MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES

 Jim Rhone is an old school motivational speaker who talked about life in the seasons of a farmer.  In the winter you prepare for summer and in the summer you "make hay while the sun shines".  The hay is for putting back for times when the harvest is non-existent or less bountiful.  Certainly now, in Oklahoma at least,  we have bountiful supplies of water and it might be a great time to re-visit the "Comprehensive Water Plan" created a couple of years ago by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board. 
In contrast this morning at breakfast an attorney mentioned having just attended a seminar on WATER RIGHTS.  

He basically said that if you have land and have not expressly claimed your water rights then it is possible that someone else actually owns them.  They are, according to his comments, different than mineral rights or surface rights.  He gave a couple of vivid examples of what can happen if the ownership is not specified clearly--which is probably the case many times.  If you own property it might make sense to at least check in to what your rights really are.

Let's hope that the equivalent of legal water wars are not on the horizon.  The water system in OKC is quite impressive and yet also vulnerable to external forces beyond our control.  I am hoping that while the "sun shines" on our water supplies we can plan ahead for when things aren't so bountiful.  We are blessed with a system based upon decades of foresight and vision that according to the Comprehensive Water Plan needs $85 billion dollars spent on it over the next 50 years just for central and western Oklahoma.  How can we as citizens honor the creators of this oasis in the plains?

Below is an article written by a financial planner friend from San Diego who cares deeply about his state and city and worries about the water issues while appreciating the magnitude of the engineering required to make the desert bloom.  His area of the country is significant to all of us who consume food grown year round in the desert southwest.  Enjoy--Doug is a much better writer than me;-)  (Sorry pictures did not come through.)

Searching for answers to the hottest question today:

How reliable is our water supply now?

by

Doug Hansen, MBA

June 1, 2015

They died to make the desert bloom. 
–Inscription at the Hoover Dam memorial.

                                                      

As I perched high on a rocky hillside, watching the sunrise spread its bright, warm glow over the triad of ten-foot diameter pipes rising from the pumping station below, I appreciated for the first time the magnitude of the engineering marvel that had transformed the arid southwest into a aqueous playground for millions of people. Those three gargantuan pipes represented the starting point of a complex system that moves a mighty river across hundreds of miles of mountains, deserts and plains, ultimately delivering to our homes and businesses a reliable flow of cheap and clean drinking water.

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority, I recently toured the water systems in both the Colorado River Basin and Sacramento Bay Delta, from which we get the majority of our water. I undertook this intensive learning experience seeking answers to one of the most urgent questions today: how reliable is our water supply now?

 

How does fresh water reach my home?

Like the ancient Romans before us, we have built an elaborate, multi-state water system, beginning with Los Angeles’ infamous Owen’s Valley project in the early 1900’s.  The complex system we have today was primarily constructed in the 1930’s by a combination of the U.S. government and LA’s Metropolitan Water District (MWD).  Without the vast spider-web of pipes, pumps, canals and tunnels that resulted, life would not be possible for most people in the Southwest.

Our water story is linked to America’s long-standing philosophy that this continent was ours to conquer. Water being a key component of our development, the federal government’s engineers designed and built an elaborate water conveyance system that consisted of:

·         Pumping stations house powerful pumps that push millions of cubic feet of water into huge pipes that carry the water up and over the surrounding mountains.

·         Man-made reservoirs that smooth the flow of the water over the long journey, and help to provide a consistent water supply during good times and bad.

·         Open canals, buried pipes and massive tunnels that carry water between pumping stations. Several tunnels, some over thirteen miles long, were burrowed through the heart of mountain ranges, including behemoths like San Jacinto, in order to deliver water to Southern California.

·         Hydro-electric generation at some dams helps to offset the huge amount of electricity it takes to operate the system.

How much water are we moving and what would happen if we didn’t do that?

Everything about the two water systems involves big numbers. The Colorado River Aqueduct moves a billion gallons of water per day over 242 miles, while California’s State Water Project moves millions of acre feet of water per year from the Sacramento Bay Delta over 444 miles. (Note: an acre foot equals the amount of water needed to cover a football field with one foot of water, or nearly 326,000 gallons).

Until recently, water was lost as it seeped into the ground below the earthen canals, but this problem was fixed when the canals were lined with concrete.

I was surprised to discover that California’s water system utilizes over a half dozen canals to move water all over the state. For example, canals bring water to the Imperial County (the All American Canal), to the Coachella Valley (Coachella Canal), to the Central Valley (the Central Valley Project), to Los Angeles (the LA Aqueduct) and so on.  No canals = no water.

                

I asked the leader of our water inspection trips, Mike Hogan, what would happen if San Diego didn’t import all this water? He explained, “1946 was the last time that San Diego was 100% self-sufficient with its water. The population was 500,000. That’s probably the number of people that could live here today with only local water sources.”  Since San Diego’s population hovers around 3.1 million and growing, that says much about our reliance on imported water.

What changes are occurring that affect the overall water situation?

·         Population growth.  If California had 3.5 million people instead of 35 million people, there would be little or no water problem. California’s population is projected to grow, so our water challenges will probably grow, too.

·         Legal issues.  The Colorado River’s water was divvied up in the 1920’s among seven states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California) and Mexico. But since the agreement was made during an unusually wet period, problems arose as the states and Mexico needed more river water.  In 2003 another agreement was reached that forced California to import only its agreed-upon share of water (4.4 MAF) and stop taking extra water that other states previously weren’t using.

The new agreement was particularly important for San Diego because it provided a vital new source of water from the farmers in Imperial County. At the same time, it highlighted a huge dilemma based Old West water laws that say “I got here first so I get mine first, forever,” also known as “first in time, first in right.” As a result of their priority rights, 180,000 Imperial County residents can legally claim around 20% of the Colorado River water allocated to the  U.S., which equates to nearly 1.1 trillion gallons of water per year, or 6 million gallons per person.

What do the farmers in Imperial County grow with all that water? Over 60% of the planted acreage is used to grow alfalfa, wheat, Sudan grass and Bermuda grass, which are water intensive crops mainly destined for Asia as animal-feed. We are shipping a good deal of Colorado River water overseas. It’s their free-enterprise right to do this, along with the almond farmers in the Central Valley who export most of their crop, but this issue will probably generate heated debates if the drought worsens.

·         The climate is changing. We now regularly experience record heat, record lows in snowfall and rain, and all the other anomalies predicted by climate scientists. The drought is not entirely new; there have been repeated multi-year droughts in the past.  What’s different this time is that there’s more people depending on the increasingly unreliable supply of rain and snow, and there’s no way of knowing if the current 15 year Colorado Basin drought or the four-year SoCal drought is temporary, or part of a “mega-drought.” Two scientists recently published a study that concluded that by 2050, there’s an 80% chance that we’ll have a 35-year drought.

This chart from a presentation by Jana Dawson Frazier, a California Dept. of Water Resources guide at the Oroville Dam, shows vividly the nature of the problem we currently face:

                             

How dependable is our water supply now?

This was the main question that induced me to join the two inspection trips. The answer in brief--our water supply is at risk and we are vulnerable to the variable we cannot control: Mother Nature.

·         Four fifths of California, and much of the rest of the Southwest, is experiencing severe to exceptional drought (don’t you find it remarkable that there’s a level worse than “extreme drought”-- “exceptional drought”?)

                         

·         California’s central valley and SoCal import between 40% and 90% of their water from a combination of the Colorado River and the Sacramento Bay Delta. If either or both of those resources decline, then the impacts will be large since the main alternative, groundwater, is now being rapidly depleted. (CBS’ 60 Minutes featured California’s groundwater issue on May 31, 2015; it’s worth watching:  http://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-water-2/). Other water resources could be developed, but only at great cost and over a long period of time.

·         The system of reservoirs throughout California holds water for recreation, but more importantly, for consumption, especially in emergencies. What I saw at Lake Mead and Diamond Valley Lake, and elsewhere, is that water levels are so low that soon we could bumping against the reservoirs’ “emergency water storage” which is supposed to be used only in an extreme emergency, such as an earthquake event. The drought is pushing us to the point where the only water available for distribution could be the emergency water—not a good situation.

Another interesting tidbit about the reservoirs (and Lakes Mead and Powell): their intakes are not located at the bottom; even in an extreme situation, we cannot take all the water out.

Water reliability and the Colorado River Basin:

·         The Upper Colorado Basin holds the key to the welfare of the whole Colorado River system.  In normal times, rain and snow-melt in this multi-state basin fills Lake Powell, which then releases water to fill Lake Mead, which in turn releases the Colorado River which runs its course until disappearing in the barren lands of northern Mexico.


In recent years, the Colorado River Basin’s snowpack has been less than half of normal, while rainfall last season was about 75% of normal.  But as MWD Director Hogan says, “It’s all about the snow”—meaning that rainwater comes and goes too quickly; snowmelt is essential for providing a more consistent flow of water over a longer period of time.

The water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead are so low that in the next couple of years, if dry conditions persist, Lake Powell may be unable to send water to Lake Mead, which stands a chance of dropping too low to produce electricity.

    

There’s a growing chance that for the first time in history, the Colorado River water available for the seven states and Mexico will be insufficient to meet their allocation; there’s a 33% chance of shortfall in 2016, 75% chance in 2017.

The bottom line is that the water that we depend upon from the Colorado River Basin is barely able to meet our needs currently, and is in a critical condition. If the drought persists, this source probably won’t be able to supply enough water to meet all the states’ needs.  Interestingly, in case of a shortfall, California is guaranteed to get its full allotment of 4.4 MAF of water, but the other states will have to significantly cut their water usage.

Water reliability and the Sacramento Bay Delta:        

     

                                                  

The Sacramento Bay Delta is critical for California’s water supply. Formerly a vast, marshy wetland, this region was radically changed over the past 150 years as wetlands were drained, rivers and streams were rerouted, and 1100 miles of earthen dikes were built to protect the newly created farmland. The 1150 square mile Delta today is a shadow of its original natural state; it has been over 95% human re-engineered. (Keep this fact in mind when presented with the Governor’s “tunnel under the Delta plan”; at first it sounds too disruptive for a natural region, but in reality it’s just another engineering revision).

What’s the problem with the Sacramento Bay Delta? 

·         The list is long, but the issue that concerned me most was the unreliable earthen dikes. As our tour guide pointed out, “These levees weren’t built to any engineering standards. They were built out of plain dirt mostly by imported Chinese laborers.  Since it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” a serious earthquake will happen, serious damage is likely to occur that will take a couple of years to repair.”

Here’s my key takeaway from the Delta tour:  If the dikes were badly damaged during a strong eathquake, which is considered inevitable, salt water from the San Francisco Bay will rush onto the below-water-level islands and mix with the Delta’s fresh water, submerging farmland and much more critically, it will cause our intake of the delta water to stop.
One of our presentations offered a graphic image of what this worst-case scenario might look like:

                   

·         The farmland in the delta is sinking. This fact became abundantly clear as our tour bus parked atop a dirt levee, with the waters of the Sacramento River flowing near our level on one side, while on the other side farmland lay 20+ feet below water level. Our guide explained that such low-lying land inevitably attracts ground water seepage, both fresh and salt.

·         Ecological damage.  There are impassioned arguments against protecting the endangered fish (smelt and salmon) and other creatures struggling to survive in the delta. What goes overlooked in this debate over “fish versus people” is that a healthy ecosystem would be a more reliable water resource.

·         Water levels are dropping here, too.  Just as we saw in the Colorado River system, the Bay Delta region suffers from inadequate snow and rain.  A key point I learned on the tour: the lake at Oroville Dam (which is the tallest dam in the United States) is the origin for almost all of the water flowing south into the rest of the State Water Project. As with the Lake Powell/Lake Mead scenario, when water sources don’t fill Oroville Lake, then it cannot release water to re-fill the other reservoirs to the south, which means that already-low reservoirs have no way to refill.

Here’s what the Oroville Dam and lake look like today, at 48% of capacity (May 12, 2015):


NOTE:  To track the water levels of California’s main reservoirs, go to http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/ getResGraphsMain.action

Overall, the Sacramento Bay Delta is an ecologically unhealthy system and its 1100 miles of levees are clearly inadequate to protect the fresh water system long-term, so major changes are needed. I was persuaded that the much-discussed tunnels are a necessary “evil” (evil in the sense that they cost so much—many billions of dollars); they would shift the intake of fresh water to a place farther north so that our fresh water supply would be protected in the event of an earthquake and a major delta levee failure further south.

There are problems, so what are the solutions?

·         Desalination:  Most people will say, “There’s a big ole’ ocean next to us. We can just desalinate the salt water.”  This is only partly true, but the hurdles are huge and conveniently ignored:  cost (desal water costs double to produce, plus one plant costs over $1 billion to build); environmental damage (intakes trap and kill some ocean creatures, and the salt that’s left over may damage the ocean when it’s dumped back); long timeframe to construct (the Poseidon desalination plant in Carlsbad took around 15 years from concept to finish); high energy use (pushing salt water through a membrane requires a great deal of energy—there may come a time when energy costs rise or supply falls – what’s the plan then?).

·         Conservation: It’s obvious that we will all have to use less water by

o   Using low flow showers and toilets

o   Not using a hose to clean patios or driveways

o   Going to carwashes where water is recycled

o   Modifying yard sprinkler systems for maximum efficiency through the use of drip irrigation and properly adjusted sprinkler heads (I check my sprinkler system two to four times a month and always find something that needs adjusting).

·         Recycling:  Let’s face it, human emotions drive our decision-making as much as logic.  Through a variety of high-tech processes and chemicals, a wastewater treatment plant can turn yucky wastewater into pure, uncontaminated drinking water.  But just let some clever opponent label it “toilet to tap” and most people recoil in horror and say “no way I’m drinking that”.  However, I had this issue put into proper perspective by a member of our tour—“There are already 290 wastewater dumping permits on the Colorado River, which means that we’re already drinking ‘recycled’ waste water!”  It’s another expensive option, but we can’t keep dumping millions of gallons per day of potentially usable water into the ocean. (One proposal called “Indirect Potable Reuse” assuages peoples’ sensibilities by sending highly treated, drinkable wastewater to a distant reservoir where it would mix with “regular” water, and then get pumped back into the normal water distribution system.)

·         Groundwater recovery: Groundwater, generally in aquifers, has provided a major backup to the currently depleted “above-ground” water system. For example, the huge farming industry in the Central Valley for the past couple of years has faced major water cutbacks . Naturally, the farmers turned to groundwater use (i.e., wells), which caused the groundwater levels to recede and forced the farmers to drill more and deeper wells. For the first time, scientists are using satellites to monitor groundwater use and until this year, groundwater use was unregulated in California, which meant that farmers could drill and pump as much underground water as they wanted. But, as our Oroville Dam guide, Jana Frazier, pointed out: “Underground aquifers, once depleted, can be permanently destroyed.”  I think there’s a mistaken line of thinking that water can be pulled out of the ground as needed and it will magically re-fill during the next rainy season.

IN CONCLUSION….Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

I have had the rare privilege of participating in two Metropolitan Water District-sponsored tours of California’s hydrological deus ex machina, which is what the ancient Greeks would have called our state’s amazing water transportation system. When viewed first-hand, the complex network of dams, giant pumps and pipes, canals and treatment plants is astounding, especially since few people fully appreciate what an engineering marvel it is.  But I also realized that human ingenuity and engineering prowess has limits.  When Mother Nature stops supplying enough rain and snow, which are now at record low levels, then we are inexorably forced to prepare for water shortages that this system, and our society, was not designed for. Right now our climate forecasting models aren’t able to help much, because as Mike Hogan pointed out, “Predicting chaos is very difficult.”

We are designed to live for hope and cling to optimism.  “All we need is another year or two of good rains and this issue goes away.”  This is an issue that won’t go away, not permanently. The fact is that we live in an arid region. We have too many people using too much water in a warming world. Change is necessary and will happen either by foresight, or by force.

Obviously even the most wondrous water system can only move water if there’s water to be moved. Right now, there’s enough water, but just barely.

                                    

As I see it, we live under a proverbial “sword of Damocles”, with an unpredictable drought hanging over our heads and threatening to force us to make difficult changes.  Under current conditions, our water-intensive lifestyles have resulted in larger demands on our water supply than nature is currently providing. We’re overdrawing our water “bank account”.  Something has to give.

Thinking back to my sunrise contemplation of our water supply situation, I felted awed by our impressive water system, and I felt shocked at the thought of what big risks, and potentially big changes, we now face.  Our California desert is blooming, but at what cost, and for how much longer?