We can get a portion of the way to meeting our future water needs with a bit more storage. But, quite simply, we can’t build our way out of the water crisis. No matter how much we build, we will not create additional rain or mitigate the effects that climate change will have upon the state.
So, conservation is where the rubber meets the road. Consider this:
New dams would produce up to 1 million acre-feet of water annually, compared with up to 3.1 million acre-feet freed up each year by new water efficiency programs, according to the delta task force, which cited state Department of Water Resources statistics. (Fresno Bee 10/21/09)
The question then is how we create some of the efficiencies to actually conserve the water. Some conservations are fairly straightforward. For example, many cities do not yet have water meters, installing them will rapidly reduce water usage as people get an idea of how much they are using and start paying for excessive use.
The bigger question is where these conservation gains will come from, and how do hold users accountable. There are a number of questions to look at, and this Fresno Bee article does a pretty good job taking a look at some of the bigger issues.
One issue that seems to always pop up is the question of coastal vs non-coastal. In the current negotiations, Republicans are arguing that coastal cities aren’t required to do enough for conservation. Much of that is because many coastal cities have already put in some pretty effective conservation measures. Under the current proposal, the targets for each city are generally a 20% reduction, but cities that have already made reductions have to do less.
The biggest question is enforcement. Republicans want to give the least possible teeth to this measure by assuring that their could not be any legal ramifications of failing to meet the requirements, which Democrats already say isn’t in the bill. However, it isn’t at all clear that without the possibility of legal challenges there will be enough teeth to actually enforce with only some grants as a carrot for compliance. In other words, the bill is all carrot, and no stick. If you meet the targets, you get some extra grants, if you miss them, you don’t. But the water still gets pumped either way.
If this water package is going to last for more than 5 or 10 years, it is going to need to be able to require very strict water efficiency. However, the key is getting beyond short-term political gain to do what’s best for the state. Whether that happens appears to be up to the Legislative Republicans…again.
When the Delta Vision Task Force finished its job, they reformed as the Delta Vision Foundation. Among their recommendations is the following:
In phone conversations with Foundation Exec. Director John Kirlin, I was told that nothing the legislature does will work if this one recommendation does not happen.
Given the bureaucratic in-fighing, turf protection and advisarial political climate in Sacramento, I don’t see that any of this will happen. The addition of a Delta Stewardship Council to the layers of bureaucracy we already have is not going to get the job done.
Yes, we all agree that Conservation has to be the major source of additional water. But unless we re-think and re-engineer the planning process, we will re-live this same set of problems again and again as climate change makes recent droughts feel like a flood.
The Green Party’s General Assembly held Oct 10-11 in Cotati approved a new plank for the party’s platform, one that put the emphasis on water management policy.
So far, what I see is Cal-Fed re-invented with the same prospect of failure.
Having individual apartment residents pay for their water bills. When water is included in the rent people dont know how much exactly they spend on water. And landlords would be required to calculate how much the water costs in the all included price before water was removed from the rent cost.
People in apartments might think oh water is part of my rent, i could use all i want.
Republicans could take a look at Monterey, where we’ve just been ordered by the state water board to finally reduce pumping from the Carmel River in compliance with an order handed down in 1995. It could reduce our daily ration to 50 gallons per person per day (the US average is 150 gallons per person per day). We’ve had significant and successful water conservation programs for some time and it hasn’t been the end of the world.
The problem in Monterey, as it is around the state, is that we have overshot our water carrying capacity. Modern Republicanism is built on the notion that all our resources are renewable and infinite. We can use as much water, oil, land, etc, as we want to, because it will always be there, and anyone who says otherwise is a godless communist.
Monterey is currently exploring new water sources – either a large desalination plant at Moss Landing, or a series of smaller desal plants that don’t produce as much as the big Moss Landing plant but leave us with more than enough to meet present needs.