Clickwhoring the monsoon

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Over at the work blog, I’ve been having fun with the onset of the North American Monsoon (or lack thereof).

My smartypants idea Tuesday, to crowdsource the problem of predicting the onset of our summer rains, turned out in retrospect to be lousy. I made a spreadsheet and everything. So far just four entires, what the crowdsourcing community would call “a thin market”. But I did find that, while few people wanted to play my silly game, the newspaper’s drought-obsessed readers seem willing to click on anything with the word “monsoon” in the title. Given that a) I’m always obsessing about the monsoon this time of year anyway, and b) there is some sort of corporate monetary incentive for clicks, I’ve instituted a daily monsoon watch feature.

You get the idea. I can keep this up through September. My fascination with the monsoon is indefatigable.

Edwards Aquifer and the hole in my argument

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I’ve been using Texas and the drought of 2011 as an argument for optimism about US water management:

I’d argue the Texas experience shows that, when communities are really up against it, they’ve demonstrated the ability to do a far better job at managing scarce water.

But there’s a huge hole in my argument. What if communities that are “really up against it” simply delay the inevitability of their water problems by overpumping aquifers?

Water levels are falling rapidly in the Edwards Aquifer in San Antonio, the primary source of water for municipal users in the region. In just two weeks, the levels have dropped 5 feet, and are projected to drop further. Victor Murphy, the Climate Program Manager for the National Weather Service Southern Region, says there’s even more cause for concern than last year.

 

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: forecasting is hard, especially about the monsoon

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In the morning paper, I pine over our elusive monsoon forecast:

I know this is the time you would really like a forecast. You would really like to know when New Mexico’s summer rains will finally get here, and whether we will have a wet monsoon season.

Sorry. Can’t help. Believe me, I’d like to. We are so far into drought debt that it will take an extra-wet monsoon to get us out, but the forecasters just don’t have much to say about what we can expect.

update: I realized after seeing the tweetage that my blog excerpt here left out the best bit:

What scientists are finding as they study the monsoon, Gutzler said, is that the forecast problem is tough to crack. “More understanding,” he said, “leads to a deeper appreciation of uncertainty.”

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: ABQ water infrastructure

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On Albuquerque’s appearance in the “our pipes are getting old!” discussion:

Albuquerque’s water and sewer utility, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in costs over the next decade to replace aging pipes and treatment plants, is considering a series of rate increases in the next five years.

When the last of the proposed rate hikes takes effect, the average residential customer’s bill would rise to $54 per month, up from $45 today, according to Mark Sanchez, executive director of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority – an additional $108 per year for the average customer by 2017.

More than 400 miles of metro area water and sewer pipe are at high risk of failure, according to a study done for the water utility and the backlog of aging pipes that need replacement is growing because of inadequate funding.

On the relative change between the level of ocean and land in the Sacramento Delta

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When I posted a couple of weeks back on the fact that land in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is subsiding faster than sea level is rising, a smart reader asked privately, “Yeah, so what’s the point?”

My reader’s observation was, in essence, that it doesn’t really matter much in terms of policy response whether the ocean is rising or the land is sinking. And that was precisely the obscure point about which I was thinking, but about which I wrote poorly.

Consider what happened in North Carolina when a panel of scientists prepared a report for the state looking at the best available science on sea level rise:

The final recommendation was for the state to plan for 39 inches of sea level rise. This number corresponds well with expert reports produced in other states.

And the response?

NC-20, a group purporting to represent North Carolina’s coastal counties, attacked both the integrity of the science panel members and the body of sea level rise literature that was reviewed. The rebuttal consisted largely of oft-repeated arguments pulled from the climate skeptic blogosphere, along with an adamant assertion that predicting the future is impossible. To the great surprise of those of us on the state’s science panel, these tactics have worked.

To the extent that a change in the relative elevation of sea and land in California’s Delta poses a threat that requires a policy response (more robust levees, perhaps?), it doesn’t really matter whether the sea is rising or the land is falling. But to the extent that rising sea level is a driver, California runs the risk of a North Carolina problem, in which the policy discussion becomes mired in the identity politics of climate change.

Thank heavens we now know the land is sinking and we don’t have to fight that fight!

Sizing up Texas drought response

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With Texas emerging from its record drought, it’s a good time to size up how the state’s water systems have responded.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reports that just two small community water systems, Spicewood Beach and Florence – a total population of less than 3,000 people – are in danger of running out of water now. This supports the argument I’ve been making – that Texas communities have made the necessary adjustments during the drought of record.

Kate Galbraith at the Texas Tribune has taken a much more detailed look at the issue, and her excellent stories provide substantial support for my argument. In case after case, Texas communities have shown the ability to manage their water supplies far better: Consider:

The final story in Galbraith’s series – On Water Conservation, Texas Has Room to Improve – suggests a bit of  a mixed bag, showing the resistance some conservation efforts have met. But given the rest of her findings, I think I’d argue the Texas experience shows that, when communities are really up against it, they’ve demonstrated the ability to do a far better job at managing scarce water. As I’ve said before, it would be nice if we had the foresight to manage our water well before the shit hits the fan. But maybe that’s unrealistic. Maybe the best we can hope for is effective water management once the crisis is upon us.

“sewage epidemiology”

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The residents of Lubbock use more cocaine on the weekend. How do we know this? Science!

Influent to the Lubbock (Texas) Water Reclamation Plant was sampled twice a week to assess weekly variations in estimates of cocaine consumption over a 5-month period. BE was extracted from influent wastewater samples using solid phase extraction and analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Measured concentrations of BE were converted to cocaine equivalents; the estimated average daily consumption of cocaine during the study period was 1152 ± 147 g. Based on BE concentrations and sewage epidemiology, higher cocaine consumption was observed on weekends compared to weekdays (p < 0.0003). This method was effective in monitoring BE in wastewater and could be used to complement survey data in estimating cocaine use at a local level.

 

The Sacramento Delta and the Colorado River – a comparison

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Barry Nelson had an insightful post today comparing and contrasting the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta systems. There are important similarities – crashing (or crashed) ecosystems and water supplies for human systems that are stretched beyond the point of sustainability. But the institutional frameworks for addressing those problems and the prospect of solutions arising from those frameworks are very different.

Lee's Ferry, 2005

Lee's Ferry, 2005

Oddly, as Nelson lays this out (and I agree), California in some sense has more institutional momentum behind grappling with core questions in the delta than one sees on the Colorado River. Yet I would argue (and this is me, not Nelson) that the chances of solving the Colorado River’s problems are much more realistic than the Delta.

On the Delta, Nelson points out via the recent Delta Vision report card that near term actions, things like levee upgrades, are stalling:

The Foundation also concluded that “the level of effort is impressive” on Bay-Delta issues. Why the apparent conflict between these two conclusions? In short, the Foundation concluded that there is a tremendous current investment in efforts to develop long-term solutions through the BDCP and Delta Plan programs, but that short-term actions like improving Delta levees and beginning ecosystem restoration are proceeding far more slowly than is needed.

I’d argue that the level of accomplishment is not commensurate with the level of effort on the long term Delta solutions either.

Compare this now with the short term and long term situations on the Colorado. As Nelson points out, short term successes on the Colorado are substantial:

In recent years, a great deal of effort has gone into developing near-term water management solutions, in light of the decade-long drought on the Colorado. Among these near-term solutions are water banking agreements between Nevada and Arizona and the Bureau of Reclamation’s interim guidelines regarding the allocation of shortages in the Lower Basin.

But what about the long term on the Colorado? Nelson:

The Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Basin Supply and Demand Study is putting the long-term challenges in sharp focus. The Bureau’s conservative interim conclusions paint a stark picture of the challenges that would result from a status quo approach in light of the likely impacts of climate change on the available water supply in the basin.

The problem, as Nelson notes, is the lack of a framework for dealing with the grim numbers coming out of the Basin Study:

What I find interesting is that there is no well-established forum to address the Bureau’s findings that includes federal agencies, as well as all of the Basin states, water agencies and stakeholders. In short, there isn’t a well-established and comprehensive Basin-wide forum to pick up the ball from the Bureau’s Basin Study. Given the size of the basin, the diversity of the players and the scale of the challenge, such a forum is likely to be critical to developing and implementing a sufficiently ambitious long-term plan.

Shorter Nelson: Delta – big institutional framework, lack of progress. Colorado River – progress, but not much framework.

This is the same issue lingering behind Carpe Diem West’s Governing Like a River Basin report. As I wrote then, there are a variety of possible governance frameworks that might be used to begin tackling the big picture Colorado River problems…

But what remains … is the meta-process question. By what process involving the existing institutions we’ve got will some sort of solutions-oriented new process arise?

I actually am more optimistic about such a meta-process arising organically than I was when I wrote the above sentences back in December. I’m sure that some sort of uber-process-framework creation, along the lines of BDCP in California, won’t work. But Nelson noted something important regarding Colorado River processes:

I was … struck at a recent Colorado River conference by the commitment among agencies and stakeholders to develop workable interim solutions and to develop relationships that set the stage for more far-reaching long-term efforts.

I see that too on the Colorado. On the Delta, not so much. That’s the key difference.