Kimberly Ayers

Is the 2012 water bond heading for the drain?

“There are two subjects water people least want to talk about: politics and money,” said the former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, David Nahai. He was speaking at the “Future of Water in Southern California” conference on a dry and windy Friday, here in the City of Angels. And those two were the uncomfortable topics State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) talked about in his lunch hour keynote.

Sponsored by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, the conference was generously sprinkled with Southland water and sanitation district staff. They’d just spent the morning presenting new ideas for water “banking,” and new technologies for advanced recycling, and Steinberg knew the idea of less money would not wash down well with the noontime pasta salad and sandwiches. In fact, a proposal to cut 25% from each project in the water bond measure even failed an Assembly committee vote on Jan. 10th.

As our interactive map (below) shows, the $11.1 billion proposal’s largest proposals are for water storage, Bay-Delta sustainability, groundwater clean-up, and advanced water treatment and recycling.

View KQED: California’s Water Bond – Where Would the Money Go? in a larger map

The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) is already on record as opposing any reduction, calling the cut “premature” in Capitol testimony earlier this month. In an Op-Ed piece for the Sacramento Bee, ACWA chief Timothy Quinn — also a former head of the Southern California Metropolitan Water District — brandished a Field survey it commissioned in which 84% of voters agreed, “the state has major water problems and must invest in its water infrastructure to ensure reliable water now and in future years.” And 64% said “investing billions of dollars in a state bond package (such as the one on the November ballot) would be worth it to ensure reliable water supplies.”

Steinberg conceded that most think the bond is “too large,” and critics say it’s overladen with pork. “I can accept that but one person’s pork is another person’s regional water solution,” Steinberg told the gathering. “We’re not going to be able to sell an $11 billion bond to voters during a very precarious period of economic recovery.” The alternative numbers he gently lobbed were in the range of seven-to-ten billion dollars.

A nationwide poll, “The Value of Water,” by hydro technology firm Xylem, Inc., showed — as of 18 months ago — water users were up for spending 11% more a month to upgrade their water systems. But the Natural Resources Defense Council had postprandial admonitions about the need to get truly creative with water system financing. NRDC’s David Beckman pointed to the group’s Center for Market Innovation, which is working to create large-scale private sector financing for energy efficiency projects.

In closing, Steinberg floated a compromise: “The choice may be do it our way and risk getting nothing or do the best we can — albeit with a smaller bond.”

The sauna at Toolik Field Station (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

Last night I celebrated my first summer solstice in the Arctic by participating in one of the most beloved activities here at Toolik Field Station.  I took a sauna. Then I jumped in the lake, which still had ice on it one week ago, according to the Toolik Naturalist’s Journal.  The sauna at Toolik is spoken about in almost reverential tones, and with good reason.  It’s a small wooden cabin a few dozen yards from the main camp, perched at the water’s edge, and there’s a window that lets you soak up the stunning expanse of lake, tundra, and mountains, while you warm your bones after a plunge in the frigid waters.  “Sauna Nirvana” was how one of the scientists described the experience.

But people don’t just love the sauna for the view and the warmth.  They also love it because here at Toolik, it’s the main way to get clean.  The process entails warming up in the sauna, running outside and dumping lake water over yourself, soaping up with some biodegradeable cleanser, dumping more lake water over yourself, and then running back into the sauna so you don’t freeze to death.  Or, if you are hard-core, you can skip the water-dumping part and just jump in the lake.

Pitchers for bathing, on hooks outside the sauna (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

The station didn’t have any showers at all until 2001 (researchers have been coming here since 1975), and even now, residents are limited to two two-minute showers per week.  Water conservation here is taken very seriously, not because there isn’t enough supply, but because all of the waste water from the showers, kitchen, and outhouses, has to be trucked 140 miles north to Prudhoe Bay for disposal at a cost of $1.24 per gallon.  Because this is such an active research site, scientists aren’t too keen on the idea of a leach field right next to the spots where they are sampling nitrogen and phosphorus.  So, in the name of science, we sauna.

Last summer, 85,680 gallons of waste water were trucked out of Toolik, which translates to 9.77 gallons of water per day, per person, according to Michael Abels, the Toolik Operations Supervisor.   Compare that with the 99 gallons per day that San Franciscans use, per capita, or the 287 gallons in Sacramento.  True, the conditions here are pretty extreme, but it’s an interesting experiment to see what it’s like to get along on 10 gallons of water each day. Of course, no one here is watering any lawns or trying to keep a swimming pool full.  And since we’re only allowed one load of laundry every two weeks, maybe everyone smells a little differently than they do in the rest of the US–but I think most people here would agree that living on 10 gallons of water a day isn’t half bad.