A very smart piece by Mike Lee at the San Diego Union Tribune about water in the west and in the world:
“It used to be that our agreements were to share the water,” Scott said. “Now we are trying to figure out how we are going to share the shortage.”
That’s meant to be a teaser. I recommend reading in its entirety.
There it is. Take it.
If I had more time, I’d write a post about how Chinatown is just a movie, full of stuff that’s made up.
But it’s the end of week two of the Tour de France, so posting here’s been light, sorry. Distracted.
Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.
It’s no exaggeration to say my understanding of climate and desert ecosystems would be much the poorer without the many hours Julio Betancourt has generously shared, the many times my questions have been met with “Have you read this paper yet?” followed by an emailed pdf.
Just saw Julio’s been awarded this year’s Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Research.
And of course, if you or some bright young person you know wants to learn more about Julio’s work, there’s a chapter about him in my book, The Tree Rings’ Tale
Smart Mark Lubell on why a better scientific understanding of our groundwater foibles – even “perfect science” – isn’t enough:
But there are many policy-makers and citizens who will take that perfect science (even when presented in a very simple manner) and flick it away like a bothersome mosquito because they don’t trust the scientists, or because the science reflects negatively on their current behavior(for example, groundwater extraction), or does not agree with their basic ideology. Second, even if the policy-makers believe the science, they usually have to figure out a way to cooperate with other water users, and why should Water District X stop withdrawing groundwater if Water Distrct Y will not? Such cooperation problems are barriers to sustainable water management from the local to global scale. Third, let’s say a bunch of policy makers believe the science and come up with some new policies to govern urban and agricultural water use, or non-point source pollution. These policies might be asking or requiring farmers, citizens, factories, and cities to change their behaviors. So we need to know exactly how these targeted decision-makers will respond to different types of policy tools.
Jeff Michael did a pithy job Thursday of untangling the snag of old fishing line that is “regulatory assurance”, the Endangered Species Act and the proposal to build giant tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to get water from California’s wet north to its thirsty south with, it is hoped, minimal disruption to the delta through which the water would otherwise travel.
The core of Michael’s argument is that the real value (in dollar terms) for water users is “regulatory assurance” – the knowledge that they’ll get the water they expect without unexpected supply interruptions because of endangered species problems. But why, Michael asks, must that regulatory assurance come from the tunnels, rather than the habitat work that is also part of the project. If they could get that regulatory assurance at lower cost by fixing the delta rather than tunneling beneath it, Michael asks, would that not be a win for all?
I’ve been arguing that water policy planning driven by the ESA is what led the delta to the political and policy mess we’re in. But if Jeff’s line of argument is right, then my argument about the ESA may not be.
It may simply be that the BDCP process got headed down the big conveyance path not because it was constrained by the requirements of the ESA policy process, but rather because that’s the path they wanted to be on. There is some evidence to support that in the November 2007 “Bay Delta Conservation Plan: Points of Agreement” (pdf):
Under a Planning Agreement dated October 6, 2006, the Steering Committee worked over the course of this year on developing an overall approach to the BDCP. We have chosen to concentrate initially on different approaches to conveyance and how they would likely contribute to achieving the planning goals and conservation objectives of the Planning Agreement and affect habitat restoration opportunities across the Delta.
A conveyance is what they seem to have been looking for, and a conveyance is therefore what they found?
Albuquerque temperatures, July 1 – 7, 2012
Matt Grubs talked to Laura Paskus and I on last night’s In Focus on local public telly. It perhaps goes without saying that we talked about water.
Lissa and I took a drive Sunday up State Route 4 through the Jemez to look at the big Las Conchas burn one year later.
A couple of points worth noting:
But recall I promised to be optimistic. The drive up State Route 4 into the heart of the Jemez passes through mile after mile of unburned forest. In some areas, Marlon’s deficit is obvious — woods thickly overgrown with fuel just waiting for another downed power line or dry lightning strike.
But there are miles where crews have begun to try to fix things — clearing the thickets, carefully reintroducing fire through prescribed burning. And then there are patches like the woods I drove through down Forest Road 289, where wildfire just did what it is supposed to do, clearing out the undergrowth and leaving a healthy forest behind.
The conventional wisdom about the US Clean Water Act (which I’ve always believed) is that it’s been a great success. Maybe not?
On the fortieth anniversary of the Clean Water Act this paper reports the first quantitative assessment of the aggregate trends in water quality in the U.S. using a single standard over the years 1975 to 2011. The analysis suggests that fresh water lakes for the nation as a whole are about at the same quality levels as they were in 1975. In short, viewed in the aggregate, nothing has changed.
In the past, I’ve used the Bureau of Reclamation’s Yuma Desalting Plant as a sort of benchmark for measuring who’s the most desperate for water in the Lower Colorado River Basin, and the level of that desperation.
Tony Davis had an excellent look at the project this past week in the Arizona Daily Star, and the provisional answer it suggests is “no one”.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had expected the desal plant’s test run to cost $23 million. The final tab was $15.9 million. The test was to last up to 365 days but treatment was finished in 328 days.
Nonetheless, the plant’s most immediate obstacle to long-run operations is lack of money. But a significant amount of fact-gathering and discussions must also occur, water officials and environmentalists said.
The current tight federal budget has no money to run the plant at full scale, said Jennifer McCloskey, Yuma-area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the plant.
The plant also needs $25 million to $50 million in upgrades, she said.
Yuma Desalting Plant outfall, Colorado River, February 2012
I haven’t dug into the numbers in detail myself, so it’s not clear to me how much it per acre foot of water it would cost, for example, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to operate the plant. But since they’re not stepping forward, I infer that they’re not desperate enough, at least yet, to pick up the tab.
But in classic western water tradition, Tony’s story does suggest an alternative path that might yet put the YDP to use – get federal taxpayers to pick up the tab!
The Central Arizona Project and other regional water agencies want the plant open for additional water during droughts – particularly with the Colorado River heading this year toward one of its lowest flows on record. CAP’s view is that running the plant is a federal responsibility, and the bureau should figure out the most effective and efficient method of running it, said Chuck Cullom, CAP’s Colorado River programs manager.
“The fact that Reclamation doesn’t request funding for the plant … doesn’t change what we believe is a pretty clear obligation,” Cullom said.