alone can hold enough to put an area the size of Pennsylvania under a foot of water. But a 10-year drought has left Mead at just over 40% of capacity (so think of flooding something more the size of Costa Rica). Just as current evidence and climate models both point toward lessening flows on the Colorado, many parts of the southwest still see relatively high population growth.
Scientists continue to run their statistical models aimed at handicapping the Colorado's demise as a dependable bringer of water. But as Fulp sums it up, "It’s really a debate about when. It’s not really 'if."
I regret an error of my own that appeared in the radio feature. I misstated the number of people in southern Nevada who are dependent on water from the Colorado. The correct number is about two million.
USGS: Americans More Water-Conscious Overall
Lake Mead in October, 2009 Photo: Craig Miller
Despite the addition of 81 million people over the period, Americans were using less water in 2005 than they were in 1975, according to the latest numbers released from the USGS.
The per-capita decrease of 30% since 2000, down to 1383 gallons per person per day, is a level not seen since the 1950s. Of course this doesn't mean that each person in the United States is using more than a thousand gallons per day at home–that number is somewhere between 54 (if you live in Maine) and 190 (if you live in Nevada). The USGS number is derived from dividing total water withdrawals by total population. In 2005, the total withdrawal was 410 billion gallons per day (5% less than in the peak year, 1980) and the total population was approximately 310 million.
An analysis by the Oakland-based Pacific Institute finds that the changes in national water use are due to improvements in efficiency, particularly in industrial use and irrigation. However, the largest category of water use–that used for producing energy–is growing (by 3% between 2000 and 2005), and the analysis cites this as a worrying trend as the population increases, particularly in dry parts of the country. In 2005, 49% of all water withdrawals were for cooling power plants.
"Far more water is required for nuclear and fossil fuel energy systems than for most renewable energy systems," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, in a statement about the new numbers. "Water availability will increasingly limit our energy choices as climate change accelerates and population continues to grow." California's two commercial nuclear plants are located on the coast and use sea water for cooling.
More efficient farming seems to be one of the bright spots in the report. Irrigation withdrawals in 2005 declined to the 1970 level of 1.28 billion gallons per day, even though the amount of irrigated land in the nation has increased by millions of acres since 1970. It seems that American agriculture is, in fact, doing more with less, thanks to more efficient sprinklers and drip irrigation systems. Even so, agriculture still claims about 77% of "developed" water in California, according to Ellen Hanak, water policy analyst with the Pubic Policy Institute of California.
The Pacific Institute commentary added some sobering notes:
The United States, although relatively water-rich, faces a range of threats to its vital supplies of freshwater. Overuse has turned the Colorado River into little more than a trickle. Overuse and contamination threaten the massive Ogallala aquifer, which runs from Texas to South Dakota and is an important source of irrigation and drinking water. Political and economic conflicts are growing between Alabama, Florida, and Georgia over water use. And other serious threats to our water resources – including climate change, environmental destruction, and population growth – remain unaddressed.
Household water use across the country is growing proportionately to U.S. population growth. While people are becoming more water-efficient at home, these behavioral changes are being balanced out by a shift in population to hotter, drier areas, such as the Southwest.
The Pacific Institute's Circle of Blue Water News has interactive maps showing which states have decreased their water withdrawals between 2000 and 2005 and total water withdrawals by state for this time period, as well as charts tracking U.S. water withdrawals since 1950.
11/18/09 Update:
Listen to audio of Peter Gleick discussing the report's findings on today's broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition.
Seeding Clouds for Hydropower
PG&E cloud seeders located near Burney Falls, CA. Photo: PG&E
Christina Aanestad's radio feature for Climate Watch airs Monday morning on The California Report.
Wringing Hydropower Out of the Clouds
By Christina Aanestad
When cloud seeding began in the 1950’s there were no laws governing weather modification. According to Maurice Roos, Chief Hydrologist with the state Department of Water Resources (DWR), it wasn’t until the late 1970’s when a storm in a seeded area near Los Angeles flooded, that regulations governing weather modification were included in the state’s water code. In the West, “Most of the states have legislation that governs the conduct of weather modification activity,” says Brant Foote, director of the Research Applications Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
Government oversight has changed over the years. Today in California, state regulations have slackened. “As for the State’s role, it is mainly informational. There are no permits or licenses,” said Roos. According to Roos, all cloud-seeding projects required permits until the law was reformed. “The old law required licenses and permits but it was repealed in the 1980’s. There was a general move toward deregulation in the government–mainly to reduce costs.” Today, according to Roos, Sponsors of cloud-seeding projects must notify DWR and county governments of the project, “This can be a letter or, for DWR, an e-mail notice,” he said. “They also have to publish a Notice of Intention in the county or counties affected by their proposed operations.”
Most of what this reporter learned was from Roos’ institutional memory, and going directly to sponsors of cloud-seeding operations–about 15 intermittent projects around the state. Data on cloud seeding at the state level is scattered, according to Roos. “We used to have an annual report that was published. Last time I tried to find it, it was in an archived box and nobody knew where it was,” said Roos, who added that budget cuts and deregulation mostly gutted the oversight program.
Despite lax oversight, the State of California wants to use weather modification as part of its 2009 Water Plan, which states:
“Cloud seeding has advantages over many other strategies for providing water. A project can be developed and implemented relatively quickly…it could offset some of the loss in snow pack expected from global warming.”
According to the plan, some regulation remains: weather modification sponsors need to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act [CEQA]. But not all seeding has to comply with environmental regulations. PG&E contends that an environmental impact report is not required for its Pit-McCloud River project because it is privately funded, with equipment on private lands,” said Roos.
That has locals groups near Mount Shasta concerned with PG&E’s proposed project in the Pit and McCloud River watersheds. “It’s a clear unequal treatment between public agencies and private entities,” said Angelina Cook with the Climate Council and the Mount Shasta Community Rights Project. “Private corporations require more government oversight and regulation to ensure accountability for the their practices.” But compiling all cloud-seeding data in California into one reference source today would be “a labor of love,” says Roos. “There’s no funds for it,” he said.
Cook says she is working on a cloud-seeding ban in Mount Shasta City, which may include a chemical trespass for silver iodide, the common chemical used in cloud seeding. “If silver iodide is found in the area, PG&E would be liable,” said Cook.
But Roos, who says cloud seeding is mostly benign, asks where one would draw the line. “There’s all kinds of influences on the air like people driving their cars, diesel trucks running around,” said Roos. Just as California has increased its regulations on air emissions in the state, some like Cook would like to see tougher regulations for weather modification as well.
Meanwhile, the state’s 2009 water plan also urges more research and development into cloud-seeding. Research could include cloud seeding’s impact on global climate change, and it’s effectiveness. The plan also identifies areas that could provide optimal results from cloud seeding, mostly in Northern California, along the Sacramento, Trinity and Russian Rivers.
Cloud Seeding Projects in California
View Cloud Seeding Projects in California in a larger map
To find references to cloud-seeding in the state’s water plan, look under Volume 3, then for "Precipitation Enhancement."
Trash Day in Tokyo: The Learning Curve
KQED's Los Angeles Bureau Chief and frequent Climate Watch contributor Rob Schmitz is spending six weeks in Japan, as part of the Abe Fellowship for Journalists. In the weeks to come he'll file a series of special reports on Japan's extraordinary strides in energy efficiency–and what we might learn from them.
Today was combustible garbage day in my neighborhood. On Tuesdays and Fridays, residents place all their garbage deemed ‘burnable’ out on the curb. At promptly 8 a.m., it is taken away and, presumably, burned.
Burn after reading? Trash day instructions in Japan.
I had a lot of questions about what was considered combustible and the sign on the light post advertising the pick-up days wasn’t very helpful. My wife and I brought our 11-month-old son here. Were diapers considered ‘burnable’? I knocked on the Webers' door to ask. Terry and Sherry Weber live next door. They’ve been working as teachers in Tokyo for 27 years. They told me that up until recently, plastic products were not considered burnable items, but all of that changed this year, and now it’s apparently fine to deposit plastic items like diapers on the curb on combustible garbage day. Either way, they told me, if the sanitation officials see that I’ve tried to sneak in some non-combustibles on the incorrect day, they’d leave it on the curb with a note, scolding me for screwing it all up.
I put a bag of diapers and another bag of what I thought were burnable items on the curb, nervous that I’d be the laughing stock of my new neighborhood. An hour later, the garbage truck arrived, two men got out, inspected my garbage, and dumped all of it into the back of their truck.
The dreaded Tokyo city sanitation department gives me a passing grade on my burnable/non-burnable garbage sorting skills.
Whew. Now I’ve got to prepare for Thursday, which is recyclables day. I’m supposed to separate all of my recyclables into paper, cardboard, plastic, and cans, and bundle each of them with string. Wish me luck.
Elsewhere on the waste disposal front:
I usually don’t get excited about toilets. But the toilet in my apartment here in Tokyo has inspired me to great heights.
It doesn't look exciting. But look more closely...
The toilet gives the user two types of flushes: the ‘big’ flush, or the ‘small’ flush, so that you can control how much water you’ll need, thereby conserving this precious resource.
Parched water districts of California: Please start importing these for your customers!
But that’s not what got me excited. What I was really impressed by was when you flush the toilet, water is pumped into the tank at the back of the toilet via a faucet. It runs into a basin on top of the tank where you can wash your hands with the water before it enters the toilet for the next flush. Genius. Pure genius. Why don’t we see more of these in California, where water is an even more precious resource than it is here?
Editor's Note: Dual-flush toilets are now available in California. But the piggy-back sink–that's a new one for me. –CM
Delta Dawn
Scientists and policy wonks seem to be in general agreement on this: that it's time to close out the current management epoch on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and begin anew. There's less accord on how to proceed.
Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Policy makers have assembled "blue ribbon" panels to study the options and make recommendations. Volumes of studies and proposals line the shelves in Sacramento and elsewhere.
Last week a new idea surfaced for moving water through the Delta: Instead of channeling around it, tunnel under it.
This week the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released its recommendations for a mechanism to fund the enormous fixes that will be required: Those who benefit pay (ecologists use the term "ecosystem services" for all those bennies we get from natural resources and tend to take for granted).
Whatever the outcome, one thing seems inevitable, with or without human intervention. Driven by warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels will continue to push saltwater farther upstream, changing the Delta's character and the "services" it provides.
Recently a team of students at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism produced a Flash presentation on some of the issues raised by advancing salt in the Delta. The multimedia report: Delicate Balance was produced for Climate Watch by Amanda Dyer, Martin Ricard and Jeremy Whitaker. We're grateful to them for their time and creativity.
Plan Moves Climate Adaptation to Front Burner
A one-fifth reduction in per capita water use by 2020 is among the goals outlined in a new state report on adapting to climate change.
Released by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) as a "discussion draft," the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy is being billed as the nation's first comprehensive game plan for adaptation to climate change.
Photo: Reed Galin
Most of the state's high-profile climate initiatives (and battles) have been about mitigation; how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow down warming. This report swings the spotlight over to adaptation; what needs to be done to accommodate the climate change effects that are already "in the pipeline."
While the California's centerpiece climate law was passed three years ago, this week's CNRA report concedes that "adaptation is a relatively new concept in California policy." The 161-page white paper comes in response to an executive order from the Governor last fall, calling for a statewide adaptation strategy.
The draft divides the strategy into seven "sectors:" Public health, biodiversity and habitat, ocean and coastal resources, water, agriculture, and forestry.
Tony Brunello, Deputy Secretary for Climate Change and Energy at CNRA, says "This is the first report that really looks at how climate change is going to impact the state and what we need to do about it."
But Brunello stopped short of conceding that mitigation is a lost cause. "You only have half a deck if you're only focused on mitigation," he said. "You need to focus on both mitigation and adaptation to truly be prepared."
Some strategies attack both. Brunello points to water conservation measures, which save both water and energy (20% of the energy used in the state is deployed moving water around).
The plan is designed to work in consort with the California Air Resources Board's implementation plan for AB-32, the state's multifaceted attack on greenhouse gas emissions. CNRA says one of its goals is to "enhance" existing efforts, rather than create new programs and offices that need funding.
CNRA also promises to use the "best available science in identifying climate change risks and adaptation strategies." Andrew Revkin has a useful overview of the mounting challenges to climate scientists, published this week in the New York Times.
One planned product from the adaptation plan is an interactive website devoted to climate adaptation, with maps and data to assist local planners. CNRA hopes to have that in place by early next year. The draft plan now enters a 45-day period for public comment.
Threats to Colorado River Water Supply
Photo: National Park Service
The Colorado River supplies water to approximately 27 million people in seven states and irrigates more than three million acres of farmland. In Southern California alone, it supplies 18 million Metropolitan Water District customers with 40 percent of their water.
So last year, when a study out of Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that there's a 50 percent chance that the Colorado River's largest reservoir (and the largest reservoir in the United States), Lake Mead, will be dry by 2021, the news generated a lot of buzz.
But a new study out from the University of Colorado Boulder finds that despite a 10-year drought in the Colorado River system, the odds of draining the river's delivery system before 2026 are pretty slim — below 10% in any given year. Researchers say this is primarily due to the massive reservoir storage capacity along the Colorado — more than 60 million acre feet, which includes Lake Mead. The reservoir system of the Colorado is currently at 59 percent of capacity, according to the study.
But the scientists predict that by mid-century, the Colorado could become less reliable unless water-management strategies change.
The researchers found that if climate change causes a 10 percent reduction in the Colorado River’s average stream flow as some recent studies predict ([PDF]), the chances of fully depleting the system's reservoirs will exceed 25 percent by 2057. If there is a 20 percent reduction in stream flow, the chances of deleption rise to 50 percent.
"On average, drying caused by climate change would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage by nearly ten times more than the risk we expect from population pressures alone," said lead study author Balaji Rajagopalan in a press release about the study.
The authors of the study conclude that the magnitude of the risk will depend not just on the amount of drying the region experiences, but also the types of water management and conservation strategies that are implemented in the near future.
For the last decade, California’s annual use of Colorado River water has varied from 4.5 to 5.2 million acre feet.
Photo: Adrian Fogg
Updated: Disaster Status Sought for Valley
Five days after filing it, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was still awaiting some response from the White House to his request for a federal disaster declaration, to address drought conditions in Fresno County.
Meanwhile, the Washington bureau of the McClatchy newspaper chain (which includes the Fresno Bee) reports that the request is something of a longshot.
The Governor made the request last Friday, one day after he faced a tense gathering in Fresno, where water issues upstaged even the precarious condition of state finances, and shortly after a meeting with farmers in Mendota.
The governor has had a standing statewide drought emergency in effect since February. Friday he signed an executive order freeing up state resources to help ease drought-related impacts. A federal declaration would allow affected businesses to apply for federal aid. President Obama has since signed several other disaster declarations last week, in response to storms in Missouri, wildfires in Oklahoma and other incidents.
Parsing the White House Climate Report
At least one researcher cited in the 196-page climate impacts report issued this week by the Obama administration is not impressed with the final product. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado's Center for Science & Technology Research has written a blog post critical of the report and in particular, the way in which his work was interpreted. If you'd rather not plow through the entire post, John Tierney has an overview of Pielke's critique on his blog for the New York Times.
2004 California heat wave, from the Aqua satellite. Image: NASA
The report was arguably the first to break down both observed and projected effects of climate change into coherent regional summaries. For the purposes of the report, California was considered part of the Southwest region, which included states as far east as Colorado and New Mexico.
Not surprisingly, many of the points raised in the Southwest section (beginning on p. 129) have to do with water supply. Most have been reported or discussed in our Climate Watch coverage, either here or in our radio reports. Selected "highlights" include:
- Past climate records based on changes in Colorado River flows indicate that drought is a frequent feature of the Southwest, with some of the longest documented “megadroughts” on Earth.
- The prospect of future droughts becoming more severe as a result of global warming is a significant concern, especially because the Southwest continues to lead the nation in population growth.
- Human-induced climate change appears to be well underway in the Southwest. Recent warming is among the most rapid in the nation, significantly more than the global average in some areas.
- Projections suggest continued strong warming, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower emissions scenarios. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual average increases in some parts of the region, and are likely to be exacerbated locally by expanding urban
heat island effects.- Water supplies in some areas of the Southwest are already becoming limited, and this trend toward scarcity is likely to be a harbinger of future water shortages. Groundwater pumping is lowering water tables, while rising temperatures reduce river flows in vital rivers including the Colorado.
- Projected temperature increases, combined with river-flow reductions, will increase the risk of water conflicts between sectors, states, and even nations.
- Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape.
- Under higher emissions scenarios, high-elevation forests in California, for example, are projected to decline by 60 to 90 percent before the end of the century.
- In California, two-thirds of the more than 5,500 native plant species are projected to experience range reductions up to 80 percent before the end of this century under projected warming.
- Projected changes in the timing and amount of river flow, particularly in winter and spring, is estimated to more than double the risk of Delta flooding events by mid-century, and result in an eight-fold increase before the end of the century.
- A steady reduction in winter chilling could have serious economic impacts on fruit and nut production in the region. California’s losses due to future climate change are estimated between zero and 40 percent for wine and table grapes, almonds, oranges, walnuts, and avocados, varying significantly by location.
By the way, Pielke's critique does not directly address anything in this list, though his work does involve weather-related disasters, which would include floods. Asked by a commentator on his blog if he thinks the entire report should be dismissed based on the flawed interpretation of his research, Pielke replied: "I wouldn't think so and would certainly hope not. At the same time the section which covers my research does not give me a lot of confidence in the process that led to the report."
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