Category: Water Supply

Proposed Reservoirs Are No Panacea for Drought

This commentary was published on Sunday, July 5, 2015, in the Sacramento Bee.

The acute water shortages now hitting California have prompted many in Congress and the state Legislature to call for new surface reservoirs to reduce the impacts of future droughts. Some have even blamed the lack of reservoir development as a primary cause of water scarcity during the current drought. The reality is that new surface storage would have added only modestly to the state’s water supply. We’d still be in the midst of a severe drought. Building drought resilience requires a much broader set of actions, including conservation, water trading, managing groundwater and expanding nontraditional supplies like recycled wastewater and stormwater.

(Continue reading on Sacbee.com.)

Drought Bills: Small Changes, High Impact

As Californians continue to cope with the impacts of the ongoing drought, actions to improve the way we manage water are being taken at all levels of government. Last week Governor Brown signed into law Drought Trailer bill (SB 88) and Resources Budget Trailer bill (SB 83). These bills will improve the way we respond to the current drought and better prepare us for future droughts. Here are three ways they will do this:

  • Consolidation of some small water systems with bigger ones to increase drinking water accessibility for at-risk communities. Many small, disadvantaged rural communities in California lack reliable and safe drinking water. These communities often lack economies of scale because the cost of improving and maintaining these systems is high and their customer base is small. Even when these small water systems are eligible for state funding for capital improvements like water treatment systems, they often lack the technical and operational capacity necessary to sustain them over time. In some cases, consolidation—the physical or administrative merging of drinking water systems—can be a cost-effective solution. The bill allows the State Water Resources Control Board to pursue consolidation when other solutions are not appropriate, and it provides protection against liability issues that may make larger agencies unwilling to consolidate. In our report Paying for Water in California we recommended consolidation as one of a suite of actions that could help address chronic safe-drinking water challenges.

  • Better monitoring and reporting requirements for water diverters and some water rights holders. Earlier this year we recommended improving the state’s water information system to effectively manage water resources during droughts. This bill takes California one step closer to this goal. For example, individuals who divert water under the most senior water rights were previously required to report their diversions to the Water Board every three years; now they’ll be required to report annually. Surface-water diverters who use more than 10 acre-feet a year will also be required to install measuring devices. Well-drilling logs will also become public. The new reporting requirements reflect progress in modernizing California’s water accounting capabilities. The next step is to integrate improved water information and resource planning tools to better manage water scarcity.

  • Temporary environmental oversight exemptions for groundwater recharge projects, recycled water system standards, and local decisions to prohibit drilling of new groundwater wells. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) can play an important role in evaluating the environmental impacts of projects or regulations, but the length and cost of the review process can discourage responsive policymaking. This bill streamlines review for projects and policy decisions that are low-risk and well-tested, but could immediately increase drought resiliency. California’s regulatory framework is such that these projects will likely be reviewed in other forums, so this bill doesn’t eliminate all oversight. As we heard from San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo at our April “Water in Silicon Valley” event, this kind of streamlining would have real-world impacts. San Jose is seeking an expedited process from CEQA to begin building a groundwater recharge system that would expand use of San Jose’s existing recycled water system.

As the legislative year continues we can expect more statewide policy changes that address our stressed water system. We’ll provide regular updates on key water legislation in this blog.

Californians and Water Conservation

In our May statewide survey, we found that 60 percent of Californians think people in their part of the state aren’t doing enough to respond to the current drought. The prevalence of this belief varies somewhat across regions. It turns out that Californians’ assessments of their neighbors’ efforts generally align with their area’s water conservation levels.

Earlier this month, the State Water Resources Control Board released conservation statistics for April 2015, showing how much each of the state’s ten hydrologic regions reduced its monthly water use compared to April 2013. This data shows that statewide water use declined by 13.5 percent in April, and that reductions ranged widely across the state. The South Coast region, which includes Los Angeles and neighboring counties, had a reduction of 8.75 percent, while the northeastern North Lahontan region (on the Nevada border) had a reduction of 37.5 percent.

For our survey, we interviewed at least 80 residents in 5 of the state’s hydrologic regions (the Sacramento River, San Francisco Bay, San Joaquin River, Tulare, and South Coast). When we compared survey responses about water conservation efforts with the water use reductions in these regions, we found that perceptions and reductions are aligned in almost all areas.

In the Sacramento River region, which had the biggest cut in water use among the five regions considered, residents were most likely to say that people in their area are doing the right amount to respond to the drought. These residents were also least likely to say people in their area aren’t doing enough. Responses in the region were split about evenly between “the right amount” (41%) and “not enough” (40%).

In contrast, residents of the South Coast—the region with the smallest cut in water use—were most likely to say that people in their area aren’t doing enough to respond to the drought and the least likely to say people are doing the right amount. In this hydrologic region, residents were more than twice as likely to say people aren’t doing enough (63%) than they were to say that people are doing the right amount (25%).

This pattern holds across the state, with one exception. The San Francisco Bay hydrologic region’s conservation rate is second best, yet its residents are the second most likely to be critical of conservation efforts in the area. This contrast between satisfaction with conservation efforts and conservation results might be attributable in part to ideology. Statewide, liberals (67%) were more likely than moderates (60%) or conservatives (52%) to say people in their area aren’t doing enough, and the San Francisco Bay region has a relatively high concentration of residents who identify themselves as liberals (41%). Also, water use in the Bay Area is historically lower than in other parts of the state, so conservation may be a deeply ingrained positive value.

What this comparison of survey responses with water use statistics tells us is that many Californians seem to have a good sense of how well their communities are doing in addressing the drought. Whether this sense comes from observations of neighbors, knowledge of their own behavior, or signals from local government and agencies, it suggests that Californians know what is needed to combat the drought.

Chart note: Survey responses are sorted by county into hydrologic regions. Counties that fall into more than one hydrologic region are assigned to the region where most of the population lives.

The High Cost of Drought for Low-Income Californians

Californians across the state are feeling the impacts of the severe drought, now in its fourth year. Among those hit hardest are the state’s low-income residents and communities.

The worst impacts are occurring in poor rural communities. Rural residents generally rely on groundwater, from either their own wells or wells managed by small community systems. Even before the drought hit, contamination by nitrate and other pollutants was a big problem. With the drought, many wells are now going dry. These problems are now firmly on policymakers’ radar, but the solutions aren’t simple. Affordability is a major challenge, not only because of low incomes, but also because small systems don’t benefit from economies of scale. That makes infrastructure upgrades costly on a per-household basis. Costs of properly running the systems can also be quite high.

The state has recently made several changes to help these rural communities, including dedicating more funds and establishing a new Office of Sustainable Water Solutions within the State Water Resources Control Board to provide technical and financial support. The governor’s office has also proposed legislation that would authorize the board to mandate utility consolidations. As we argued in our 2014 study Paying for Water in California, physical consolidation with larger nearby systems is a good option for many small systems. In places where the distance is too great to hook these communities up, administrative consolidation can still help provide economies of scale in management and technical oversight, ensuring better long-term outcomes.

Less on the radar but also worth monitoring are the effects of the drought on the urban poor. Large metropolitan areas have generally been in much better shape during this drought, and they also are less prone to the kinds of problems witnessed in small rural systems. Urban systems benefit from economies of scale for new investments and have some ability to provide lifeline rates for lower-income households, by using revenues from the rest of their customer base.

But there are warning signs on the horizon. Urban water bills have been rising faster than inflation, making affordability a challenge for poor households in some areas. And since the 1996 enactment of Proposition 218, a voter-approved constitutional amendment, public water utilities are generally not able to increase budgets for lifeline rates without a two-thirds approval by local voters. (Privately owned utilities—like those providing electricity and telecommunications services—are exempt from this provision.) The drought raises new affordability challenges, because the extra conservation now required will lower revenues below costs for many utilities. To cover these costs, some utilities are increasing the fixed service fees on monthly bills, rather than increasing the rates charged per gallon used. Such service fees disproportionately impact lower-income households, who tend to use less water.

Now more than ever, utilities should consider the equity implications of their rate structures. And as we argued in the Paying for Water study, Californians may need to consider reforming Proposition 218. One important reason is to enable the use of lifeline rates, a tool for ensuring that poor households have access to an essential service. Finally, to durably support safe drinking water needs in rural communities, where the local funding base is inadequate, Californians should consider instituting a statewide lifeline rate system funded by a small surcharge on monthly water bills.

View slides from the presentation Water, Drought and Social Justice in Urban and Rural California.

Getting to Groundwater Sustainability

David Orth’s involvement in California water issues spans nearly three decades, and in that time he’s seen at least four droughts, serious declines in Central Valley groundwater tables, major floods in the Central Valley, and a host of other water challenges. But to hear him tell it, nothing was quite so daunting as working on the recent state groundwater law. Orth is general manager for the Kings River Conservation District, a California Water Commissioner, and a key participant in the negotiations leading up to the enactment of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.We spoke at a recent event in Fresno about the challenges facing the new groundwater law.

PPIC: What keeps you up at night regarding the new groundwater law?

Orth: The new law has really elevated the standard significantly, from voluntary management to a much higher bar of sustainability. It will be critical to get people who use the water involved in solutions to groundwater problems, and avoid protracted litigation. The tools we have include a few that I expect will be more easily embraced, but when we start talking fees and pumping limits, I’m afraid the reaction we might get will be for people to retreat to their corners and lawyer up. It’s also hard for stakeholders to fully understand the scope of the problem, since you can’t see it. Helping to educate stakeholders and then working collaboratively with them to get buy-in on solutions will be key.

Another huge challenge is land use. There’s a pretty big conflict between the economic objectives of growth and development of the land-use agencies and our ability to cap our water use. How we find that balance will be critical. The land-use agencies are concerned that new development, urban and agricultural, could be restricted by limited water supply, resulting in significant negative economic impacts. But I think sustainability requirements will create certainty, and in the long run, more solid and consistent economic conditions.

PPIC: What is the most important thing that local agencies should be doing now to prepare for the changes that the groundwater law will bring?

Orth: There are three things, really. First is to organize the various local agencies—both the water and land use agencies—to create the governance structure and leadership systems for regulating groundwater. In the Kings Basin, for example, we have about 40 to 50 local agencies that need knitting together. Second is the outreach component I mentioned. In the Kings Basin, we’re been heavily engaged in outreach and education, and I think it’s the most important thing we need to do. And third, there’s the need to gather data. Again, the Kings Basin has a bit of a head start—10 years ago we started an integrated planning process to eliminate over-drafting of our groundwater, and we’ve developed models and monitoring programs to support that objective. A good data set will inform outreach and also good solutions, so we need to do these things concurrently.

PPIC: Do you think this drought has changed people’s perceptions of the need for better groundwater management?

Orth: There is definitely heightened awareness of the drop in groundwater, and the need to do things differently. There’s greater awareness both politically, in Sacramento and at the local level. Less than five years ago, we couldn’t have done this law—groundwater was a no-touch area. The grower community is still kind of split, but there’s a lot of recognition that things have to change.

PPIC: What gives you hope for the future?

Orth: Six months ago, people were saying this law would be a disaster. Now that’s changing, and there’s broad acknowledgment that it’s needed, and probably not as bad as they thought it would be. Mindsets have changed in a very positive way. The other thing that gives me great hope is bringing the different agencies together to talk about solutions in an integrated way. The kind of integrated planning we’ve been doing for 10 years in the Kings Basin is now being re-created across the state. There’s more collaboration among cities, different types of agencies and counties. This collaboration gives me a lot of hope.

Read “Why Farming Needs the New Groundwater Law”

Learn more about Kings Basin groundwater management planning

Video: Let’s Pull Together to Solve the Groundwater Crisis

Groundwater overuse is an invisible problem that has surged with the drought. Shrinking aquifers can bring great risks for the state’s economy and well-being of groundwater-dependent communities, which is why the state stepped in to regulate its use last year. Last week, PPIC’s Water Policy Center and the California Water Institute at Fresno State co-hosted an event that brought together local experts representing agricultural, urban, and rural community perspectives. The discussion addressed the challenges of managing groundwater sustainably and implementing the new groundwater law in the San Joaquin Valley.

The event’s take-away message was clear: it’s time to stop finger-pointing and focus on cooperation. Business as usual is no longer an option when it comes to this shared resource. Local agencies and groundwater users need to come together to determine how to best manage their local resource for long-term sustainability, or risk having the state step in and do it for them. David Orth, a state water commissioner and manager of the Kings River Conservation District, said, “We have the opportunity to come up with good sustainability plans, and if we do it right, the state stays out of it. The burden is on us to succeed.”

Ellen Hanak, director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, noted that the Central Valley “is in many ways ground zero for drought impacts” on groundwater. The fact that more Californians than ever before now say the drought is the biggest issue facing the state provides opportunities for change. (View her presentation slides.)

Moderator Mark Grossi, veteran environment reporter for the Fresno Bee, has seen a shift in thinking about water in the Central Valley as well. “Forgive me for smiling, but I’ve been covering water since Governor Brown’s first term. I grew up in Bakersfield, and covered water in Kern County … Every time the subject of groundwater came up in the valley, people laughed me out of the room. Now we have the kind of drought that people have been talking about for a long, long time”— the kind of drought that has helped launch the workings of a law to manage groundwater more sustainably.

Some cities have begun tackling these issues head on. Luke Serpa, the director of public utilities for the city of Clovis, described a series of investments intended to soften the impacts of the drought, including water recycling, re-use of stormwater to recharge underground basins and other approaches to increase local supply.

Sue Ruiz, who works with local well-dependent communities, brought home the difficult realities of shrinking groundwater tables for people in the region, and the challenges of solving these problems in ways that don’t excessively burden low-income households. She described people whose wells have run dry facing 6-12 month waits for well-drillers to sink deeper wells, a sometimes slow response from the state, and too few dollars to fund long-term solutions. Poverty compounds the problem, as homeowners can’t get a loan to drill a new well if their current one is dry; without a loan, many can’t afford to pay the tens of thousands of dollars it can cost to drill.

“We’re drowning in drought,” she said.

One serious subject got a big laugh. Luke Serpa noted that his city’s mandated 36% water cut is a big hurdle, especially because it needs to happen over a short timeframe. His city’s new unofficial slogan? “If your lawn’s not dyin’, you’re not tryin’.”

View videos from past regional events:

From Droughts to Floods: Water in Silicon Valley
Water and California’s Future (Los Angeles)

Video: Mark Baldassare & John Myers Discuss the PPIC Survey

For the first time since the start of the PPIC Statewide Survey, Californians ranked the drought as the most important issue facing the state. And that was not the only “first” for this survey. PPIC presented it in Sacramento Thursday in a new format. Mark Baldassare—PPIC’s president, CEO, and survey director—was interviewed onstage about the findings by John Myers, senior editor of KQED’s California politics and government desk.

In addition to the drought, Baldassare and Myers covered a long list of topics that were raised in the survey, including taxes, vaccinations, marijuana, University of California tuition, distrust in government, and voter turnout. Myers also raised a theme he explored in his report on the survey for KQED: Despite an improving economy and Californians’ support for the governor’s ideas about the budget, their outlook on the direction of the state remains gloomy.

Why Farming Needs the New Groundwater Law

A groundwater deficit is growing in key agricultural areas of California. The double-whammy of the extended drought and longer-term reductions in surface water deliveries for environmental needs has pushed many farmers into using ever-more groundwater, at rates that can’t be sustained. In average years, about a third of water used by California’s farms is groundwater—and much more during droughts like this one. In some basins (especially those in major farming regions in the southern San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast), groundwater withdrawals have long exceeded the pace of replenishment, thus shrinking our most reliable supply for times of drought.

The groundwater law enacted last fall gives local agencies the tools and authority they need to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management plans. Once agencies put these plans in place, they will have 20 years to achieve sustainability—until 2040 for the most stressed groundwater basins. The state can step in if these agencies fail to act.

Despite the seemingly generous timeline for compliance, the law’s goals will be challenging to meet. By June 2017, groundwater users in each basin need to designate a local groundwater sustainability agency that will be responsible for local oversight. And by January 2020, these agencies need to start implementing their sustainability plans. In most places, getting this preparatory work done will require significant additional technical analysis to understand how the basins’ supply and demand work. It will also require coming to agreement on how to collectively manage what has largely been considered an individual resource, with each user able to pump as much as he or she can put to beneficial use.

The drought has made it clear that the status quo is unsustainable. Declines in groundwater levels are resulting in higher energy costs to pump water from deeper depths, sinking lands, and wells going dry in some places.

The groundwater law was not widely embraced by the farm community; indeed, not a single legislator from the San Joaquin Valley voted in favor of it. Yet California farming needs to strengthen groundwater management to support the growing investments in highly valuable fruit and nut orchards and vineyards, which must be watered each year. It’s essential to manage groundwater so that it’s available during droughts, and the new law provides a pathway to do this.

Bringing basins into balance will require creative approaches to basin replenishment. Many irrigation districts are already taking critical steps in this direction. For example, agencies on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley manage surface and groundwater resources jointly to encourage groundwater basin replenishment in wet years. Some districts in the San Joaquin Valley and in the Central Coast have begun recharging basins with recycled wastewater from neighboring urban areas. Another promising approach is allowing floodwaters to spread on fields normally watered by drip irrigation.

A number of technical challenges will need to be addressed. For example, not every aquifer can be recharged, and in many areas, recharge is slow. Much of California’s water conveyance infrastructure was designed for use with surface reservoirs as the main water source, not groundwater. And over time, widespread conversions from flood to drip irrigation methods have allowed farmers to stretch limited surface water supplies, but this is also reducing opportunities for groundwater recharge. New institutional and financial arrangements will be needed to optimize groundwater storage.

Like nearly everything to do with the state’s water management, the solutions to groundwater recharge will require a deft blend of management, infrastructure and policy changes. The new law appropriately puts locals in the driver’s seat for managing a local resource. But the state must play a central role in supporting this transition, with financial and technical support. Allocating funds from Proposition 1, the water bond approved by California voters last November, will be a good start.

Learn more:
Read our policy brief about the challenges of water storage
Read our policy brief on water for farms

A Dry Run for a Dry Future

During times of extreme water scarcity it is hard to find the silver lining. Yet the severity of this drought, including its record warm temperatures, is benefiting us in one way: it is a window into what droughts may look like in the future and gives us something to plan for—a target, if you will.

The state’s system of water rights laws and water supply infrastructure is built around managing periodic droughts. The design of this system reflects the climate conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as a much smaller population than we have today. Climate models and current observations indicate that we are facing an increasingly different future, one where warm droughts like our current one are no longer the rare exception.

It is crucial that we study our dry years closely. Like past cases, this drought has seen strong rainfall deficits. For four consecutive years (so far), the state has been dry to critically dry, with the driest calendar year on record in 2013. But recent studies have shown that while it has been unusually dry, the precipitation numbers of this drought fall within the realm of natural variability.

What is most unusual about this drought is its exceptional warmth. Statewide, three of the past four winters have been substantially warmer than the long-term average. The past two winters set records that were 4-5 degrees F above average. With this exceptional warmth, California experienced record low snowpack, since much precipitation fell as rain rather than snow and the lean snowpack melted rapidly.

The causes of this drought are being studied and debated by climatologists and oceanographers. Emerging research suggests that this drought may be linked, partially, to very warm waters in the far western tropical Pacific. Heat and moisture pumped into the atmosphere from these waters influence winds and storm tracks in the North Pacific, altering climate patterns in our region.

These teleconnections appear to have created the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, an anomalous high pressure feature that camped over the waters off the West Coast and pushed North Pacific storms far to the north. This ridge, with its associated weak winds and unusual weather across the eastern Pacific, created The Blob: an area of very warm water stretching from the Bering Sea to Baja California. This blob has disrupted our marine ecosystems, harming fish, sea birds and marine mammals.

Onshore from all of this activity, winter storms that made it off the Pacific Ocean and into California were much fewer than normal. And those that did make it tended to be warm, reflecting conditions in the eastern Pacific, leaving us with rain instead of snow.

To date, there has been no definitive link that implicates this drought as a symptom of climate change. However, the consecutive years of dryness coupled with high temperatures strongly resemble the kind of droughts that are projected under the warmer climate during the latter half of this century. While the origins of future droughts may not be precisely the same, the on-the-ground results are likely to be.

Difficult as it is to endure, this drought provides important lessons. It is a useful and instructive test of how we manage water now—and how we will be forced to manage water in the future. As it unfolds, it tests the resiliency of California’s water infrastructure—made up of dams, aqueducts, and groundwater basins—along with our management systems and institutions. The drought is providing a preview of the warmer conditions during dry spells that will inevitably occur in future decades. As such, it is unveiling future challenges in managing the environment, including conserving our declining native biodiversity.

In short, this drought has revealed what a warmer climate future looks like. We should learn from it and plan accordingly.

“Water 101” Podcast Covers Challenges, Solutions

What do Californians need to know about our water system to be able to grasp the big management challenges we face—both in times of drought and for the longer term? Jeffrey Mount reveals all in a conversation with Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock. The wide-ranging conversation, now a free podcast, is a 45-minute entertaining crash course in the workings of watersheds, state water policy, and why we need an “all of the above” strategy to solving our water crisis.

The interview walks us through a number of key topics, but goes in-depth on one: groundwater.

“This will be the year of groundwater,” Mount said. “We’ve been treating groundwater like a non-renewable resource, like oil . . . Now as a state we’re trying to grapple with the fact that we’ve overtaxed that resource.”

By podcast’s end, you’ll be able to talk intelligently about the pores between soils (and why we need them), the costs of desalination plants, the potential for information technology solutions to help us manage our water better, and the long-distance origins of our current drought.

When asked what lasting change he would like to see as a response to the current drought, Mount said: “Droughts are pivot points: they lead to changes in technology, and they lead to changes in practice. We saw that in Australia; after the drought was over, people’s behavior changed. That is going to happen in this drought. People are using less water on a per-capita basis, and that will be the lasting part of the drought.”

We hope you’ll listen in.