Category: PPIC Water Policy Center

The Unintended Consequences of Indoor Water Conservation

High rates of water conservation helped California manage limited supplies during the 2012–16 drought. But conservation can have a downside. New research shows that indoor water conservation can reduce the quality and quantity of wastewater, making it harder for local agencies to use treated wastewater to augment their water supply.

We talked to two members of the research team about their findings: David Jassby, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA; and Kurt Schwabe, professor of environmental economics and policy at UC Riverside and an adjunct fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center.

Jassby summarized the problem: “In general, as people conserve water inside their homes, the concentration of contaminants in the wastewater goes up—organic matter, nitrogen, detergents, and more. All of these things have to be treated.”

Schwabe noted that in the past, recycled water was mostly used for irrigating nearby cropland and median strips—not drinking. But as treatment processes have improved and demand for water increased, recycled water has become an integral part of the drinking water supply in some areas, where it is used to replenish groundwater basins. In many communities, treated wastewater is discharged into rivers and streams and used by downstream entities that treat the water again.

Salinity is a particular challenge. “Most wastewater treatment plants can treat higher levels of nutrients, but they’re not designed to treat higher levels of salinity,” Schwabe said. “What this means is the water that is discharged into streams or to farms or into aquifers for groundwater recharge will be saltier, which reduces water quality and crop yields.”

Schwabe noted that while utilities can employ technical fixes to address drought-related wastewater quality issues, this doesn’t address the problem of quantity. Indoor conservation results in less treated water flowing into streams or available for reuse.

On average, only about 10% of municipal wastewater is reused in the US. Israel reuses 85–90% of its wastewater—perhaps the highest rate in the world, Schwabe said. California is adopting new rules on “direct potable reuse” of treated wastewater, which would enable cities to add treated wastewater directly into their water supply.

“Farmers in some parts of California are becoming increasingly reliant on treated municipal wastewater from neighboring urban areas. This is an effective strategy for dealing with water scarcity. But it also reveals that conservation—another effective drought strategy—might in some instances work at odds with wastewater reuse.”

Urban areas are also affected. For example, recycled wastewater is a significant portion of stream flow in the Santa Ana River in Southern California. Indoor conservation reduces water supply for communities in downstream reaches of the river.

Does this mean that people abandon conservation? The researchers say no. “Our results are intended to illustrate how different drought mitigation actions are related so agencies can plan, communicate, and coordinate in the most informed and cost-effective manner possible,” said Schwabe. “Conservation mandates that don’t recognize these linkages can have significant and negative consequences on the effort to reuse wastewater.”

Jassby noted that the place conservation happens is key: “When people are asked to conserve water, they should be encouraged to conserve water outside the home.”

More broadly, having water supply and wastewater treatment agencies cooperate in how they manage their systems can also help, Schwabe said.

Commentary: A New Approach to Protecting Rivers

This commentary was published in the Sacramento Bee on November 20, 2017.

California’s native freshwater fish—salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and others—continue to decline, and regulations to reverse this trend have fanned controversy. A new approach to environmental stewardship is needed. We should start by granting the environment a water right, as detailed in a new report by the PPIC Water Policy Center.

Read the full commentary on sacbee.com.

Reforming Water Management for the Environment

A longer version of this piece was recently published by Water Deeply.

It’s time for California to rethink how it manages water for the environment. Despite decades of effort, many of the state’s aquatic native species are in decline. Controversy over water for the environment remains high. The latest drought left lasting effects on already-stressed species and their ecosystems and highlighted the need for a change of course.

Our new research identifies shortcomings in current practices and lays out three reforms that could reduce conflict while improving freshwater ecosystems.

Better accounting. During the latest drought, state and federal agencies found their decision making hampered by information gaps on water availability and use and ecosystem conditions. For example, weaknesses in accounting and monitoring systems—and poor operational choices at Shasta Reservoir—pushed endangered winter-run Chinook salmon to the brink of extinction.

These management challenges were made more contentious by public perceptions about the uses of environmental water. The state lumps many things into the “environmental water” category, including flows required by regulations to maintain water quality for urban and agricultural uses. For example, during the drought, environmental water that flowed from the Delta into San Francisco Bay was widely criticized as “wasted to the sea.” Yet most of this water was needed to prevent high salinity in Delta water supplies.

We must do a better job of measuring and tracking water and ecosystem conditions—and make this information timely and transparent. The state also needs to clearly define what purposes “environmental water” serves, and separate water that benefits both water users and the environment from that used solely to support ecosystems. Better accounting will improve efficiency and provide a common understanding of water use for policy debates.

Better planning. The drought revealed major weaknesses in how California plans for and responds to water scarcity in ecosystems. While urban water managers routinely plan for drought, no such planning exists for ecosystems. With a few exceptions, fish and wildlife agencies react to—rather than plan for—severe drought.

California needs to shift from reacting to drought to anticipating and mitigating its effects on ecosystems. This can be achieved through the development of watershed ecosystem plans that set management goals and priorities for actions.

In addition, California needs annual contingency plans to prepare for uncertainty over how wet the winter and spring will be. A good model is that of Victoria, Australia, where water managers vet their plans and priorities with stakeholders. This allows water users to know what to expect, and tensions are reduced.

Ecosystem water budgets. California also needs a new way to allocate water to protect ecosystems. The over-reliance on minimum flow and water quality standards—often set for individual endangered species—limits the capacity of water managers to adapt to changing conditions.

A more nimble approach would also provide assurances to all interests about allocation of ecosystem water. This can be accomplished by granting the environment a water budget that can be flexibly managed, much as urban and agricultural water-right holders do. These ecosystem water budgets could be stored in reservoirs or groundwater basins, and even traded. The budget would be administered by a trustee guided by the watershed plan and good accounting systems. The trustee could manage the water budget to maximize benefit for ecosystem functions and, where possible, reduce impacts on other water users.

Management of California’s freshwater ecosystems—particularly during drought—is not working well for anyone. These reforms would improve conditions and reduce tensions over allocation of water–and enable freshwater ecosystems to adapt to a warmer and more variable climate.

The State of Groundwater Recharge in the San Joaquin Valley

When strong winter rains finally ended the recent five-year drought, many water districts seized the opportunity to recharge depleted aquifers. How did they do, and what barriers did they face? A public forum brought more than 30 experts together to discuss the benefits, opportunities, and barriers to groundwater recharge. The event was hosted by the California State Board of Food and Agriculture and the state Department of Water Resources.

My presentation focused on recharge in the San Joaquin Valley—a region that is home to more than four million people, half the state’s agricultural output, and most of its critically overdrafted groundwater basins, where pumping exceeds replenishment. Consequences include dry wells, sinking lands, and reduced supplies to weather future droughts.

As part of our ongoing work to explore practical and effective solutions to the region’s water challenges, the PPIC Water Policy Center recently surveyed local water districts about their groundwater recharge efforts. Although such efforts have been underway for decades in some parts of the valley, the state’s 2014 groundwater law has increased interest in using recharge to bring basins into long-term balance.

About 75% of respondents to our survey said they were actively recharging this year. Large water districts with formal recharge programs are doing the lion’s share of recharge, but there’s lots of interest from smaller agencies in getting in on the act.

Agricultural districts are already employing a broad mix of recharge tools, and many see potential for expansion. In contrast, urban districts—most of which rely heavily on groundwater—are much less active. The most widespread methods—used by two-thirds of agricultural districts surveyed—include allowing water to seep through unlined canals and irrigating crops with surface water instead of groundwater, which enables basins to recharge naturally (a method known as “in-lieu” recharge). Other popular options—used by half of agricultural districts—include directing water to dedicated “recharge basins” and applying extra water on irrigated cropland. Some districts also spread water on fallowed land and open space. Of these tools, recharge basins are being used most intensively, storing more than half of total recharge reported (roughly four maf). One caveat to this last finding is that many districts have been using some popular methods (cropland irrigation, in-lieu recharge, and unlined canals) without formally accounting for how much recharge occurs.

Kern County is “recharge central,” accounting for more than half of total recharge volumes reported. It is also the hub of recharge partnership programs that enable water users to store water off-site, by districts that have especially good recharge conditions.

Survey respondents also noted the biggest barriers for their districts. Perhaps reflecting the very large volumes of surface water available this year, respondents were much more likely to flag problems related to infrastructure (72% of respondents) than to regulatory issues (30%). Infrastructure challenges included capacity constraints in several areas: recharge basins, “system” conveyance to get water to the district (e.g., through the Friant-Kern Canal or the California Aqueduct), and conveyance within the district to deliver water to good recharge lands. Many respondents also noted problems with the timing of water availability—a big issue in this very wet year, when storms brought large amounts of water all at once. Other constraints include challenges of expanding recharge on croplands because of farm-related issues (42%)—including unsuitable irrigation systems and uncertainties about the impacts on crop health—and difficulties raising funds for recharge projects (23%).

Survey findings also highlight the opportunities to expand recharge to help close the valley’s water deficit. In particular, the new groundwater sustainability agencies will need to develop better water accounting—which can help improve incentives and funding opportunities for recharge. And as water districts and water users work together to develop basin-wide sustainability plans, there’s potential to develop joint programs between surface water “haves” and “have nots.” Importantly, this includes opportunities to involve more cities and towns in groundwater banking projects and to encourage partnerships to expand off-site recharge.

For more details on these preliminary findings, see the slides linked below. And stay tuned for a report with complete survey findings in early 2018.

Videos: Priorities for California’s Water

This past year brought drought-busting rain and snow and severe wildfires—extremes that tested California’s systems for managing water supply and the natural environment and foreshadow conditions of a changing climate. In light of these challenges, a PPIC Water Policy Center event in Sacramento last week brought together experts to discuss ways forward in three areas: legislative priorities for cities, farms, and rural communities; partnerships that improve the health of ecosystems; and decisions for the Colorado River and Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.

Ellen Hanak, director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, began the program by summarizing priorities for California water outlined in a new PPIC report. These include California’s ability to recharge aquifers, maintain dams and levees, manage headwater forests and aquatic ecosystems, and provide safe drinking water to rural communities.

The first panel examined a host of proposed, passed, and pending water bills, covering topics as diverse as funding water infrastructure, improving water-use reporting, and addressing safe drinking water problems.

The lack of safe drinking water in disadvantaged communities prompted a lively conversation on how to pay for a lasting solution to the problem. Laurel Firestone, codirector of the Community Water Center, noted that while California has passed a resolution declaring a human right to water, the state’s drinking water crisis—which she said dwarfs that of Flint, Michigan—will take a more concerted effort to resolve.

One possible funding solution the panel discussed is a tax on fertilizers to pay for cleaning up groundwater contaminated by nitrate, which can cause health problems. “This is a legacy problem that stems from the over-application of nitrogen fertilizer for many, many decades,” said Dave Puglia, executive vice president of Western Growers.

The second panel tackled a problem even longer in the making: the crisis in California’s aquatic ecosystems. “We spent 150 years fundamentally changing the ecosystem… We’ve spent about 40 years actively failing to do something about it,” noted Lewis Bair, a water resource engineer with Reclamation District No. 108. “Our system is so modified, and there’s so much work to do, it will probably take a generation to make significant change.” The panelists discussed innovative projects and partnerships that are providing multiple benefits while also improving habitat for aquatic species—and how to scale them up to get broader effects at the ecosystem level.

The final panel looked at two watersheds that have outsized importance to California’s water supply: the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River. While the multi-state effort to improve management of the Colorado River has become a model of cooperation, efforts to make progress in the Delta have been more contentious.

Much of the conversation focused on WaterFix, the state’s proposal to modernize the Delta’s water export infrastructure with a pair of tunnels. Grant Davis, the new director of the California Department of Water Resources, called the Delta “the heart of the state’s water supply delivery,” and said that “the status quo will take us into unreliability and ultimately a crisis—and no one wants to manage water in a crisis.” The conversation turned to the long and difficult history of trying to resolve water conflict in the Delta, the need for reliable water supplies for agriculture, and the costs of the tunnels project.

We invite you to watch the videos from this event and hope you find the discussions illuminating and useful:

 

Learn more

Visit the Policy Priorities for California’s Water YouTube playlist
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

New Laws Ease Funding and Improve Accounting for Water

This was a busy year for water policy in the California Legislature. Governor Jerry Brown signed more than a dozen bills affecting the way we manage water. The bills cover a wide range of issues, from funding water infrastructure to reporting on new groundwater wells in overdrafted basins.

Paying for water emerged as a major theme in this year’s crop of water bills. Here’s a summary of newly signed bills:

  • Stormwater: SB 231 gives the courts guidance on how to interpret Proposition 218, which requires that a majority of landowners or a two-thirds majority of all local voters approve new stormwater drainage fees—making it difficult for agencies to pay for needed improvements to their systems. SB 231 defines stormwater as part of the sewer system. This puts stormwater services on par with water, sewer, and trash collection, none of which are subject to direct voter approval of new fees. If the courts uphold SB 231’s interpretation, this will give stormwater agencies more flexibility to raise funds.
  • Safe drinking water: AB 560 and AB 339 expand funding options for projects that enhance drinking water quality in poor communities and meet emergency water supply needs. AB 560 will make it easier for some disadvantaged communities to access grants and get more affordable terms on loans for safe drinking water projects through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. And AB 339 makes permanent a temporary authorization to use the State Cleanup and Abatement Account for emergency drinking water supply problems such as shortages or impaired quality.
  • Water and parks bond: SB 5 (the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access for All Act of 2018) is a $4 billion general obligation bond for improving outdoor open spaces and parks, protecting rivers and coastlines, and supporting solutions to a range of other water management issues such as groundwater sustainability and flood protection. This will go before voters in June 2018.

Two bills improve water use accounting:

  • AB 589 creates standards for water use measurement techniques. This addresses the relatively recent requirement that surface water diverters measure and report water use to the state.
  • SB 252 specifies types of information that groundwater users must report to their local jurisdictions when they apply to dig new wells in critically overdrafted basins. Reporting includes characteristics such as well location and depth, distance from surface water areas, estimated volume to be pumped, and category of use. The bill, which sunsets on January 30, 2020, is aimed at filling a critical data gap until groundwater sustainability plans are adopted under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

Other pending water policies that did not make it to the governor’s desk this year are likely to return in 2018. To pay for safe drinking water projects in disadvantaged communities, SB 623 would create a Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund, to be funded by fees on agricultural chemicals and urban water use. And AB 1668 (in conjunction with SB 606) would authorize state agencies to establish long-term urban water use efficiency standards. The bill also proposes additional components to agricultural water management planning and reporting. SB 606 proposes changes to urban water shortage planning policies.

The new laws are designed to improve access to funding and strengthen existing tools for improving the way California manages water. We will keep track of updates and new proposals in 2018.

Commentary: California’s Forests are Dying—They Need Better Care

This commentary was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 14, 2017

California’s forests are on fire, with tragic consequences for communities around the state. While the firestorm in the Wine Country has made international headlines, many small mountain communities also were aflame or on high alert.

The focus now is on saving lives and protecting property, but when the fires are out, the state will have to face up to a major problem: Our forests are too dense and dry, and, in some areas, dying. We need a new way to manage this vital natural resource.

Read the full commentary on sfchronicle.com.

What Recent Hurricanes Mean for Flood Insurance in California

Three exceptional hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria— caused staggering damages from floods, winds, and storm surge in recent weeks. It’s likely they will make the record books as the most costly natural disasters in US history.

Although California doesn’t get hurricanes, it does get large storms (called “atmospheric rivers”) that can be just as damaging to people and property. Currently, one in five Californians and close to $600 billion worth of structures are vulnerable to flooding.

One way for residents and businesses to reduce the financial risks of flooding is to carry insurance. Millions of Californians depend on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But at almost 50 years old—and facing an uncertain reauthorization this December—it has many problems.

The most immediate concern is the imbalance between premiums and claims. Currently, the NFIP is more than $25 billion in debt―a figure that will certainly grow once all the recent hurricane claims are processed.

“The program never charged prices that would cover a year like Hurricane Katrina, where it paid out more than it had over the life of the program.  And the string of storms since then—Ike, Sandy, and now Harvey, Irma, and Maria—have only worsened its debt,” says Carolyn Kousky, director of policy research for the Wharton Risk Center and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network.  “Realistically, the program will not be able to repay this debt, so the best thing may be for Congress to simply forgive it, while also putting in place a new approach to pay for catastrophic events.”

Another problem is that too many people at risk of flooding do not enroll in the program. In Houston, approximately 80% of Harvey-flooded homes were not insured.  And here in California, just 10% of flood-prone Sacramento county households and only half of those in high-risk areas have flood insurance.  Among the reasons so few people purchase insurance, Kousky says, are “unwillingness or inability to pay, a misunderstanding about the role of insurance, an unsubstantiated faith in disaster aid, and importantly, no information or even misinformation on flood risks.”

Inadequate perception of risk stems, in part, from the way FEMA maps flood hazards and mandates insurance. Currently, FEMA requires (but does not sufficiently enforce) flood insurance for homes with a 1-in-100 chance of flooding in any given year (the so-called 100-year flood). For homes in the floodplain but out of this high-risk zone, insurance is optional.

Nicholas Pinter—the associate director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network―notes that this gives a false impression that those outside this zone are safer than those within it. His laboratory found that roughly half the flooding from Harvey was outside of Houston’s 100-year floodplain zone.

“The picture in California is much better than in Texas,” Pinter says. “But updating flood maps here still takes many years, and California still largely works within FEMA’s framework of the ‘all or nothing’ 100-year floodplain.”

But the state may not be getting a good deal from the NFIP.  According to Pinter, California pays much more into the program than it is getting back.  He notes that California has gotten just 14 cents in return for every dollar of premiums paid.  The Central Valley—the most flood vulnerable area of the state—got just 9 cents per dollar.

“For a variety of reasons, California may be overpaying for its actual flood risk,” Pinter suggests. “The state needs to explore whether it is cheaper to develop its own flood insurance program and to invest the savings—estimated to be at least $150 million per year—in reducing flood risk across California.”

With this year’s unprecedented string of flood disasters and uncertainty for national insurance, it’s time for real policy reforms to ensure Californians are prepared to weather the growing risk of floods. Fixing our flood insurance problems is one way to start.

Learn more
Read Floods in California (PPIC fact sheet, September 2017)
Watch our 3-minute video “Floods”
Read Financing Flood Losses by Carolyn Kousky (February 2017), and her related blog post, “Flooding and the Economics of Risk Reduction” (August 30, 2017)

Video: Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests

Forests in the Sierra Nevada benefit all Californians―they provide timber, wildlife habitat, recreational landscapes, two-thirds of the state’s surface water, and other benefits. But their health is in decline from drought, insect infestation, changes in management practices, and overcrowding. These changes have raised the risk of catastrophic wildfire and tree die-off. Improving forest health will require thinning trees, which will make forests more resilient.

These were some of the observations from experts gathered in Sacramento to discuss a new PPIC report on improving forest management.

Van Butsic―an assistant cooperative extension specialist from the University of California, Berkeley, and a coauthor of the  report—gave an overview of the crisis in forest health and solutions to it. A panel discussion followed, moderated by the PPIC Water Policy Center’s Jeffrey Mount. The panelists were David Edelson, Sierra Nevada project director at the Nature Conservancy; Barnie Gyant, deputy regional forester for resources for the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service; and Susie Kocher, natural resources advisor for the Central Sierra Region at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

“We looked at prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical thinning, and we realized these three treatments were actually effective,” said Butsic. “But they’re hard to use in California because of a complex management environment.”

Some essential takeaways from the event included:

  • About two-thirds of the land in California’s headwaters is federally owned, making the federal government a key player in solving this crisis.
  • Policy and budgets prioritize fire suppression over forest management. More than half of the US Forest Service budget is for fire suppression.
  • Revenue-generating logging on forest management projects can make these projects financially viable.
  • Treatments to thin forests can negatively affect species and habitat—but catastrophic wildfire is even more harmful.
  • Climate change makes solving the crisis in our forests challenging but not impossible.

Jeff Mount wrapped up the event by noting that the forest health crisis presents an “exceptional opportunity” to stakeholders and decision makers. “We’re seeing an awakening and awareness at a level we’ve never experienced,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary moment that is not to be wasted.”

Learn more
Read Improving the Health of California’s Headwater Forests (PPIC, September 2017)
Read California’s Water: Protecting Headwaters (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s drought resource page

Storing Water for Dry Days

Where would California be without the ability to store water? We talked to Jay Lund―an adjunct fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center and director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis—about the often contentious and always complex topic of water storage.

Jay LundPPIC: What should every Californian know about storing water?

Jay Lund: Thanks to our Mediterranean climate, California has a very long dry season, which is when we use most of our water, and a fairly short wet season, when we try to gather and store water. To put water storage in perspective, California every year has a worse drought–in the form of a long dry season—than most of the country has ever seen. California has always relied on water storage, and in droughts today we rely on it even more. Almost all the water people use in summer has been stored someplace—either in a reservoir or groundwater. The state’s natural storage system of groundwater and snowpack is now augmented with reservoirs, pipelines, and groundwater pumping. This storage and conveyance system has been critical to California’s prosperity, particularly to its agricultural economy.

You often hear calls for more storage, and of course we do have some limitations in water storage capacity. But no matter how large a reservoir you build, you’ll never be able to reliably get more water out than that stream’s average flow into it. In much of the state the problem is that there’s not enough water available to store or that we can’t get water to the places where it’s needed most. The bottlenecks are often inadequate conveyance rather than storage.

PPIC: What did we learn about water storage from the recent drought and subsequent record-breaking wet winter?

JL: The drought highlighted the importance of groundwater storage. Surface storage in reservoirs is very important in the first couple years of a drought, but with longer droughts we rely more and more on groundwater storage. Groundwater will always be our primary storage for long droughts. California has 400–500 million acre-feet in groundwater storage, compared to about 42 million acre-feet in total surface reservoir capacity. Water quality is a bigger challenge with groundwater than with surface water, since pollutants can be washed into aquifers and accumulate there.

California’s geography is fortunate—we have huge aquifers under the Central Valley. Farmers made up for about 70% of reduced water supply during the drought by pumping groundwater. The longer the drought, the more important groundwater becomes. If we don’t manage to recharge enough water during wet years, there won’t be enough in drought years.

The wet year brought us the Oroville Dam spillway crisis. All of the dam’s outlet structures were compromised or broken for much of the winter. It was a good reminder that we have to maintain these structures and systems, and find funding for maintenance and independent inspections. Good inspectors will always find some concerns and problems, but few problems rise to the level of crisis. With California’s extensive water infrastructure system, if you’re not finding any problems you’re not looking hard enough.

PPIC: What will it take to made good use of groundwater recharge and storage?

JL: You need three things to recharge groundwater: porous land above an aquifer, enough water available above that land, and enough empty space under that land to store it. While local conditions are important, the big limitation for the areas of California experiencing groundwater problems is lack of surface water available for recharge. During this wet winter, people were trying to recharge as much as possible and being very creative about it. But this was a record wet year. We often lack enough water to get good recharge.

To improve recharge locally, we need a better accounting system to improve incentives. We also need more legal protections for local agencies that want to do recharge, and faster authorizations to recharge in wetter years.

Learn moreRead Dams in California (PPIC fact sheet, September 2017).
Read California’s Water: Storing Water (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016).
Read “Expanding Water Storage Capacity in California” (California Water Blog, February 22, 2012).
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center.