California Has One Year of Water Left

[mark handler]

California Has One Year of Water Left

http://www.newsweek.com/nasa-california-has-one-year-water-left-313647

lagued by prolonged drought, California now has only enough water to get it through the next year, according to NASA.

In an op-ed published Thursday by the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, painted a dire picture of the state's water crisis. California, he writes, has lost around 12 million acre-feet of stored water every year since 2011. In the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, the combined water sources of snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil water and groundwater amounted to a volume that was 34 million acre-feet below normal levels in 2014. And there is no relief in sight.

"As our 'wet' season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows" Famiglietti writes. "We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too."

n Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that one-third of the monitoring stations in California’s Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains have recorded the lowest snowpack ever measured.

"Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing,” Famiglietti writes.

He criticized Californian officials for their lack of long-term planning for how to cope with this drought, and future droughts, beyond "staying in emergency mode and praying for rain."

Last month, new research by scientists at NASA, Cornell University and Columbia University pointed to a "remarkably drier future" for California and other Western states amid a rapidly-changing climate. "Megadroughts," the study's authors wrote, are likely to begin between 2050 and 2099, and could each last between 10 years and several decades.

With that future in mind, Famiglietti says, "immediate mandatory water rationing" should be implemented in the state, accompanied by the swift formation of regulatory agencies to rigorously monitor groundwater and ensure that it is being used in a sustainable way—as opposed to the "excessive and unsustainable" groundwater extraction for agriculture that, he says, is partly responsible for massive groundwater losses that are causing land in the highly irrigated Central Valley to sink by one foot or more every year.

Various local ordinances have curtailed excessive water use for activities like filling fountains and irrigating lawns. But planning for California's "harrowing future" of more and longer droughts "will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon," Famiglietti writes. "Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin."

 

[mark handler]

New watering restrictions imposed amid California drought

LA Times By BETTINA BOXALL

MARCH 17, 2015, 3:39 PM

With California heading into another parched year, state officials Tuesday beefed up

emergency drought regulations, directing urban agencies to limit the number of

days residents can water their yards.

The move is expected to have little or no effect in most major Southern California cities, which

already have watering restrictions. The statewide effects are difficult to gauge, as regulators don’t

know how many local agencies lack limits.

In Los Angeles, the state rule “doesn’t change anything,” said Michelle Figueroa, spokeswoman for

the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The city has restricted outdoor watering to three

days a week since 2009.

Under emergency drought regulations adopted last summer, the State Water Resources Control

Board ordered urban districts to restrict outdoor watering. But the local rules vary, with some

cities only banning landscape irrigation during the heat of the day.

“Some are really, really loose,” said water board chair Felicia Marcus, who described Tuesday’s

action as “quite modest.”

Local agencies that don’t currently limit watering days will have to restrict landscape irrigation to

no more than two days a week if they don’t adopt their own curbs before the new rules go into

effect in 45 days. Cities with limits can maintain them, even if they permit watering on more than

two days a week.

Additionally, the board prohibited landscape irrigation during and in the 48 hours after a

measurable rainfall, directed restaurants to serve patrons water only upon request and told hotels

to offer customers the option of not having their linens and towels washed daily.

The board also added to a requirement that urban water districts report their monthy water use,

asking them to additionally report on their enforcement actions.

The state’s water situation is in some respects slightly better than it was a year ago. Precipitation in

key watersheds in Northern California is 81% of normal for the date. Shasta Lake, California’s

largest reservoir, is 58% full, compared with 45% a year ago. Lake Oroville is half full, compared

with 45% at this time last year.

Customers of the State Water Project, which delivers supplies from Northern California to

Southland cities, will get 20% of their contract requests this year, compared with only 5% in 2014.

But some smaller reservoirs in the Southern Sierra Nevada have fewer reserves than they did last

spring. And most troubling to water managers is the statewide snowpack. At 13% of average, it has

all but disappeared. “That snowpack is just terrifying,” Marcus said in an interview Monday.

The mountain snowpack acts as a natural reservoir that in a normal year can hold hold much as a

third of the state’s water supply, slowly releasing it throughout the spring as seasonal water

demand rises. This year that release will be a trickle.

“Even though the [reservoir] levels are technically higher,” Marcus said, the state’s water situation

“is worse” as it faces a fourth year of punishing drought.

For the second year in a row, Central Valley farmers without senior water rights are likely to get

no supplies from the valley’s big federal irrigation project.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which imports supplies from Northern

California and the Colorado River, is expected next month to consider allocating regional water

deliveries, as it did during the 2007-09 drought. That will have a ripple effect throughout the

Southland as local agencies react, probably by increasing water rates and adopting stronger

conservation measures.

In coming months, Marcus said, the board will discuss additional actions it may take if local

agencies don’t ramp up conservation efforts. Those steps could include making the emergency

restrictions permanent, requiring water districts to perform leak audits and setting targets for per

capita water use that would vary according to climate zones.

The latter, Marcus acknowledged, would be difficult to enforce. That’s “why we fervently hope the

agencies step up,” she said.

 

[conarb]

To begin with we have adequate water, we just can't get it south because of the eco-nuts trying to save the smelt, a 4" long bait fish. As Rham Emmanual put it: "Never let a crises go to waste", the civil servants are using this as an excuse to raise rates and pad their own salaries.

Three of the largest Bay Area water agencies -- the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which runs the Hetch Hetchy system -- all are considering water rate hikes of up to 30 percent this year.The agencies -- which serve 5.8 million people, or about 80 percent of the Bay Area's population -- say they need to increase rates because they are selling a lot less water as customers conserve because of the drought.¹

Then we read that they need the money to pay the enormous salaries of their employees.

Jerry Brown's salary and benefits topped $416,000 last year, putting him in the stratosphere of California's top-paid government officials.

No, not Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, the Golden State's governor.

Try Jerry D. Brown, general manager of the Contra Costa Water District.

A new Bay Area News Group analysis of the region's four major water districts reveals that all of their general managers receive more than twice as much compensation as the man who runs the most populous state in the country. And that doesn't sit well with drought-weary residents who are being told to conserve water -- and now, in many locations, being asked to pay more for the precious resource.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District, for example, just rewarded CEO Beau Goldie with a $19,605 bonus and a $10,000 raise, beefing up a salary-and-benefits package that cost the public $388,000 last year. The ***** came even though the district is strapped for cash: It is poised to consider a 19 percent rate hike to make up for increases in water costs because of the drought.²

90% of California's water is used by agriculture, I drove up to Sacramento recently, the almond trees are in full bloom, when I reached the Yolo Causeway the rice paddies are flooded as far as the eye could see in all directions, yet to control the population and extract more money from them they can't waste the crisis.

¹ http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_27668436/california-drought-bay-area-water-agencies-considering-big

² http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_27713697/despite-drought-bay-area-water-district-executives-reap-generous-pay

 

[jdfruit]

If you want to find out how bad the water management and public policy is in the western US, read the book "Cadillac Desert".

Mark Twain was right: "Whiskey's for drinkin', Water's for fightin'"

 

[mark handler]

all a hoax; or so they say

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[MASSDRIVER]

Well, a few issues here.

First, let me correct that water use number. Ag uses 40% of captured water, not 80% or 90%. That number cropped up when use by environmentalists to sustain captured water flow for fish habitat. Now I'm not altogether against that. I have seen the reports by actual scientists and realistically there needs to be a maintained flow. However, actual studies by the CA dept of Fish and GAME ( I will not use the new name change, for the same reason CDF is not CALFIRE) show quite conclusively that flows can be cut dramatically with very little impact on fish health. Besides, if the water is going to be gone in a year, what the hell does it matter?

Second, millions of acre feet of water are lost every year, that would otherwise be captured, if we built storage instead of dumb a55 non-bullitt trains between Frespit and some field north of the Grapevine.

Third, conservation gets you nowhere, unless you are on a fixed delivery source with no replenishment, and even then for a fractional amount of time, which brings me to stupid people believing anything they hear; using the metric that we have one more year of captured water, the difference of time of running the pipe dry conserving or not conserving is less than one day. If you cooked the numbers to max conservation vs. min truth in water storage, you can get to something like 42 hours. Math don't lie.

And even those pictures can lie. Is the water situation bad? Of course it is. And are the lakes full? No, of course not. But guess what; I go to those lakes, and what IS there is still a lot.

So why are our trees and ag still wet? Because we have the water here.

The irony was killing me today when I drove through Knights landing, which crosses the Sacramento river. There is a sign that says "Conserve water, severe drought" about 5 seconds before you go over the drawbridge with a healthy river flowing underneath it.

I think our idea of drought is a little different than Ethiopia's.

And so what if ag is "just 8%" of CA GDP? That number does not even remotely convey how important the industry is to not just this country, but the world.

But none of it matters anyway. In a few years all the numbskulls will be begging to get the gates shut on the dams, before the levees get breached, as they have done in the past, as water pushes 10 feet over the spillways where it can't be stopped.

All of this is important to know and be accurate about, but hey, we got toilets than won't push a turd down a pipe in less than 3 flushes, so it's all good.

Brent.

 

[conarb]

A letter to the editor today:

[QUOTE='Contra Costa Times]Where are new dams we were promised?Last year, before the November election, Gov. Jerry Brown was begging the voters to support the drought proposition. Billions of dollars were to be used to build new dams to catch the future rainfall to ensure us greater water storage in the future.I have not heard nor read one word from our elected officials to keep their promise to build new dams. In fact, have any of you reading this heard of one thing they are doing with all this money we voted for them to ensure more water storage for the future?What is really being done with all the money we voted to give them? Is the money going where they told us it would go?The drought is supposed to be an emergency. Where are the new dams? They should have been started already before the rains return.Can Brown please give an accounting to the people of California of what he is doing with all of the money we voted to him to fight the drought?Joe TrevorsHercules ¹

[/QUOTE]Trevors has a point, even though the Sierra Club has fought dams and even made us tear down dams they finally relented and we voted them the money, we all know that it will take a few decades of environmental impact reports to get the dams approved, but we hear nothing about them even starting, after all they're getting the money pouring in. Jerry Brown is otherwise occupied with the Pope, the Pope has seen the profitability of the Global Warming Religion and wants a piece of the action.

We can complain all we want about global warming being a religion and our 1st Amendment frees us of religion, look what happened to our 1st Amendment Freedom of Association, just try telling a black guy or a disabled guy that you don't wish to associate with him claiming a constitutional right. ¹ http://www.contracostatimes.com/letters/ci_28522066/july-23-letters-editor

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[MASSDRIVER]

An enormous portion of money is being funneled through grants associated with the word "drought" in them.

Many projects that were shelved or rejected were reworked in wording (really) to convey some notion of drought mitigation or fibrous tangent.

And that's a fact. It's done in much the same way solar is being supported. Just do it.

So if you can make some correlation between drought and whatever it is you are trying to get a grant for, then Bob's your uncle. It's dirty and political, and careers and accolades are being made and heaped upon bureaucratic management drones for their vision and hardwork.itty

KInda makes a guy want to hurl.

Brent.

 

[conarb]

A little history, Folsom was originally built as a flood control project. Later they tried to build another reservoir in Auburn, but that was stopped by the environmentalists. In December 1861 it began raining for 43 days straight, up and down the entire western coast of America and into Canada. The Central Valley became a 300 mile by 20 mile lake as deep as 30 feet in some areas. It lasted for months . Sacramento was flooded and the newly elected governor Stanford had to row from the second story of his house to the Capital building for his inauguration. The California government packed up and moved to San Francisco temporarily when the waters did not rapidly subside after the rain ended. When the government moved back to Sacramento, Stanford added a 3rd story to the governor's mansion and kept the bottom floor empty. Many streets and buildings in the downtown area were raised 15 feet. These types of heavy rains have historically occurred on average every couple hundred years.