Drought Watch – Page 3 – Public Policy Institute of California

Drought Watch: Groundwater, Our Hidden Asset

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

The drought has brought the term storage to the forefront of political debate over how to manage water in California. Water scarcity during this drought is perceived by many, including prominent elected officials, as a failure of government to build sufficient storage.

For most, storage refers to water kept in reservoirs behind dams. People tend to forget that we also store water underground, in the state’s many aquifers. And during a drought, this groundwater storage is usually much more important.

Managed well, groundwater is the state’s best hedge against drought. The volume of potential groundwater storage in California is several times greater than surface storage. On average, about 35 percent of annual water use for cities and farms comes from groundwater, and 60 percent or more in some important agricultural regions such as the Tulare Basin and the Central Coast. During a severe drought such as this one, when groundwater pumping increases, this share can go up significantly. But groundwater is not easing the effects of this drought as much as it could because we don’t manage it as drought storage.

A fundamental principle of sustainable groundwater management is that you allow water to accumulate in aquifers during wetter years so that you can pump it out during the dry years when surface water sources are insufficient. In most of California’s main agricultural areas—especially the southern Central Valley and parts of the Central Coast—the total water demands are so great that we have stopped allowing groundwater levels to recover during the wetter years. Instead, we are “mining” groundwater, treating it like oil and gas, extracting it as if it was a non-renewable resource never to be replaced.

This mining—or overdraft—reduces the available supply of groundwater during dry years. It raises the costs of remaining supplies, as wells need to be drilled deeper and electricity bills rise because water has to be pumped from deeper depths. Unsustainable pumping also creates a host of other problems, including dewatering of rivers and wetlands that support fish and wildlife as well as land sinking—or subsidence—that damages roads, bridges, canals, and flood control infrastructure.

Some of California’s large urban areas—including much of Southern California and Silicon Valley—provide valuable lessons on how to move toward more sustainable management of groundwater basins. In these areas, acute groundwater overdraft spurred groundwater users—often with the aid of the courts or the state legislature—to develop management schemes that work. These groundwater basins are overseen by court-appointed water masters or special management agencies that can collect fees, monitor use, and allocate pumping rights. Most important, they can compel users to store water during wet times, so it is available when drought strikes.

A silver lining of the current drought is that it has brought focus to how we manage groundwater, the other water storage in California. Innovative proposals for comprehensive reform are coming from the Brown administration and from grassroots efforts orchestrated by the Association of California Water Agencies and the California Water Foundation. These proposals have the common goal of creating sustainable groundwater management by

providing local agencies the tools necessary to manage groundwater sustainably, and
giving the state the power to ensure that these standards are achieved if local agencies fail to act.

Now is the time to move forward on this issue, while the consequences of groundwater overdraft are at the center of debate and impacting so many.

Drought Watch: Improving Environmental Management

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

In the previous Drought Watch we examined the need to modernize the way we track water supply and use to better manage droughts. California also needs to modernize how we manage water for the environment during droughts.

By reducing the quality and quantity of habitat, drought poses a broad ecological challenge to California’s fish and wildlife. The stress is particularly acute in watersheds where native species compete with the demands of cities, farms, and forestry for critical land and water supplies. In many watersheds, remaining habitat has become more suitable for invasive, non-native species, which also compete with native species in various ways. The net result can be significant reductions in populations of native species during severe droughts. Recovery can take years.

In a recent blog post, we joined colleagues from UC Davis, UC Hastings, and Stanford to call for reform in the way the state manages the environment during drought. A common approach is to relax flow and water quality standards prescribed for species protection to make more water available for human needs. This year, the State Water Resources Control Board has already done this on numerous occasions, with the concurrence of state and federal fish and wildlife agencies.

This is not necessarily bad drought policy. Regulators have to make difficult choices when there simply is not enough water to go around. However, the process could be improved. Flow and water quality standards for critically dry years are set well in advance of a drought and involve extensive scientific review. In contrast, relaxing standards receives little review, and the process typically does not incorporate plans to mitigate for the consequences, either during or after the drought.

This same ad hoc approach applies to well-meaning efforts to conserve species during a drought. In late April, the governor released an executive order that instructs the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to help endangered fish species, through actions such as monitoring winter run Chinook salmon, improving habitat on state lands, and seeking cooperation from landowners. These are common-sense measures, but if they had been planned for before the drought, they could have been implemented more quickly.

Money for environmental management during a drought is also an afterthought. In his latest state budget, to be considered by the legislature this summer, the governor has proposed approximately $40 million be made available to support actions contained in his executive order. This is a significant increase over the $2.3 million total allocated in emergency state funding in February. Still, this money will not arrive soon enough to make a major difference for this year. Again, planning ahead to raise such funds would be preferable. (See one alternative approach here.)

Good environmental drought policy must anticipate actions that may be necessary to balance human uses of water with the long-term needs of fish and wildlife. The criteria and scientific basis for the relaxation of flow and water quality standards should be developed, reviewed and adopted before a drought emergency. This includes identifying funding mechanisms for emergency responses and mitigation actions that reduce harm during the drought and lead to recovery of species afterward. If California is lucky enough to get through this drought without significant new harm to our native fish and wildlife, let’s make sure we prepare better before the next drought strikes.

Drought Watch: Keeping Better Track of Water

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

In most years, the arrival of May signals the end of the rainy season. As California transitions from hoping for rain to managing its absence, it is appropriate to assess how we have handled this drought so far. In a recent blog post, we, along with our colleagues at UC Davis, UC Hastings, and Stanford University, identified several key lessons from the current drought. One of these is the need to modernize the way we track water supply and use.

To illustrate, just this past week the State Water Resources Control Board released a series of graphs that summarize the gaps between projected supply and demand for this year. These graphs form the basis for determining who may be told to curtail the amount of water they take out of rivers when supplies are scarce. The take-away from these projections is that significant shortfalls will occur starting this month—when the irrigation season starts in earnest. Under California’s water rights system, irrigators holding junior water rights—i.e., rights established more recently—could be completely cut off in most areas. It also appears that unprecedented cuts will occur for senior water rights holders as well.

Although these demand and supply curves appear precise, the state board is handicapped by a lack of good information on water supply and use. To manage the drought more effectively, the board needs better information in two key areas.

First, there have been major advances in technology that can be used to measure flow. These include sophisticated remote sensing techniques, computer modeling, and sensor networks. Although there has been progress, the state has been slow to adopt these new technologies. For many rivers the board, and its partner the California Department of Water Resources, are, at best, making educated guesses. In addition, the state uses protocols for managing this information that were adopted in the early 20th century. In a drought there is need for real-time information and forecast-based projections to manage diminishing supplies.

Second, who uses how much water, and when, is acutely important when river flows are low, because a handful of users can have great impact. Although reporting on water use has improved since legislation passed in 2009, the board has not been in a position to verify the accuracy of self-reporting by thousands of water rights holders, including the oldest, most senior water right holders. Statewide, there is no comprehensive understanding of how and when water rights holders make use of alternative supplies, including the state’s overdrafted groundwater basins.

Since the economic, social and environmental consequences of water management during a drought are especially high, people understandably want to see the board administering diversion curtailments with precision and in real time. But during the wet periods, the legislature and state agencies tend to ignore this issue because there is more water to go around and little public pressure to correct information gaps. Then, when the wet inevitably turns to dry, there are insufficient time and resources to address the problem.

Droughts provide the political and economic motivation to get our water management system into better shape. Step one would be to invest in modernizing the way we measure, forecast, and administer water use—hopefully before the next drought.

Drought Watch: Essential Elements for a Water Bond

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

In both houses of the California Legislature, multiple versions of a new water bond are being amended and debated to make the June deadline for replacing the $11.1 billion bond now slated for the November election. Originally intended for the November 2010 ballot, the bond has been twice delayed due to concerns it would not pass. The March 2014 PPIC Statewide Survey showed a bump in public approval since last year, with 50 percent of likely voters now saying they would approve it, up from 42 percent in March 2013. Survey responses to other questions about water suggest that this rise in support likely reflects concerns over the drought. For example, a record share of residents (15%) named water as the most important issue facing the state (up from 2% a year earlier).

As the legislature considers the final size and shape of this new bond, it is worth reviewing how bond funds have been used in the past and the areas that most need bond support in the future.

The 2000s were a big decade for water bonds, with approved funds totaling almost three times as much as the three previous decades combined. Even so, bond funds currently only contribute about $1 billion a year to the water sector, a small portion of the $30 billion that is spent annually on the state’s water system.

Moving forward, new bond funds are likely to be more limited (as shown by the current bond’s bumpy road to approval), so it makes sense to focus them on areas that lack sustainable and reliable funding sources. As we show in our report Paying for Water in California, these areas include small water systems in rural, low-income communities, flood protection, stormwater pollution management, aquatic ecosystem recovery, and integrated water management. The bond funds approved in the 2000s have been spent overwhelmingly in these areas, yet the need is still great.

For activities that more readily raise funds from local ratepayers—such as water supply and wastewater management—future bond support should be limited to projects that generate broad public benefits. This might include water supply projects that promote better integration of our water system (e.g., by capturing stormwater, which can improve both water supply and prevent pollution) or ecosystem recovery (e.g., by improving the quality or quantity of water to support fish and wildlife).

Even if a new water bond passes this fall, California will need to find other ways to pay for small system drinking water quality, critical improvements to flood protection, stormwater management, aquatic ecosystems, and integrated water management. As part of its deliberations, the legislature will need to think beyond bonds, and consider new statewide fees or special taxes—such as a small surcharge on water use or a small increment on the sales tax—to help fill these gaps with a reliable revenue stream.

Chart Source: Paying for Water in California.

Drought Watch: Funding Sustainable Groundwater Management

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

Although droughts have many downsides, they can also spur lasting improvements in water management. Unsustainable groundwater use has long plagued California’s rural areas, and the current drought is providing much needed impetus to pursue reform.

California is one of the only western states that does not regulate groundwater use under state law. Except for a few dozen basins where local agencies have special oversight authority (mainly in urban Southern California and the Bay Area), local groundwater management remains largely voluntary and somewhat precarious. Despite some recent advances in basin monitoring and replenishment programs, these agencies have been unable to prevent damaging declines of groundwater supply and quality. As recent headlines on water scarcity point out, overtaxed basins are unable to effectively serve one of groundwater’s most important roles: as a buffer against drought.

In late March, the Governor’s Office held a workshop to seek input from local managers and other experts on a proposal that would empower local agencies to better manage groundwater—and commit the state to step in as an emergency backstop if locals fail to come through. Today’s post on the California Water blog, coauthored by an interdisciplinary team from PPIC, UC Davis, UC Hastings, Stanford, and elsewhere, walks through important funding considerations for this reform.

To be effective, local entities must have sufficient authority and flexibility to raise the money they need to track water levels and make key investments—both in infrastructure and in new water supplies for replenishing their basins. In addition, these agencies should have the ability to enact special surcharges to prevent excessive pumping. Right now, that power is only granted to a handful of agencies.

Extending and strengthening the funding and oversight authorities available to local agencies across the state will better prepare us for the next time we need to look to the ground, instead of the sky, for our water needs.

Drought Watch: Roadblocks to Efficient Funding

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

The drought has prompted California to redirect hundreds of millions of dollars of remaining state bond funds and other revenues to make the state more resilient in the future. These funds are certainly welcome, but it’s important to see this spending in perspective. As we show in a new PPIC report—written with a team of co-authors from other institutions—the contributions of state money are small change when it comes to spending on water. Most of the $30 billion spent annually to support California’s water system is raised by local and regional water agencies.

The good news is that California’s urban water and wastewater utilities are in relatively good fiscal health. Thanks to their significant investments to improve water supply reliability in the two decades since the last major drought, California’s major urban areas—and the state’s economy—will largely be able to weather this one. Crucially, these utilities have been able to make the needed investments by raising local water rates.

However, looming legal challenges may limit the ability of local agencies to make continued investments in modern, integrated water management—investments that would better prepare us for population growth, climate change, and future droughts. Proposition 218, a constitutional amendment adopted by the state’s voters in 1996, requires water bills to reflect the costs of service to each individual parcel. As some recent court cases have shown, a narrow interpretation of this requirement can present roadblocks to several important management tools:

Conservation pricing. Tiered pricing—which charges higher per gallon prices for larger amounts of water use—can promote conservation. And, because new water sources often cost more than existing supplies, higher-priced tiers are justified. But it is difficult to establish a precise link between the price paid and the amount of water saved at each property. As a result, these rate structures may be legally vulnerable even though they improve utilities’ ability to maintain reliable water service.
Use of new water sources. Non-traditional sources of water, such as recycled wastewater and stormwater, improve overall system reliability for existing customers, even if not all customers use those specific sources. But a recent trial court interpreted Proposition 218 to mean agencies could not charge customers for any part of water service (in this case, recycled water) that was not physically available to them.
Sustainable groundwater management. One promising way to stabilize California’s overtaxed groundwater basins is by charging a per gallon fee to limit pumping and to cover the costs of recharging basins with other supplies. But because groundwater overdraft doesn’t affect each parcel in exactly the same way, groundwater agencies have also faced court challenges regarding the legality of these fees.

To enable our water system to respond effectively to future droughts, the courts need to keep the entire water system in mind when responding to rate challenges. And over the longer term, California needs to better align its funding laws to the goals of modern water management. In a state where drought is a fact of life, this alignment will allow us to manage this crucial resource far into the future. Asking our water managers to account for the cost and location of each drop of water when developing their water rate structures will undermine recent momentum toward a more sophisticated and interconnected water system.

Drought Watch: Harnessing the Storms

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

Southern California got a thorough soaking in late February and early March, with intense storms that caused localized urban and coastal flooding. Northern California also received some much needed rain and snow. As officials pointed out during and after this wet interlude, it helped, but it was not a drought buster.

So where did all that rain go and did we miss an opportunity to improve our water supplies?

In urban Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, most of this water was lost to the ocean. This loss comes from both the nature of the storms and our long-standing approaches to stormwater management.

First, like many of California’s winter storms, these storms were very intense. When heavy rains fall on urban landscapes, all those hard surfaces—roads, roofs, gutters—gather and shed water quickly rather than allowing it to soak in to recharge groundwater.

Second, the way we manage most of this runoff in coastal areas ensures that it goes to the ocean. During the post-WWII expansion of urban California, planners and engineers viewed storm runoff as a nuisance to be disposed of as quickly as possible. The iconic California urban stream—straightened, channelized, and lined with concrete—is designed to move water rapidly out of neighborhoods and route it to the ocean. This design has made places like the Los Angeles River better suited to filming car chases than to harnessing local water supplies. Moreover, this fast-moving stormwater is a major source of pollution of California’s bays, beaches, and watersheds. Regulations to limit this pollution have become increasingly strict, making this one of the costliest water management headaches for many California communities.

Fortunately, this antiquated style of stormwater management is now changing. Many of the state’s urbanized areas have begun to capture and store stormwater in groundwater basins for later reuse. Sustainable stormwater management can be accomplished in many ways: installing pavements that soak up rain instead of repelling it, designing landscapes and streetscapes to capture runoff, replacing hard urban landscapes with parks, and routing stormwater into settling basins. These projects achieve multiple benefits: in addition to increasing local water supplies and greening our neighborhoods, they help reduce water pollution.

All of these efforts are still a work in progress. Drought legislation signed by the governor will allocate some additional state funds to stormwater projects. This money is a welcome boost, because funding stormwater projects with local dollars is difficult to accomplish. As a forthcoming PPIC report on water system finance shows, stormwater is a “fiscal orphan” —an area where our current funding rules (including two-thirds majority voting requirements to pass local special taxes) limit the ability of local managers to raise the resources they need to make smart community investments. Reshaping our urban environments to make stormwater an asset, rather than a liability, will take time and money but it will pay off in future droughts.

Drought Watch: Saving the Fish

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

In a recent California WaterBlog post, Peter Moyle of the University of California, Davis—a frequent collaborator on PPIC projects—highlights an issue not much discussed in the context of this drought: we ignore fish and wildlife at our peril. California is home to 122 different species of native fishes, including 32 kinds of salmon and trout. These fishes are part of the unique natural heritage of California and, as Moyle points out, most are on a trajectory toward extinction. A poorly managed drought can hasten this process.

State and federal laws that protect endangered species reflect the high value society places on native biodiversity. The sweeping Delta Reform Act of 2009, passed by bipartisan majorities, went a step further, placing ecosystem health on par with water supply reliability. Above all, history shows that failure to manage fish and wildlife well during a drought can have very expensive long-term consequences for water management once the rains return.

So what, if anything, is being done for fish in this drought?

The short answer is “not much.” Most discussion at both the state and federal levels has focused not on whether to relax environmental standards, but on how much to relax them. In the coming weeks many petitions will be filed with the State Water Resources Control Board for exemptions from water quality and flow standards. The board has already exempted the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project from meeting flow standards for the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, which is home to many endangered fishes, including salmon and steelhead. The emergency drought legislation making its way through the state legislature includes significant sums to provide relief to communities hard hit by the drought, but very little to help reduce stress on the environment. On the federal level, the legislation pending in the House would reduce protections for the environment, while the Senate bill—introduced by California’s two U.S. senators—offers little to improve conditions for fish.

Moyle points out that although native fishes adapt well to drought, they are hampered by the many modifications we have made to our rivers, the way we manage water, and our policies regarding fish harvests and hatcheries. He offers some well-known prescriptions for drought management and some novel ideas, including trucking fish to cool water sources and establishing fish triage panels with the authority to allocate water to keep fish alive through a drought. Equally important, his post reminds us that the actions that help the environment most during a drought are those taken long before the drought begins.

Drought Watch: A Conversation with Business Leaders

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

I recently had the opportunity to talk about the economic impact of California’s ongoing drought with two of California’s leading business representatives: Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce, and Dave Puglia, senior vice-president of Western Growers—a group that represents the state’s producers of fresh fruits and vegetables, who supply much of the nation and many overseas markets with high-quality, high-value produce. The conversation was wide-ranging, touching on the extent of the drought, its likely economic impact, and the steps that can be taken to help California avoid economic harm from future droughts.

The conversation highlighted several key points:

Two types of water uses are being especially hard-hit by this drought: farming—especially in the San Joaquin Valley—and environmental flows that protect fish and other wildlife. Most urban areas are in much better shape, thanks to major investments made over the past two decades to conserve, diversify water sources, and improve local storage systems.
The economic impacts of this drought are likely to be concentrated in farming and related sectors, such as industrial processing of farm products and fertilizer and seed sales. The drought will cause severe hardship in some regions, but it will not likely have major repercussions on the state’s economy as a whole, because farming and related activities make up just a small share—1 to 2 percent—of total state gross domestic product.
We need to make systematic investments to reduce our vulnerability to future droughts. Urban areas such as Southern California spent significant sums—mostly funded by local ratepayers—to diversify their water supplies. Farming areas have invested considerably in more efficient irrigation techniques, but they have also been drawing down their groundwater reserves. As a result, groundwater—normally an especially valuable resource during dry years—is in short supply in many areas, less able to help farmers weather the drought.

Drought Watch: How Much Do Recent Rains Matter?

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

Drought-parched Northern California had a welcome bit of rain during the first week of February. An “atmospheric river”—a meteorological phenomenon that funnels tropical moisture from the west Pacific into California—produced prodigious amounts of rainfall. In the central Sierra Nevada more than 10 inches of rain fell in just three days. More than 20 inches of rain were measured in the Russian River watershed—an amount greater than the annual average rainfall for the City of Sacramento. Some rivers in the North Coast and Sierra Nevada that were at record low levels on February 1 rose to record highs on February 9.

Drought’s over, right?

Not even close.

Still, it is important to acknowledge how helpful this rainfall was. Small towns like Willits, which were facing emergency drought measures to maintain drinking water, got a much-needed boost to their dwindling water supplies. Folsom Reservoir, down to just 160,000 acre-feet of water before the storm (17% of reservoir capacity), added an additional 100,000 acre-feet, which will help cities in the Sacramento area. Several salmon species starting to make their way to the sea got a welcome boost down the rivers. The Delta, which was becoming as salty as it had ever been in any period in recent memory, received a pulse of fresher water. And there was the psychological boost that comes from no longer being the driest year on record.

But this recent rainfall hardly dented the drought. This year is currently the third driest on record, after the two great dry years in California history: 1923-24 and 1976-77. What’s more, this third-driest year follows two fairly dry years. And California is in a statewide drought. The bulk of the rain fell north of San Francisco, offering no relief to the very driest portions of the state and leaving most of the state’s reservoirs unchanged.

In addition, it was a very warm storm, providing little in the way of improved snowpack—normally an important way to store water until spring. And because the rainfall was so intense over such a short period of time, most of it flowed off the hillsides and into streams rather than recharging groundwater.

While impressive in the intensity and amount of precipitation, this storm did little to alter the state’s drought picture. Things may still change, but given that our rainy season has only about six weeks left in it, the odds are against much improvement.

Researchers have noted that when we think about climate, we are influenced by the weather. As John Steinbeck pointed out in East of Eden, if it is wet, Californians tend to think it has always been so and when it is dry, we forget about the wet. Our climate in 2012–2014 has been dry, but our weather, at least in early February in Northern California, has been very wet.