Guest Rant: Sierra snowpack could recharge bad water policies
Why not stop the cycle of water mismanagement in California, instead? Breaking: Arizona sets a good example
In 2018, UCLA scientists accurately predicted that California would experience “dramatic shifts between extreme dry and extreme wet weather [especially wet] by the end of the 21st century.”
And it seems safe to say that Californians have seen that prediction fulfilled for the past six years, and more.
But nobody predicted the record snowpack and snow water content that this year’s extreme storms left in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Now, this water-year’s extreme precipitation seems to have ended. And so ends the worst drought in the west in 1,200 years, at least in most of California.
Californians are experiencing the predictable results of our latest climate-change whiplash: great snow, fuller reservoirs, better flowing rivers and streams, and great floods.
They are also experiencing the predictable spin doctoring of climate events by Big Ag and other “water abundance” ideologues, who want to preserve our current unsustainable water-supply system.
These extremists seem to think that climate change is over or never happened. Or maybe they care more about profits and power than life itself?
Good and bad news
Mammoth Mountain has received a record high snowfall of almost 700 inches (300 inches above average) with skiing to continue at least into July.
That’s great news for our reservoirs and skiers, but the resulting snow melt will also create flooding along with levee and road breaks. The LA Aqueduct already had a major break in the Owens Valley, where “all hell broke loose,” according to the LA Times.
And while snow skiing is fun, I personally prefer to witness nature’s course by kayaking on the newly reincarnated and great Tulare Lake (once the largest of all lakes west of the Mississippi), currently where “water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse” and “thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated,” according to another Times story.
The recent mega storms have exposed poor infrastructure maintenance and the lack of sound floodplain management, part of the State’s history of putting profits before safety and environmental justice.
Despite that history, proponents of “water abundance” lobby for more tunnels and dams.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) provides water for 19 million people in Southern California. It’s efforts to store water from this season’s storm runoff for future climate emergencies are laudable.
But at the same time MWD has ended its Water Shortage Emergency and Emergency Water Conservation Program and continues to advocate for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Delta tunnel instead of prioritizing necessary local and regional projects—a horrific path given the pressing need for local infrastructure upgrades.
One likely result of the State and MWD’s lack of vision is that responsible groundwater recharge will remain neglected and land subsidence will come from a “frenzy of well drilling” by big San Joaquin Valley farmers in a “race to the bottom” across the American southwest.
That is why we must prioritize groundwater metering immediately and move up the deadline for complete compliance with the (2014) Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, originally scheduled for 2040. Every moment of delay further diminishes our rapidly disappearing groundwater supplies and the chances for recovery.
Mono Lake
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is citing the spontaneously created “record-snowpack” doctrine to justify continued water diversions from streams that feed one of the world’s most unique and critical ecosystems, Mono Lake.
In 1994, the State Water Resources Control Board ordered LADWP to decrease its diversions in order to refill the lake to within 27 feet of its original level at 6,392 feet above sea level, an estimated 20-year task. But the city hasn’t come closer than 10 feet of that goal, and currently is 15 feet short.
The city is greedy for the lake’s water, which costs it almost nothing and makes up less than 1% (4,500/AF) of its water supply. Despite their relatively small size, the current diversions still delay the lake’s long overdue recovery from near ecocide caused by stream dewatering and increased lake-salinity.
Meanwhile, the city has invested in new water treatment facilities that will supply 70% of its drinking water by 2034.
Three groundwater remediation facilities will start operating by Dec. of this year, producing over 100,000 acre-feet of recycled potable water a year, according to Evelyn Cortez-Davis speaking from LADWP, speaking at the Southern California Water Dialogue forum in February.
That’s good, in part because it means there’s probably no need to take ANY water away from Mono Lake anymore.
But the LADWP illogically argues that it still has a desperate need for the water despite its online and future wastewater treatment projects and that the current Sierra snowpack protects Mono Lake from harm if diversions continue (see screenshots below).
But the unnecessary delay in halting the Mono Lake water diversions is an excuse to continue bad business as usual and violates the concepts of reasonable use and environmental justice embedded in the California Constitution.
Once again, like in 2017 and before, the reservoirs will fill and we will drain them, recklessly, and cry, “crisis!”
But the graphic below presented at a meeting of MWD’s water stewardship committee by the non-partisan Pacific Institute illustrates what we can do to help guarantee water-supply reliability for all Californians without breaking the bank or destroying our natural resources.
Our current water policies are misguided, costly, and harmful to the environment.
We spend too much time and money on water projects that are useless or damaging, such as desalinating ocean water, extracting water from the Mojave desert, and building large dams and tunnels.
These projects ignore or undermine the sustainable solutions of local water sources, such as wastewater recycling, storm-water capture, groundwater recharge, and water conservation.
We must stop the cycle of water mismanagement in California and adopt a local water approach that is resilient, equitable, and environmentally sound.
BREAKING: Now here’s an idea from Arizona: https://ktar.com/story/5487088/arizona-revokes-water-permits-for-saudi-arabia-owned-alfalfa-farm/
P.S. It’s not a drought, it’s climate change.
 | A guest post by
|
wastewater recycling is important but tunnels, dams, and desal are even more important. Wastewater recycling creates a sustainable source for the current population's needs, but the population will grow, thus making it necessary to pull in new sources of water to population centers
I do also worry that the "record-snowpack" logic will cause us to put off doing the most important things because it's earned us some comfort for a little bit of time