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3/13/13 How California's New Water Laws Inform the Coming National Crisis - Popular Mechanics

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Homepage / Science / Earth and the Environment / How California's New Water Laws Inform the ComingNational Crisis

How California's New Water Laws Inform theComing National CrisisCalifornia has its share of problems these days; the state carries billions of dollars in debt, drugcartels have made their way in from Mexico and the wild fire season came and went with greatforce. As if the governor didn't have enough on his plate, California is also in the midst of oneof the biggest water crises this nation has ever seen. Farmers and fishing communities,businesses and a growing population are locked in a battle over water rightsÂ—scrambling forwhat has become a dwindling resource. To stop the problem, a task force has studied theSacramentoÂ–San Joaquin River Delta for two years and came up with dozens of proposals toalleviate the water crisis. Here are six of the most prescient proposed itemsÂ—problems andsolutions that may be coming to a local assembly (or a courthouse) near you.

December 18, 2009 3:29 AM

As California withers through a third year of drought, state lawmakers have been recalled to Sacramento for aspecial legislative session to try and squelch a decades-in-the-making water crisis. California's woes are a productof an expanding population, served by antiquated water delivery and storage systems, overtapping a static watersupply--a situation that's only exacerbated by global warming. With the current political interest, the crisis seems likelyto force the first major revamping of California water policy in nearly half a century.

At issue is the fate of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a giant inland estuary east of San Francisco Bay thatserves as the main water tap for some 23 million Californians, or about two-thirds of the state's population. There,water from California's wet northern climes is pumped to mid-state farmers and the parched, heavily populated south."The delta is the focal point, or fulcrum, for a lot of the water in the state and it's going to hell," says Phil Isenberg,former chairman of a two-year task force appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that studied the waterway through2008.

In the delta, populations of salmon and a small, endangered fish called smelt have plummeted to historic lows,prompting a painful commercial fishing ban on the former and court-ordered restrictions on water exports to protectthe latter. These restrictions, along with natural water scarcity, have devastated farmers in the Central and SanJoaquin Valleys, causing unemployment to soar and leaving several hundred thousand acres fallow this year.

Solutions bandied about for years have made their way into a package of five bills that remained held up in bicameralcommittees and in a conference report as the legislative session came to an end in September. Now the details arebeing hashed out in backroom negotiations between the Governor and legislative leaders. A roughly 150-page billwas introduced by Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), Senate pro tem, late last Friday, and now public hearings havebegun with a possible deal and a floor vote this week.

In meeting the dual goals of water supply reliability and ecological sustainability--as recommended by Isenberg'stask force and enshrined in the pending bills--the main sticking point has been money. A proposed $9 billion bond topay for infrastructure upgrades and possibly two new dams is on the table, though opponents call this a budget-buster in an already debt-wracked state. The governor and others have also expressed interest in a long-proposedperipheral canal that would divert water from the Sacramento River around or through the Delta to thirsty southernfarms and residents, but at a potentially boondoggle-ish cost in addition to that of the separately proposed bond bill.

An old tire lies on a dry stretch of the San Joaquin River below Gravelly Ford, near Mendota in Fresno County. (Photograph by

Michael Macor/The Chronicle)

California: An urban water conservation mandate of 20 percent by 2020.

Gov. Schwarzenegger issued an executive order in 2008 instructing state agencies to begin investigating how toimplement this within the framework of existing laws; now this order may become statutory.

National Implications: In California, as elsewhere, the opportunities for water efficiency improvement aretremendous, says Juliet Christian-Smith, a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, Calif. Lessthan a third of urban Californian businesses have low-flow toilets, for example, she says. Residentially, some 60percent of water use now goes toward irrigating the grass and garden, but homeowners could swap what Christian-

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Smith calls an "English countryside lawn" aesthetic for native, hardy vegetation. These notions continue to gaincurrency in the arid West, and similar governmental action may not be far behind in other states and municipalities."Almost every state [in the West] is looking at conservation initiatives," says Tom Willardson, executive director of theWestern States Water Council, an advisory body to 18 western states.

Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (Photograph by NASA)

California: Institute groundwater monitoring.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass claims California is the only state that does not monitor groundwater; experts agreethat California ranks among the worst states in this regard. Surface water monitoring is pretty lax in California as well:In the delta's watershed, for example, almost a third of surface water right permit and license holders do not reporttheir annual or triennial water use and diversion amounts to the California State Water Resources Control Board, thebody charged with allocating water and protecting water quality. The board lacks enforcement authority and thereports it does receive are of questionable accuracy, according to a memo it issued in 2008. "Without understandingwhere water is going and how it's being used, it's like trying to balance a checkbook without knowing half of theinformation about the purchases," Christian-Smith says.

National Implications: Groundwater is the primary source for almost three-quarters of public water systems inthe United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's most recent community water system surveyfrom 2000. Yet the very nature of groundwater makes it difficult to quantify and qualify. "You can't look at it, you can'tsee it," says Peter Evans, the executive director of the Interstate Council on Water Policy, "but you can poke holes inthe ground to try and measure it." Private residents often do not want to deal with the hassle of the government drillinginto their property, and many fear that relinquishing data about the water underneath their plots could expose them tohaving some of it taken away, Evans says. Water shortage crises, however, can force the issue: In southernCalifornia, courts mandated groundwater monitoring in recent years to settle competing claims and mete out waterwith at least some grasp of actual supply-and-demand. Still, much of groundwater monitoring nationally is doneindirectly by coupling electric bills with assumptions of well and pump efficiency to arrive at usage rates. As statesface looming water shortages (36 of 50 states' water managers anticipate shortages even in nondrought years,according to a 2003 Government Accountability Office report), technology may help fill in some of the groundwaterblanks without getting legislatures or courts involved. Helicopter electromagnetic surveys now used in several statescan actually map the geometry of underground aquifers and continually improving computer models aid in estimatingthe volumes of water they contain.

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California: Increased fines for illegal diversion of water and new adjudication rights.

Along with enhanced surface water monitoring capacity, the California State Water Resources Control Board may getthe authority to assign higher penalties for illegal water diversion and to settle certain water use disputes. Under thenew legislation, rainwater capture for personal use via cisterns and rain barrels will remain broadly legal; SanFrancisco, for instance, launched a citywide rainwater harvesting program last year. Two bills introduced thislegislative year support rainwater harvesting, though neither made it to the governor's desk and at present this issueis not at stake in the special session.

National Implications: Rain that falls on private property is not considered to be "owned" by the landholder in allstates, making rainwater collection potentially illegal. Several Western states and Alaska have regions that requirehomeowners to get permits first, and in Utah catchment is prohibited across the board. But there are signs that thetrend towards rainwater collection rights is spreading, says Tim Pope, past president of the American RainwaterCatchment Systems Association. On Oct. 12, Washington state exempted homeowners from having to get a water-rights permit for catchment, and Colorado passed legislation recently allowing rainwater capture by citizens withprivate wells; Tucson, Ariz., meanwhile, mandates the practice for new commercial buildings starting June 2010.

The Columbia irrigation canal draws river water east of Mendota in Fresno County. (Photo by Michael Macor / The San Francisco

Chronicle)

California: Permit-free graywater systems for small residences.

Unrelated to the ongoing special session, California's Building Standards Commission legalized permit-free, single-fixture graywater systems in August. Graywater (or greywater) includes household water that has been used forwashing dishes, clothes and bodies (it does not contain bacterial contaminants from toilet, or "black" water).Primarily, nonpotable that is collected by homeowners can be recycled for use on lawns, dramatically reducing theimpact of the foremost water-consuming home activity. "Because of the drought emergency, the opportunity arose forgraywater codes to be revised," Christian-Smith says. "This is a huge change statewide."

National Implications: Graywater reuse remains illegal in most of the country, but many western states in recentyears have passed laws or amended their wastewater codes to allow its adoption. California now joins states suchas Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington, along with early-adopters Arizona and New Mexico, whichgave graywater the green light in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Laura Allen, co-founder of Greywater Action, says there



is a growing national shift away from the notion that all wastewater is the same and should be automatically piped offto a treatment center. Developing in tandem is an educational effort to ensure that graywater application is safe andbeneficial to both homeowners and the landscape they're irrigating: All systems should have a way to switch waterflow back to sewers or septic systems, for example, if the homeowner plans to use bleach or certain detergents thatcould harm flora.

California: Outline in-depth agricultural water-management plans.

As a farming-intensive state, California is the top irrigator in the nation. The Delta's watershed contains one-sixth of allirrigated lands in the United States and grows nearly half of the country's domestically produced fruits and vegetables.A big problem in California is that 60 percent of irrigation is of the inefficient "flood" variety, says the Pacific Institute'sChristian-Smith, wherein water is simply gushed over fields regardless of a crop's true water needs, rather than morecarefully applied via drip irrigation or center-pivot sprinkler systems.

National Implications: Nationally, irrigation for agriculture consumes about 40 percent of human freshwater use,according to the United States Geological Survey. (Other estimates quote as much as 70 percent.) While agricultureis trending towards reduced water waste, the answer is not as simple as swapping flood-for-drip, points out DavidZoldoske, director of the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University, Fresno. "Rather than beingprescriptive and saying `thou shalt use drip,' we'd rather say to use the irrigation with the best demonstrable efficiency[given local conditions]." In California and elsewhere, that means factoring in variables such as local water cost,optimal crop mixtures and soil conditions. In northern California, for example, rice farmers employ flood irrigation todrown out weeds and break down rice straw, while simultaneously providing a temporary aquatic habitat for migratingbirds. "This is a case where flood irrigation and environmentalism work in sync," Zoldoske says.

The Friant Dam will release water to the San Joaquin River. (Photograph by Michael Macor / The San Francisco Chronicle)

California: A rescue package for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

A levee system in the Delta that extends more than 1000 miles currently preserves about 60 islands and tracts ofreclaimed land, many of which are as much as 25 feet below sea level. Scientists have determined that the Delta isgeologically unstable and that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake could knock out many of these levees, which would cut the



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state water supplies by a fifth. This isn't just fear-mongering: In 2004, the Upper Jones Tract Levee collapsed (in dryweather, to boot) costing the state nearly $100 million to de-water the land and rebuild the earthen walls. Winterflooding in the Delta is expected to increase in the years ahead, too, as what would otherwise be snowpack flowsdown from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Many Californians have compared the peril of the Delta to New Orleans'inevitable encounter with a devastating hurricane.

National Implications: As in California, concerns about climate change's potential impact on water availabilitymay well spur other state governments into action, depending upon each state's particular vulnerabilities. Californiaand other coastal states may well have to deal with sea level rises, says Karen Schwinn, associate director of theEnvironmental Protection Agency's Water Division Region 9 (Pacific Southwest). Further inland, this rise could lead tosaltwater intrusions into freshwater aquifers. Warming temperatures in some regions will further strain agriculturaland drinking water needs while altering water evaporation rates, thereby changing precipitation patterns, says theEPA's 2008 report, National Water Program Strategy: Response to Climate Change. Overall, climate change appearslikely to make maintaining water supplies even more challenging.

Delta-Mendota Canal

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