PPIC Water Policy Center – Page 9 – Public Policy Institute of California

Video: Water Priorities for California’s Next Governor

California’s many water challenges are complex, with many possible solutions and even more opinions about best approaches. How can a new governor forge a path forward in this critical area?

The PPIC Water Policy Center assembled a group of 16 experts this week for a half-day workshop in Sacramento to discuss how the new administration can promote water policies and practices that benefit the state’s people, economy, and environment. Lively discussions addressed three overarching topics: how local and state water policies intersect with California’s most pressing economic issues; innovations in policy, practice, and technology that offer better solutions for key water problems; and steps needed to adapt the state’s water systems to a changing climate.

Ellen Hanak, director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, summarized some major water challenges the new administration will face, including increased risks of drought and floods; poor water quality and drying wells in disadvantaged rural communities; and finding durable ways to pay for needed water system improvements. Leadership will be key to advancing solutions, she said.

“California has been a leader both nationally and internationally” on climate change mitigation and reducing emissions, Hanak said. “We think California has the potential to be a leader when it comes to climate adaptation as well.” She noted that water is a lynchpin issue for addressing the effects of a changing climate.

The first panel shed light on the links between water and the state’s leading economic challenges, from housing affordability to jobs. For example, growing water scarcity in the San Joaquin Valley—one of California’s fastest-growing areas―will affect plans to build new housing there. And regulation can complicate efforts to build affordable housing. Dan Dunmoyer of the California Building Industry Association noted that some water-related regulations—such as strict rules to prevent runoff from construction sites during the rainy season—can significantly increase building costs. Panelists agreed that better coordination could help open up many of these bottlenecks.

Denise Fairchild of Emerald Cities Collaborative highlighted the potential for job training programs in the water sector—which is grappling with the “silver tsunami” of an aging workforce—to create economic opportunities for low-income communities. “If we take this opportunity to rebuild California’s water infrastructure, it has great job generation potential” in communities affected by a historical lack of water sector investment.

The next panel looked at technical and policy-related innovations that can improve water management, such as weather forecasting tools that enable more nimble water management in dams—key to adapting to an increasingly volatile climate. Also, better information on agricultural water use can “empower communities to stop arguing about numbers and start working on solutions,” said Robyn Grimm of Environmental Defense.

The final panel explored opportunities to modernize the state’s water “grid”—its vast network of reservoirs, aquifers and conveyance systems—to make it more resilient in the face of five climate pressures: warming temperatures, shrinking snowpack, shorter and more intense wet seasons, more volatile precipitation, and rising seas. Improving water conveyance and reworking the current system would enable the state to “take advantage of bigger storms” linked to climate change by capturing their water for recharge, said Ashley Boren of Sustainable Conservation.

Each panel discussion included a quick round of “elevator pitch” advice for the governor-elect. Jennifer Pierre of the State Water Contractors captured the mood of the group with her pitch: “In water, flexibility is the name of the game—we need it for managing the existing grid, and for grid improvements. Don’t wait for the perfect plan; we’ll suffer every year that we delay.”

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

A Water Budget for the Environment

California’s freshwater ecosystems—and many native species that rely on them—are in decline and becoming increasingly vulnerable to drought. Allocating water to these ecosystems is contentious because it often conflicts with urban and agricultural uses. There may be a way to meet environmental needs that reduces conflict.

My recent presentation before the Delta Science Program outlined an alternative approach to managing water for the environment that is detailed in a 2017 PPIC report.

Currently, state and federal regulators rely heavily on minimum flow and water quality standards to protect the environment. These flows are often set to meet the needs of one or more endangered species. This approach has failed to reverse the decline in native species and their ecosystems for many reasons—simply bumping up minimum flows is unlikely to improve conditions.

Instead, our report recommends establishing ecosystem water budgets. These budgets would specify a volume of water to be made available to support a range of ecosystem functions to which native species are adapted. The amounts would vary in accordance with the type of water year (e.g., wet, average, dry) but each amount would be fixed for a number of years. The volume to start with would be the water currently allocated to meet minimum flow and water quality standards. Mechanisms would be needed to increase this volume where necessary through purchases or leases.

To be effective, the budget should be flexibly managed, much like a water right—preferably by an ecosystem trustee vested with the authority to trade and store water. These budgets would focus on improving overall ecosystem conditions rather than protecting individual species.

Ecosystem water budgets are a better approach for three reasons. First, the flexible allocation of water allows environmental managers to use water more efficiently by responding to changing conditions (such as droughts, storms, and heatwaves) and delivering water to habitat in areas that are likely to have the highest ecological benefit.

Second, having a budget that can be flexibly managed makes the environment a partner in water management, not just a constraint. The ecosystem trustee would sit at the table with water managers and participate in the trading, storage, and planning that goes on in a watershed.

Finally, a budget with a set term makes the amount of water that will be allocated to the environment clear to all water users. This addresses one of the most common complaints about environmental water management: urban and agricultural users face uncertainty over regulatory actions that transfer water from economic to environmental uses.

Ecosystem water budgets would be an advance over traditional minimum flow and water quality standards, but they are unlikely to succeed without major improvements in both ecosystem planning and water accounting. Robust, watershed-scale plans are needed to set budget objectives and priorities for action. We recommend annual watering plans—vetted with local stakeholders—that preview actions to be taken every year, depending on hydrologic conditions. Equally important, California must improve accounting for water use and availability, because it’s not possible to manage what you don’t measure.

The current approach to freshwater ecosystem management is not working for anyone. The three reforms described here—ecosystem water budgets, ecosystem plans, and improved accounting—are likely to produce better outcomes for native species and result in more efficient use of environmental water. They also have the potential to increase certainty about environmental water allocation and reduce controversy. Making the environment a partner in water management is a novel, effective way to address one of the big challenges in California water.

Groundwater Management is Key to Adapting to Climate Change

California relies heavily on groundwater for its water supply, particularly during drought. Climate change is increasing drought intensity, making groundwater―with its immense potential for low-cost storage―an ever more important water source. Sustainable groundwater management will be vital to adapting to a warmer future and should be a top policy priority for the next administration.

In non-drought years, groundwater supplies approximately one-third of urban and agricultural water use in California, but its share rises during droughts, when snow and surface water are scarce. In severe drought years, it provides more than half of urban and agricultural water use.

A recent report by the PPIC Water Policy Center and a large team of experts highlighted the impacts of climate change on water supply and ecosystem management during drought. As winter precipitation shifts from snow to rain in a warming climate, a key issue will be adapting the management of the state’s water storage system. A more volatile climate and changes in precipitation could shift the use of large multipurpose reservoirs from water storage to protection against flood risk, thus reducing the water available from reservoirs in some years―and making groundwater storage even more important.

In some regions, including the San Joaquin Valley, groundwater overdraft—taking more water out of aquifers than is put back—has been going on for decades. This has increased the cost of groundwater pumping, dried up wells in many rural areas, and caused land to sink, damaging infrastructure.

But the greatest long-term impact of unsustainable groundwater use is the loss of stored water that can be economically pumped during dry periods. This makes the state increasingly vulnerable to drought in a changing climate.

The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires water users and other stakeholders to self-organize into groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) and prepare and implement plans to achieve sustainability in the next 20 years. Done well, these efforts will restore the capacity of the state’s groundwater basins to supply water during drought.

GSAs have begun the hard work of developing their sustainability plans—due in January 2020 for critically overdrafted basins and two years later for the rest. The Department of Water Resources is providing technical and planning assistance, and the State Water Board―which has ultimate authority over these plans―is offering policy and legal guidance where it can.

Making SGMA a success will require additional action in the following four areas:

Advance planning. At the top of the list is expanding state and regional support for groundwater sustainability plans. Factoring in the predicted effects of climate change and developing robust water accounting and regional strategies for managing scarcity will be key.
Modernizing the water grid. A major priority for helping groundwater basins achieve sustainability is to upgrade and modernize the state’s water “grid”―the network of reservoirs, canals, rivers, and groundwater basins that store and convey water. Improving the grid’s capacity to move surface water into groundwater storage during wet periods is essential.
Updating water allocation rules. For the improved grid capacity to function well, the state will need to make it easier to recharge, trade, and bank groundwater.
Finding the money. Finding the money for groundwater sustainability programs will be crucial. The best solutions focus on expanding funding from local water bills and taxes—which currently fund roughly 85% of water management expenditures—and using state general obligation bonds to fund projects with clearly defined public benefits.

Achieving sustainable groundwater management is one of the most important things California can do to prepare for a warming climate. Getting there will require a suite of actions―including some reforms beyond those called for under SGMA. Better planning, modernizing the grid, streamlining water allocation, and finding program funding can help us manage this critical water supply.

Tackling Safe Drinking Water in the San Joaquin Valley

Unsafe drinking water is a significant problem in parts of California, especially in small, disadvantaged rural communities. We talked to Maria Herrera—a California water commissioner and community development manager at Self-Help Enterprises—about how to tackle this ongoing problem.

PPIC: What’s behind California’s safe drinking water problem?

Maria Herrera: Too many California residents still lack access to safe drinking water. In the San Joaquin Valley, drinking water delivered by small water systems and private domestic wells is contaminated by many natural and manmade contaminates. Typical water quality issues for valley communities are contamination from nitrate, arsenic, uranium and a chemical called 1,2,3-TCP. Small community systems and private well owners often don’t have the resources to address these issues. They face a lot of challenges—for starters, they have little to no staff and lack the resources to maintain or upgrade aging infrastructure. Some rely on just one or two wells. Historically, these communities haven’t been prioritized for state funding or in planning processes.

PPIC: How should we be tackling this problem?

MH: I grew up in communities experiencing these problems and have worked on these issues for more than 10 years, and I’ve seen a big shift in visibility over safe drinking water in recent years. California has taken a number of steps to address the problem, especially with the passage of the human-right-to-water law (AB 685), which makes it state policy that every Californian should have safe and affordable drinking water. That was the biggest signal that this issue is now being prioritized. Also, Proposition 1 prioritized safe drinking water in disadvantaged communities by increasing technical assistance funding and giving communities an opportunity to hire consultants to develop shovel-ready projects and fund safe drinking water projects.

We need to continue on that path in order to make these communities less vulnerable to drought. We need to not only fund mitigation of contaminated wells and treatment plants, but also help communities develop redundant water sources, promote consolidation of small systems to larger ones, and help them with drought contingency planning. Communities need guidance and technical assistance in order to develop solutions and participate in water planning.

This year California came close to establishing a safe drinking water fund, which would have created an ongoing fund for disadvantaged communities to improve their water infrastructure and clean up contamination. A safe drinking water fund is still a priority for drinking water advocates going forward.

PPIC: How might the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) affect the safe drinking water effort?

MH: SGMA creates a good opportunity for people to come together and identify ways to protect and improve drinking water supplies. But achieving sustainability will bring some tough decisions and will have some impact on agriculture. We want farmers to thrive—and rural communities to have adequate water supplies. SGMA provides groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) an opportunity to play a very meaningful role in improving groundwater supplies. We’d like to work with GSAs and communities to develop joint solutions, improve coordination between GSAs and the agencies that work on water quality, and ensure that good information is available regarding groundwater supplies used by these communities. We’d like to encourage GSAs to look more closely at domestic wells. We’re trying to encourage them to develop more protections for vulnerable communities. Our ultimate objective is to ensure that rural communities have the information and resources they need to play a meaningful role in developing and implementing their groundwater sustainability plans.

PPIC: What gives you hope?

MH: I’m inspired by the interest of rural residents in building capacity and leadership skills to engage on water issues. There’s a new generation of young adults that know the issues, have lived in impacted communities, and are now ready to a make change in their communities by participating in water management and planning. I’m also energized by the partnerships we’ve helped establish between the communities, irrigation districts, cities, and agencies. It gives me hope that they are interested in finding common ground. And, I’m encouraged by the attention the issue is getting at the state level—the legislature, governor, the voters have all shown interest in funding propositions and programs that will help bring safe water to these communities.

Watch a video with Maria Herrera and other panelists discussing managing drought in a changing climate.

Video: A Conversation with Candidates for US Senate

As part of our Speaker Series on California’s Future, PPIC is inviting all major candidates in selected statewide races to participate in public conversations. The purpose is to give Californians a better understanding of how candidates would approach the challenges facing our state.

To give Californians a chance to hear directly from the two candidates for California’s US Senate seat, PPIC invited California state senator Kevin de León and US senator Dianne Feinstein to San Francisco on Wednesday to talk about their visions for California and the nation. PPIC president Mark Baldassare moderated a lively discussion that covered a range of topics.

The candidates, both Democrats, were in agreement on many state and national issues—including gun regulations, the Delta tunnel proposal, and comprehensive immigration reform. Both would support revisiting the allegations against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, and both feel that there are Republicans in Congress who want to reach across the aisle.

But while both candidates talked about the need for universal health care, they had different views on the way to proceed. As Feinstein put it, “I believe in universal health care. The question is how we get it.” She outlined an incremental approach—offering a public insurance option, lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to 55, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. By contrast, de León characterized health care as a right: “I believe that health care is a human right. I believe in Medicare for all.” He also cited his leadership in creating the Covered California health care exchange, expanding access to the exchange to undocumented minors, and instituting drug price transparency in California.

The candidates’ views on health care epitomize their overall approaches to governing. For de León, the key is to bring his experience in California to Washington. Asked about the tensions between California and the federal government, he said, “California has been the leading voice for the entire nation. The world looks to California, not Washington, DC.” And he argued that Democrats in Congress need to elevate key issues, “even if we’re in the minority.” In response to a question about why he wants to be California’s US senator, de León said, “I’m running to give you a new voice, and a new approach.”

Feinstein often focused on what her years of experience in the Senate have taught her about the complexities and difficulties of governing. She reminded the audience more than once that Democrats are in the minority: “When you have both houses and the White House controlled by one party, it is extraordinarily difficult.” Explaining why she’s running in 2018, she focused on the work that needs to be done: “In terms of American public policy domestically, we can achieve a great deal . . . if we’re smart in how we go about it.”

The Connection between Groundwater and Surface Water

When the California Legislature created the “modern” water rights regulatory system more than a century ago, it focused exclusively on surface water, exempting groundwater from the permitting system. Yet in most watersheds, surface water and groundwater are closely linked. Actions that change one often have an impact on the other. The arbitrary legal divide has made it harder to manage the state’s water. But a recent law and a new court decision have done a better job of connecting surface water and groundwater.

When rain falls or snow melts in the foothills and mountains of California, water follows several pathways downhill and into rivers and streams. Some water moves across the land or through deep soils and weathered bedrock, arriving in rivers hours to weeks after rain or snowmelt. And some percolates deep into the ground, becoming groundwater.

As groundwater tables rise in winter and spring, they discharge water into rivers and streams, either directly through river beds and banks or indirectly through springs. This is why many of California’s rivers and streams flow long after the rain stops.

The exchange between surface water and groundwater continues when rivers emerge from mountains and flow across the state’s large valleys. Winter flooding, along with rainfall in the valleys, recharges groundwater during the winter. Some of that groundwater moves back into rivers and helps maintain flow in the dry season. Shallow groundwater also supports wetlands and riparian vegetation.

Groundwater pumping alters the exchange between surface water and groundwater. In many of the state’s large valleys, such as the Central Valley and valleys in the Central Coast and Southern California, streams and rivers that historically flowed all year are now intermittent due to lowered groundwater tables. In many cases, groundwater tables are so far below the surface that water only flows one way: from the river bed to the aquifer.

The arbitrary legal divide between surface water and groundwater has begun to change. A big step was the 2014 enactment of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). SGMA requires water users in overdrafted groundwater basins to develop and implement groundwater sustainability plans to bring groundwater use and recharge into balance by 2040. SGMA mandates that these plans include measures to avoid undesirable effects from pumping, such as reduced stream flows and harm to groundwater-dependent ecosystems like wetlands. This is one of the few explicit legislative acknowledgements of the links between groundwater pumping and surface water flows.

Additionally, the California Court of Appeal recently added an important legal connection between groundwater pumping and surface water uses. In litigation to protect salmon and steelhead in the Scott River, the court ruled that the public trust doctrine―which protects the public’s right to use waterways for navigation, fishing, boating, natural habitat protection, and other activities―applies to groundwater pumping that adversely affects a navigable river or lake. The court also held that SGMA doesn’t override the public trust doctrine in groundwater cases.

These developments will have far-reaching implications for how California’s groundwater will be managed in the future. They also bring the law closer to hydrologic reality, which is likely to improve the effectiveness of both surface water and groundwater management.

A more extensive analysis of the Scott River decision by PPIC senior fellow Brian Gray was published on the California WaterBlog. Richard Frank, a UC Davis law professor and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s research network, has also written a summary of the case.

New Laws on Drought, Forests, and Safe Drinking Water

The legislative session that just wrapped up addressed a number of water and forest management issues. Progress was made in three major areas—urban drought management, forest health, and safe drinking water.

Urban water use efficiency and drought management: Assembly Bill (AB) 1668 requires the State Water Board and the Department of Water Resources to adopt long-term efficiency standards for residential water use and efficiency metrics for commercial, industrial, and institutional water use by June 2022. The law complements Senate Bill (SB) 606, which requires urban water suppliers to develop local water use budgets by November 2023. Progress toward those objectives will be overseen by state agencies. SB 606 also strengthens local drought planning requirements and increases transparency of information about drought risks and responses. The law requires suppliers to regularly analyze the risk of a five-year severe drought and report short-term water shortage risks and responses to the state each spring. Suppliers must also revamp their drought response plans to include new elements such as descriptions of supply forecasting procedures, new ways of reporting water shortage levels, and protocols for communicating with customers during droughts. AB 1668 also includes provisions to increase drought preparedness for small rural water systems and large agricultural water suppliers.

Wildfires and forest management: SB 901 takes substantive steps toward reducing wildfire risks by increasing the pace and scale of forest health improvements. Cal Fire will have access to new, stable funding from cap-and-trade revenues—$200 million per year for five years—to pay for forest management. The law also helps lower management cost barriers for family forest owners, which occupy about one-quarter of the state’s headwater forests. It relaxes some timber harvest regulations to make it easier for these owners to reduce wildfire risk. A provision that increases the size of trees owners can harvest should expand their ability to raise funds from selling timber. The law also allows multiple landowners to work under the same timber harvest permit. Finally, SB 901 includes provisions that apply to forests managed by the US Forest Service, which make up more than half of our headwater forests. In particular, it streamlines California’s environmental permitting process for collaborative fire risk reduction projects on federal lands that are approved under the federal National Environmental Policy Act.

Safe drinking water for vulnerable communities: Drinking water received significant attention this year, as lawmakers attempted to fill the funding gap for small disadvantaged communities facing water quality and quantity problems. Proposals to tap urban water customers and agricultural fertilizer users for safe drinking water funds ultimately failed in the legislature. However, new laws signed by the governor will strengthen tools for addressing drinking water quality issues. AB 2501 increases the State Water Board’s ability to require the consolidation of vulnerable water systems with larger, more reliable systems. The new law expands the board’s authority to require the consolidation of communities served by domestic wells. AB 2501 also extends the board’s authority over support services to help communities provide safe drinking water where consolidation is not an option. Another new law, AB 2541, gives severely disadvantaged communities expanded access to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund for water infrastructure projects. The law makes it easier for the board to provide full grant funding in addition to low-interest loans.

The governor also signed more than a dozen other bills related to water, in areas such as sewer system consolidation, on-site treatment regulations and rules for the reuse of non-potable water, and the establishment of an office within the State Water Board to help address water-rights matters.

We will keep track of updates and new proposals in 2019.

Groundwater and the Colorado River

Like so many rivers, the Colorado is closely linked to groundwater. A US Geological Survey study found that more than half of the streamflow in the upper Colorado Basin originates as groundwater. We talked to Doug Kenney—director of the Western Water Policy Program at the University of Colorado and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network―about managing groundwater in the basin. Kenney organized a conference in June that covered these issues in depth.

PPIC: What is the status of the basin’s groundwater?

Doug Kenney: That’s difficult to answer, in part because there’s a lack of good information on groundwater in many areas. Also, there is no one groundwater source—the Colorado Basin has multiple aquifers, with different types of connections to surface waters and different uses for the water. Some aquifers provide potable water, while others are too salty or polluted to use for drinking. We have a number of huge aquifers, and some very tiny ones.

Some places have a very tight physical connection between groundwater and rivers. In those areas, if you drill a lot of wells and the water table drops, streams can dry up. The connection goes the other way as well—when there’s a lot of water flowing in streams, some seeps into aquifers. In other places, there may not be a physical connection but groundwater use impacts overall water management. The key is that if you manage groundwater poorly, surface water will ultimately suffer―and vice versa.

PPIC: What are the big challenges for managing groundwater in the basin?

DK: While it’s hard to generalize, the trend is increased pressure on groundwater, just as with the basin’s surface water. In some aquifers, depletion is a really acute problem. The management challenge is that with so many differing circumstances, you need a unique approach for each one. Each state in the basin has come up with its own groundwater laws and policies, but each state also recognizes that managing groundwater at the state level is too broad―you still need solutions tailored to local conditions.

Managing groundwater is just inherently difficult—you can’t see it and it’s hard to measure. And there’s a time lag: bad groundwater management today often creates slow-moving problems that might not be felt for many years. In those cases, there’s no constituency to protest groundwater mismanagement because those constituents haven’t been born yet. With surface water, if someone is using water in a way that harms another user, that user will draw attention to the problem.

The Colorado River is governed by a compact between states, and there’s a body of law to help manage its surface waters. But the river’s compact doesn’t deal with groundwater, and it’s always been left out of the discussion. You can get away with that for a while, but once it affects surface-water allocations, that’s where agreements start to fall apart—as has happened on the Rio Grande, the Arkansas, and the Republican Rivers. These are just three examples where the Supreme Court had to get involved. I worry that’s going to be the future for the Colorado too.

PPIC: What strategies hold promise for improving groundwater management in the future?

DK: I’d say 80% of good groundwater management is just making the effort. It will always be a difficult endeavor, but you have to try.

In many respects, groundwater management has become more innovative than for surface water. For example, there are more experiments with market-based approaches in groundwater. In places as diverse as the Diamond Valley in Nevada and in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, new incentive structures are being tried to reward people for not depleting the aquifer. In both places, prospects for maintaining the agricultural economy are much better than before; people have had to innovate or die. In surface water, it’s more about clarifying who has what rights to water and enforcing them—there’s not as much innovation. But in groundwater people are trying creative things and it’s encouraging.

What Motivates People to Use Less Water?

During a drought, households can be inundated by messages to conserve water. We talked to Katrina Jessoe—an economist at UC Davis and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s research network―about new research on what motivates people to conserve water.

PPIC: Talk about your recent research on water conservation messaging. What did you learn?

Katrina Jessoe: We partnered with a municipally owned water and electric utility to see how people would respond to additional water conservation messaging during summer 2015―at the height of the latest drought. These households were already receiving statewide and utility messages and incentives to conserve water. Our focus was to gauge if social comparisons would lead to additional conservation.

The utilities sent bi-monthly home water reports to a random sample of households. These reports compared a household’s water use to that of neighbors, gave recommendations on how to conserve water, and provided information on particular conservation programs being used by that utility.

We looked at how people responded and found that households that got these reports saved more water than those that didn’t. The reports prompted a reduction in water use of 3 to 4.5%, on top of water savings already prompted by other conservation programs. Interestingly, these water reports led to reduced electricity use as well—participating households used 1.3% to 2.3% less electricity that summer.

Similar home energy reports, which are being deployed throughout the US, are typically cited as leading to 1.3% to 2.5% reduction in energy use. These home water reports reduced electricity use by similar amounts as the energy reports while also reducing water use—even though electricity use wasn’t the target.

We were also able to see that people reduced their electricity use during peak hours—which is when electricity is most expensive and less likely to be produced from clean energy sources like renewables. This has ramifications for greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of providing energy. So this program was providing more bang for the buck than just water conservation.

Why should policy makers care? If you think about this from a cost effectiveness angle, saving water alone may not justify these kinds of interventions. But with the additional electricity savings, it increases the net benefit of these reports by almost two-thirds. We talk a lot about the water-energy nexus, but typically it’s about “embedded” energy savings—if you reduce water use by a gallon, what is the energy savings from treating and moving that water. This research documents the end-use savings in electricity from a water conservation instrument.

PPIC: What other tools show promise for encourage conservation?

KJ: We’ve looked at the City of Modesto, which moved from a flat fee type of billing to charging per unit of water. The utility took a unique approach to rolling out its pricing change. About every six months the utility switches a number of households to the new volumetric pricing system. Households receive a letter informing them when they will be switched to volumetric prices. For two billing periods they also receive a hypothetical bill informing them what their bills would be under the new system, though they continue to pay a flat rate for water.

We find that households reduce water use in response to both the actual price change and the earlier message with the hypothetical price change. The reduction in water use persists for more than two years after the switch to volumetric pricing. While still preliminary, these results highlight that when customers are informed about price changes, they respond to them. This suggests that price may be an effective tool to manage water use, if customers are well informed about the change.

Hurricanes Are Getting Worse. California Should Take Note

As Hurricane Florence ground its way through the Carolinas this past weekend, climate watchers couldn’t help but notice that the size and behavior of the storm have been eerily reminiscent of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston last year. What made these two hurricanes so destructive was their slow pace and the fact that they were supercharged with moisture from bathtub-warm oceans. It’s a deadly combination that leads to epic, record-setting amounts of rainfall and unprecedented flooding, amplifying damage from the high winds and storm surge typically associated with hurricanes.

Once Florence leaves the Carolinas and the floods have receded, the nation will rally to clean up what will likely be of one of its top five most destructive hurricanes. Florence will add to this century’s staggering storm damage, caused by 22 hurricanes or tropical storms that led to more than $700 billion in damages in the United States (adjusted for inflation).

Is this part of a trend? Most certainly. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a detailed analysis of billion-dollar US weather disasters since 1980. Clearly, weather impacts are getting much more expensive—and much more frequent.

What does this mean for California? First, like all other states in the nation, California relies upon the federal government to help with disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. The increase in the number of natural disasters and their growing costs affect the ability of federal agencies to respond. And the most important tool in mitigating flood risk—flood insurance—relies on an insolvent National Flood Insurance Program that will surely be hit hard by Florence.

Second, while it is tempting for Californians to write off Florence as a weather problem that affects the Gulf Coast and Atlantic states, this would be a mistake. We have our own hurricane-equivalents here, called atmospheric rivers. These can produce rainfall rates similar to those found in hurricanes, and they are responsible for most of our floods.

California is no stranger to extreme floods that rival hurricanes in terms of damages. The Great Flood of 1861‒62 affected the entire state and turned the Central Valley into a lake. If that same flood were to happen today, studies by the US Geological Survey suggest that more than $700 billion in damages would occur (equal to all the damages from all hurricanes nationwide in the past 18 years) and more than 1.5 million Californians would be displaced. Research by Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, suggests that the risk of this scale of flooding is increasing as global warming intensifies. Indeed, his work has shown that the probability of a flood similar to the 1861‒62 flood occurring in California by mid-century is greater than the probability that it won’t.

Florence is a sobering hurricane that will likely be one of the worst in history. California would do well to heed some of its key lessons. As discussed in our recent report and highlighted by California’s Fourth Climate Assessment, flood risk is increasing due to climate warming. The 2017 crisis at Oroville Dam is an expensive reminder that California needs to upgrade its aging water management infrastructure. This will require finding new and innovative ways to fund flood management improvements.

California should also expand its efforts to steer new development away from high flood-risk areas through better land-use planning that incorporates increasing risk.

No matter how well California prepares, there will always be floods that overwhelm defenses, damage homes and businesses, and threaten lives. The state needs to continue to improve emergency preparations for floods and to encourage those who live in areas at risk of flooding to purchase insurance.

California has been a leader in reducing its contribution of greenhouse gases. But more work is needed to ensure its water supply and flood management systems are able to withstand a more volatile climate. California must act now to weather floods of the future.