Groundwater Crisis Grows Beneath California Crops
Published on by Paul Garner, Garnerlaw - Senior Trial Counsel
Groundwater Crisis Grows Beneath California Crops
Beneath California Crops, Groundwater Crisis Grows & Scientists wonder whether groundwater supplies will last til the 2040s :
Even as theworst drought in decades ravages California, and its cities face mandatory cuts in water use, millions of pounds of thirsty crops like oranges, tomatoes and almonds continue to stream out of the state and onto the nation's grocery shelves.
But the way that California farmers have pulled off that feat is a case study in the unwise use of natural resources, many experts say. Farmers are drilling wells at a feverish pace and pumping billions of gallons of water from the ground, depleting a resource that was critically endangered even before the drought, now in its fourth year, began.
California has pushed harder than any other state to adapt to a changing climate, but scientists warn that improving its management of precious groundwater supplies will shape whether it can continue to supply more than half the nation's fruits and vegetables on a hotter planet. . . .
In some places, water tables have dropped 50 feet or more in just a few years. With less underground water to buoy it, the land surface is sinking as much as a foot a year in spots, causing roads to buckle and bridges to crack. Shallow wells have run dry, depriving several poor communities of water.
Scientists say some of the underground water-storing formations so critical to California's future — typically, saturated layers of sand or clay — are being permanently damaged by the excess pumping, and will never again store as much water as farmers are pulling out.
"Climate conditions have exposed our house of cards . . . "
"The withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can't keep doing this."
Cannon Michael, a farmer who grows tomatoes, melons and corn on 10,500 acres in the town of Los Banos, in the Central Valley, has high priority rights to surface water, which he inherited with his family's land. But rampant groundwater pumping by farmers near him is causing some of the nearby land to sink, disturbing canals that would normally bring water his way.
"Now, water is going to have to flow uphill," said Mr. Michael, who plans to fallow 2,300 acres this year.
Last week, Mr. Brownimposed mandatory cutsin urban water use, the first ever. He exempted farmers, who already had to deal with huge reductions in surface water from the state's irrigation works. Mr. Brown defended the decision on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, saying, "They're providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America to a significant part of the world."
In normal times, agriculture consumes roughly 80 percent of the surface water available for human use in California, and experts say the state's water crisis will not be solved without a major contribution from farmers.
California's greatest resource in dry times is not its surface reservoirs, though, but its groundwater, and scientists say the drought has made the need for better controls obvious. While courts have taken charge in a few areas and imposed pumping limits, groundwater in most of the state has been a resource anyone could grab.
Yet putting strict limits in place is expected to take years. The new law, which took effect Jan. 1, does not call for reaching sustainability until the 2040s. Sustainability is vaguely defined in the statute, but in most basins will presumably mean a long-term balance between water going into the ground and water coming out. Scientists have no real idea if the groundwater supplies can last until the 2040s."
Draining the Central Valley
Eighty percent of the water used by humans in California goes to agriculture. The state's Central Valley has 17 percent of the irrigated land in the United States and produces a quarter of the nation's food. But growing that food takes more water than is available from rain and snow, even in wet years.
Snow and Surface Water
Snow accumulates in the mountains until early April, then slowly melts over the spring and summer, flowing downhill into the Central Valley. A drought in recent years has left the Sierra Nevada with a record low snowpack, below, reducing the flow of surface water and increasing the amount of water that must be pumped from wells.
"You see the lack of regulation hurting the agricultural community as much as it hurts anybody else," said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources
"Climate conditions have exposed our house of cards," said Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist in Pasadena who studies water supplies in California and elsewhere. "The withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can't keep doing this."
Cannon Michael, a farmer who grows tomatoes, melons and corn on 10,500 acres in the town of Los Banos, in the Central Valley, has high priority rights to surface water, which he inherited with his family's land. But rampant groundwater pumping by farmers near him is causing some of the nearby land to sink, disturbing canals that would normally bring water his wa"Now, water is going to have to flow uphill," said Mr. Michael, who plans to fallow 2,300 acres this year.
PhotoGarrett Schaad after plowing a dry field in Dunnigan, Calif.CreditMax Whittaker for The New York Times
In the midst ofthis water crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown and his legislative allies pulled off something of a political miracle last year, overcoming decades of resistance from the farm lobby to adopt the state's first groundwater law with teeth. California, so far ahead of the country on other environmental issues, became the last state in the arid West to move toward serious limits on the use of its groundwater.
Last week, Mr. Brownimposed mandatory cutsin urban water use, the first ever. He exempted farmers, who already had to deal with huge reductions in surface water from the state's irrigation works. Mr. Brown defended the decision on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, saying, "They're providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America to a significant part of the world."
In normal times, agriculture consumes roughly 80 percent of the surface water available for human use in California, and experts say the state's water crisis will not be solved without a major contribution from farmers.
California's greatest resource in dry times is not its surface reservoirs, though, but its groundwater, and scientists say the drought has made the need for better controls obvious. While courts have taken charge in a few areas and imposed pumping limits, groundwater in most of the state has been a resource anyone could grab.
Yet putting strict limits in place is expected to take years. The new law, which took effect Jan. 1, does not call for reaching sustainability until the 2040s. Sustainability is vaguely defined in the statute, but in most basins will presumably mean a long-term balance between water going into the ground and water coming out. Scientists have no real idea if the groundwater supplies can last until the 2040s.
Here's a potential solution, if we can just get the radionuclides out with the salt:
Carlsbad Desalination Project, San Diego, California, United States of America
The Carlsbad desalination project in San Diego County, California, will be the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere. The $922m project is the first large-scale desalination plant on the West Coast, being privately financed and developed by the Poseidon Resources Corporation (Poseidon).
The project includes a desalination plant, a pumping station, product water storage and a ten-mile finished water conveyance pipeline.
Poseidon has leased a four-acre site adjacent to the existing Encina Power Station site, owned by Cabrillo Power, for 60 years for the desalination plant. On the south of the plant site is the Agua Hedionda Lagoon of the Pacific Ocean.
The plant will produce 50 million gallons of desalinated seawater (MGD) a day and provide ten percent of the total drinking water needed by San Diego. It will supply 56,000 acre-feet (approximately 2,440 cubic feet) of water annually, sufficient for about 300,000 people.
The water from this plant will be purchased by the Carlsbad water agencies, and be supplemented with imported water from San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA), the region's water supplier.
Bidding for EPC of the project was made in February 2006 and the contract awarded in 2007.
In 2008, the plant received approvals from the State Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission. In May 2009, the Regional Water Quality Control Board approved the plant's construction. In September 2009, the city of Carlsbad approved the desalination project with minor changes to the main plant building and pipeline network to the certified EIR.
Construction of the first phase of the Carlsbad desalination plant started in November 2009.
In January 2010, the project was allocated $530m in private activity bonds (PABs) by the California Debt Limitation Allocation Committee (CDLAC). Financing for the project was closed in December 2012 to clear the way for the start of construction.
The plant is expected to generate 2,300 jobs during the construction phase and 575 jobs during operation. It is expected to begin supplying desalinated water by 2016.
Need for the Carlsbad desalination plant
Approximately 30% of the California state water project (SWP) goes to San Diego, but the county still imports 90% of its water from the Bay-Delta and the Colorado River. California has seen a prolonged drought along with changes in its environmental pattern and population growth, meaning that tapering sources and stringent water treatment requirements are increasing the cost of traditional water sources.
The Carlsbad desalination project aims to provide a local source of potable water with an increased quality level (250mg-350mg) and reliability by using economically feasible technology.
In 1998 the Carlsbad officials in San Diego teamed up with Poseidon Resources to secure a sustainable future water supply in the region. The public-private-partnership has since then been working towards construction of the 50MGD plant.
The Carlsbad desalination plant underwent ten years of planning and was in California's permitting process for five years, before in September 2004, the Carlsbad Municipal Water District signed a water purchase agreement with Poseidon.
Opposition to San Diego County's water project
The plant was proposed in 1998 and faced several hurdles before it gained all the required official approvals that delayed the construction. A total of 14 cases were filed against the project between 2006 and 2009. Most of these cases were filed by Surfrider Foundation (San Diego Chapters) and Coastkeeper.
Some of the hurdles included desertion by the San Diego County Water Authority in July 2006, a petition against the project's brine discharge by environmental groups in 2007 and opposition regarding energy, climate and marine impacts. . . .
No more nice guy: California naming, shaming water wasters:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California is done with gentle nudges and polite reminders to deal with its devastating drought.
State regulators are naming and shaming local water departments that have let water wasters slide — and forcing them to slash water use by as much as a third. They say it's necessary as California reservoirs, and the snow on mountains that is supposed to refill them, reach record lows.
Among the last straws was new data showing the worst water savings in February since officials started tracking conservation.
Along the south coast, home to more than a third of Californians from San Diego to Los Angeles, residents actually showed an increase in water consumption despite longstanding calls for cutbacks. And water use along the coast is expected to increase this summer as tourists and seasonal residents flock to beach homes.
"These are sobering statistics and disheartening statistics," said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board.
Brown planned a meeting Wednesday on the drought with representatives from water agencies, agricultural interests and environmental groups.
State officials say they're prepared to slap large fines on agencies that don't take steps to conserve or meet reduction targets, although they haven't used similar powers earlier in the drought.
Places such as Newport Beach must make drastic improvements. Residents of the wealthy beach town use about 120 gallons a day, compared to 100 gallons for others who live along the southern coastline. City officials have spent months telling residents about the water regulations and ways to cut back, and they're now seeking new authority to issue fines.
They have reduced residential lawn watering to four times a week, twice as often as state recommendations allow, and prohibit residents from refilling their pools more than 1 foot a week.
"We liked the friendly approach, and it seems to be working well, but we aren't afraid to issue citations," said George Murdoch, the city's utilities general manager.
Some cities must drastically improve water savings. San Diego and Los Angeles must cut water use by 20 percent. Others such as Santa Cruz, which already has cut its water use by a quarter, are likely to easily meet smaller targets.
The water use data show the difficulties of changing longstanding habits, such as watering lawns, washing cars and taking long showers.
The water board has given local water departments discretion to set their own conservation rules, but it has established some statewide regulations, such as banning lawn watering 48 hours after rain and prohibiting restaurants from serving water unless customers ask.
The agency also plans to have municipalities penalize overconsumption through billing rates.
Meanwhile, some water agencies are working on more drastic actions of their own. Southern California's giant Metropolitan Water District will vote next week on a plan to ration water deliveries to the 26 agencies and cities it supplies, according to spokesman Bob Muir. The cuts would take effect July 1.
How the Drought Is Changing California Forever:
In San Francisco, California's most densely populated big city, residents consumed 44 gallons per day in February, while residents of Palm Springs and neighboring desert communities used more than six times as much water, according to the state water board. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Cambria, a seaside hamlet of vacation homes and wine bars, offers a glimpse of how far Californians must go to conserve water as the most populous U.S. state struggles through the worst drought in its history.
Residents take pails into the shower to capture runoff, then empty them into toilet tanks. Others rarely flush. Once-verdant lawns have yellowed.
Residents in this community of 6,000 midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles now use 32 gallons (121 liters) a day on average, less than half than before the drought began in 2011.
"These are practices that Cambrians are really internalizing as habit, and will continue after the emergency is lifted," said Gail Robinette, the president of the Cambria Community Services District board, which rations water from two creeks. "If we keep this front and center, most people in California will change their habits. Some people will just keep doing things as they are and their communities will need to deal with them."
In a handful of drought-plagued communities, including Cambria, East Porterville and Santa Cruz, scarcity has forced changes. Residents in East Porterville, in the San Joaquin Valley, use temporary showers in a church. In the tourist destination of Santa Cruz, people postpone car washes and limit showers to five minutes. The communities face especially strict limits because they aren't part of the State Water Project, a system of canals and reservoirs that delivers mountain runoff to urban areas in the Bay Area and Southern California.
appliances, yet the suburban ideal of a carpet of green grass has persisted, Upadhyay said.
"The new low-hanging fruit is outdoor water use," he said. "It is going to be harder to get these additional gains, but we know where they're going to come from."
Cutting Use
Cambria residents have been able to cut use without damaging their quality of life or jeopardizing the town's tourist-based economy, said Mary Webb, 60, a retired database manager. Most savings are as simple as using shower water and trucked non-potable water to irrigate plants and and lawns, she said.
"Fifty gallons per day allows people to wash and cook and do all the things they need to do in their lives just fine," said Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It really goes to a different kind of question, which is a change in how the outdoor landscapes look and feel in cities. It's more a question of aesthetics than physical hardship."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-09/cambria-showers-with-pails-as-drought-shapes-california-s-future
California Is In The Middle Of Its Worst Drought In 1,200 Years, And These People Are Doing Something About It:
California's drought is serious. The U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists more than 40 percent of the state in the highest category, "exceptional drought" -- up from 23 percent a year ago.
The state's drought is the most severe in at least 1,200 years, according to astudythat examined the drought between 2012 and 2014.
Officials have implored Californians to cut down on water usage, but recent data show residents savedless water in February than in any other monthsince the state started tracking water conservation. Southern California residents actually used more water than average that month.
Solving the state's drought isn't going to be simple, or quick, and it will requiretechnology, improved efficiency and conservation. But everyone can do something. Here are seven examples of people who are doing their part:
California's Craft Breweries
A small California town has found an unlikely champion during the massive California drought:its brewery.
Bear Republic Brewing Company recently installed a water-recycling, energy-generating system at its craft brewing facility in Cloverdale, Calif., a town on the Russian River that the Department of Public Health has named one of the communitiesmost vulnerable to running out of waterduring the state's mega-drought.
The EcoVolt system, originally designed for the U.S. military, will supply more than 10 percent of the facility's water needs with recycled water and produce enough biogas to cut back 50 percent of the brewery's electricity use, significantly reducing both the company'scarbon footprint and production costs.
"We were looking forways to conserve waterin the face of threatening drought and saw the EcoVolt system being installed in a nearby winery," Bear Republic owner and CEO Richard Norgrove Sr. said.
The brewery business is a big water-sucker; typically, production uses ten times the amount of water than beer produced. Bear Republic reports keeping their ratio at less than half that in producing their 72,000 barrels a year, and that was before installing the EcoVolt.
"We've worked hard to reduce our water use to a3.5 to 1 ratio," Norgrove told the North Bay Business Journal. "With EcoVolt we expect to do even better. The city of Cloverdale red-lined us at 8 million gallons of water a year, but we use less than that."
U.S. Drought 2012-20131of46î€
Carly Fiorina: Environmentalists To Blame For 'Man-Made' Drought In California
Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on Monday blamed environmentalists for what she called a "man-made" drought in California, which has led to the state's first water restrictions.
"With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided," Fiorina, a likely 2016 Republican presidential contender, said in an interview withradio host Glenn Beck. "Despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California's population has doubled."
Fiorina, California's 2010 GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, said it was a "classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people's lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology. It is a tragedy."
The drought, now officially in its fourth year, prompted Gov. Jerry Brown (D) last week to order a 25 percent reduction in water consumption. The order does not apply to the agriculture industry, which consumesnearly 80 percentof the state's water.
Lawmakers in Congress and in the state legislature have proposed bills authorizing construction of new dams and reservoirs, citing the need to capture water that ends up in the ocean. They have been opposed by environmental groups, which argue the projects would endanger the state's habitat and endangered species. Last year, House Republicans proposed pumping additional water to Southern California, but the bill failed under aveto threatfrom President Barack Obama.
There is significant debate about whether the state has enough water left, at this point, to justify the cost of building new dams and reservoirs. According toThe Sacramento Bee, some new reservoirs, wouldn't supply significant new water.
"There's nothing magical in and of themselves to build a (reservoir) facility," Lester Snow, the executive director of the California Water Foundation, told the Bee last year. "If we had two more surface storage facilities that we built 10 years ago -- pick any of the two that people are talking about -- they would both be very low right now. There's a tendency to pull down our surface storage when we get mildly short of water."
NextGen Climate, the climate-focused political group run by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, on Monday evening called Fiorina's comments "irrational."
"For a science denier to opine that Democrats caused the drought in California is about as irrational as believing someone who failed at running a business in California and then failed as a candidate for office in California has any cause to be running for the highest office in the land," Bobby Whithorne, the group's spokesman, said in a statement.
The Sierra Club, a national environmental group, disputed Fiorina's assertion that more dams and reservoirs would have lessened the impact of the drought.
"For more than 100 years, environmentalists have failed to stop the damming of nearly every significant river in California. And yet all of the hundreds of dams out there have done nothing to produce rain or snow pack over the last four years. That's because you can't store what's not there," said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club's California chapter. "We simply don't have rain or snow pack and are suffering the worst California drought since water agencies and weather trackers started keeping records."
"What we are seeing is exactly what climate scientists have predicted would happen in California with the onset of human-caused climate disruption: Weather and precipitation would become less predictable and droughts would become more frequent and more severe," Phillips added.
Drinking Contaminated Sea Water :
CARLSBAD, Calif. — Every time drought strikes California, the people of this state cannot help noticing the substantial reservoir of untapped water lapping at their shores — 187 quintillion gallons of it, more or less, shimmering so invitingly in the sun.
"Now, for the first time, a major California metropolis is on the verge of turning the Pacific Ocean into an everyday source of drinking water. A $1 billiondesalination plantto supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as November, providing a major test of whether California cities will be able to resort to the ocean to solve their water woes. . . . .
Still, the plant illustrates many of the hard choices that states and communities face as they consider whether to tap the ocean for drinking water.
Continue reading the main story
In San Diego County, which depends on imported freshwater supplies from the Colorado River and from Northern California, water bills already average about $75 a month. The new plant will drive them up by $5 or so to secure a new supply equal to about 7 or 8 percent of the county's water consumption.
Continue reading the main story
Related inOpinion
Op-Ed Contributor: The Many Droughts of California
The plant will use a huge amount of electricity, increasing the carbon dioxide emissions that causeglobal warming, which further strains water supplies. And local environmental groups, which fought the plant, fear a substantial impact on sea life.
PhotoThe Pacific Ocean will feed a desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif. The intake of seawater and the disposal of salt into the ocean can harm sea life, environmentalists say.CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
The company developing the plant here,Poseidon Water, has promised to counter the environmental damage. For instance, it will pay into a Californiaprogramthat finances projects to offset emissions of greenhouse gases.
Still, some scientists and environmental groups contend that if rainy conditions return to California, the plant here and otherscould become white elephants. Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles, built its desalination plant a quarter-century ago and promptly shut it down when rains returned.
Australia is a more spectacular case: It built six huge desalination plants during a dry spell and has largely idled four of them though water customers remain saddled with several billion dollars' worth of construction bills.
"Our position is that seawater desalination should be the option of last resort," said Sean Bothwell, an attorney with theCalifornia Coastkeeper Alliance, an environmental coalition that has battled California's turn toward the technology. "We need to fully use all the sustainable supplies that we have available to us first."
The rising interest in desalination is not simply a matter of desperation, though that is certainly a factor in states with growing populations and few obvious sources of new water. Advocates say the technology has improved markedly over the past 20 years. While the water can cost twice as much as conventionally treated water, it is still less than a penny a gallon, and that is starting to look tolerable in parched regions.
Desalination has grown into a huge industry, with more than 15,000 plants operating around the world. Many are small and treat brackish groundwater, requiring much less energy and costing less than seawater treatment. The United States already has scores of these smaller plants.
Huge plants treating seawater have been rare here, but they exist elsewhere, particularly in chronically dry regions like the Middle East. In little more than a decade, Israel has moved from perpetual water crisis to a point where it will soon get half its water from desalination. Israeli engineers have become sought-after partners in many cities, and are involved in the Carlsbad project. .. ..
It is in the late stages of construction, by an artificial bay opening to the sea in Carlsbad. On a recent day, the faint smell of glue wafted through the air as workers sealed joints on huge pipes. When it goes into operation, the plant will pump water through 16,040 cylinders containing the membranes that trap salt.
Peter MacLaggan, a vice president of Poseidon Water who is overseeing the project, said the plant was in some ways a response to longstanding public interest in desalination.
"Every time California has a drought, we get letters to the editor pointing out that there's a lot of water in the Pacific Ocean," he said as waves broke on the shoreline in the distance. "They say, ‘Hey, guys, what are we waiting for?'"
Santa Barbara, a chic tourist destination on the coast, could face severe water shortages within a year if the drought continues. The city is on the verge of spending $40 million to reactivate the long-mothballed desalination plant there.
That step would drive water bills up sharply, acknowledged the mayor, Helene Schneider. But, she added, "no water is a worse option than very expensive water."
On road to Coachella Music Festival:
Coachella Music Festival in Progress:
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