How Much Water Will $30 Billion Buy?

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So far this year I had the privilege of attending two water oriented events. The first, in February, was at the annual CalDesal conference in Sacramento. The second, in March, was at the Kern County Water Summit in Bakersfield. I sensed there is a growing recognition among the participants in both of these events that not only is California’s state water policy fundamentally broken, because it still prioritizes rationing instead of more projects to increase supply, but also that there is more potential today than ever for regional interests to work together to demand a new approach.

Specifically, there is potential for water agencies and water users in California’s rural, agricultural San Joaquin Valley, to stand alongside water agencies and water users in Southern California’s megacities to promote a shared list of water supply projects that will eliminate water scarcity in the state forever. An incentive for this unity, and its urgency, may be found in what is about to be the greatest waste of money in California water history, the construction of the Delta Tunnel. A realistic, if not wildly optimistic cost estimate for that megaproject is $30 billion. That money could be used instead to help fund massive regional water projects. Split it 50/50: $15 billion for the farms, and $15 billion for the cities.

The Delta Tunnel, according to its own proponents, is only projected to deliver 500,000 acre feet of water per year to Southern California. Moreover, that is a gross number, since it is likely that use of the existing Delta pumps will be further restricted once water starts going through the tunnel. While the official cost estimate for the tunnel is $16 billion, California’s High Speed Rail project ought to provide a cautionary reality check. Does anyone sincerely believe it’s going to be possible to construct a tunnel 45 miles long with a 36 foot interior diameter, underneath one of the biggest estuaries in the world, for less than $30 billion?

Compared to other water supply project options, the Delta Tunnel does not make financial sense. Spending $30 billion to build something that will move 500,000 acre feet of water per year equates to $60,000 of capital cost per acre foot of annual yield. This is a terrible ratio.

For comparison, consider the proposed Temperance Flat Reservoir, for which the highest construction costs estimates came in at $3.5 billion. This reservoir would hold 1.3 million acre feet, and yet its detractors claimed its “yield” would only be 70,000 acre feet per year. Estimates vary, but even if that were true, at $50,000 in capital cost per acre foot of annual yield, it still beats the Delta Tunnel. And it would generate hydroelectric power. More recent evidence suggests that these biased estimates of its probable yield were low. Temperance Flat would have been full last year, and again this year.

In any case, Temperance Flat is one of the more expensive examples of surface storage options, yet it is clearly more cost effective than the Delta Tunnel. Consider the proposed Shasta Dam raise, for which engineering studies are already complete. Raising the height of the dam a mere 18 feet would increase storage in that vast lake by over 600,000 acre feet. And it, too, could have been filled to capacity this year, and last year.

Raising the height of the Shasta Dam attracts the same united chorus of opposition as Temperance Flat, but it makes so much sense that it continues to come up for discussion. A 2012 expert study claimed “dry year deliveries” from Lake Shasta would only increase by 76,000 acre feet. That’s not the average, of course. That’s worst case. But at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion (2024 dollars), that still equates to slightly less than $24,000 of capital cost per acre foot of annual yield, almost three times more cost-effective than the Delta Tunnel.

Other surface storage projects fall somewhere in between these estimates. All of them are better returns on investment compared to the Delta Tunnel. So what about desalination?

It is likely that if desalination plants were constructed at a larger scale, starting for example at 100,000 acre feet of annual capacity which is roughly twice the size of California’s existing plant in Carlsbad, the capital cost per acre foot of annual yield would be less. But as it is, referencing the inflation adjusted actual cost to build Carlsbad, and the more recent cost projections for the proposed plant in Huntington Beach, ocean desalination costs around $27,000 of capital cost per acre foot of annual yield.

The point here isn’t to proclaim desalination as a more cost-effective choice than surface storage. It probably isn’t on average. But it is a reliable water supply that is competitive with surface storage in dry years. More to the point is the fact that desalination, combined with upgraded wastewater treatment and urban runoff harvesting, all have the potential to significantly reduce the need for California’s big coastal cities to import water from the Central Valley. A $15 billion dollar investment in desalination would yield 550,000 acre feet per year, at a capital cost to annual yield ratio that is at least twice as favorable as that of the proposed Delta Tunnel. Putting that money into wastewater recycling instead would yield a comparable return. There is no serious water supply project option available to Californians that does not beat the Delta Tunnel in terms of return on investment.

Bear in mind the energy cost to pump water through seven pumping stations from the proposed tunnel entrance through southbound aqueducts and into Los Angeles is about 400 constant megawatts to move 1.0 million acre feet of water per year. That is almost exactly how much energy is required to desalinate an equivalent amount of salt water. Transporting fresh water over 500 miles, lifting it (cumulatively) over 2,000 feet, takes just as much energy per unit as ocean desalination. Just leave Diablo Canyon open. It generates five times that much in baseload electric power.

What proponents of desalination have to resist is the temptation to disparage surface storage options on environmental grounds while defending desalination against environmentalist objections. Ditto for the proponents of surface storage. They have to stop disparaging desalination while defending surface storage. Unite. Both solutions are necessary and feasible. The reasons environmentalists have been able to prevent major water supply infrastructure is largely due to a lack of sustained unanimity among proponents of infrastructure. At the heart of that needless schism is the mistaken idea that farm interests and urban interests are in inherent conflict.

Surface storage and desalination aren’t the only answers. Maybe there are better options. The San Joaquin Valley water agencies may be able instead to build fish friendly delta diversion filtration beds that would benignly transfer millions of acre feet per year of potential floodwaters into capacious quick-fill underground storage. Urban water districts may optimize stormwater harvesting in order to collect millions of acre feet more cost-effectively than desalination. What is certain is that conservation efforts have reached the point of diminishing returns. To achieve resiliency, or even abundance, we must agree to build ways to produce more water. Also certain? The Delta Tunnel is the worst option.

There’s $30 billion dollars up for grabs. Working together, urban and agricultural interests may be able to prevent it from being wasted. There’s still time. But they will have to agree on a list of projects that splits the money, and then they have to support each other’s proposals.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Harvesting Urban Storm Runoff

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In a normal year, by the end of March downtown Los Angeles receives 13 inches of rain. Last year 27.8 inches fell, and through March 3 of this year, 21.3 inches has already fallen. This suggests that both this year and last year, over 1.0 million acre feet of rainfall hit the region. Even in an average year, rainfall totals about a half-million acre feet.

If Californians could somehow capture more of this runoff, it would tip the balance from scarcity to abundance in a state that has coped with chronic water shortages for several decades. A 2022 study by the Pacific Institute concluded that California’s urban “stormwater capture potential is 580,000 AFY in a dry year to as much as 3.0 million AFY in a wet year.” But can engineers design systems to capture whatever the skies deliver?

More generally, is it possible for California’s coastal megacities to become completely independent of imported water through a combination of runoff harvesting, wastewater reuse, and desalination? Orange County Water District, with a service population of 2.5 million, is the furthest down the path to water independence.

In an average year, they capture about 75,000 acre feet of baseflow from the Santa Ana River, in addition to harvesting 55,000 acre feet of storm runoff. So-called incidental percolation from rain contributes another 60,000 acre feet per year to their groundwater basins, and the agency built the biggest water recycling plant on the West Coast, allowing it to reuse 130,000 acre feet of wastewater every year. With a total demand for water at 390,000 acre feet, OCWD only has to import 70,000 acre feet per year from the State Water Project.

To capture more storm runoff, OCWD’s current approach is to create more opportunities for incidental percolation by encouraging conversion of impermeable surfaces to permeable surfaces. By doing this, the district estimates they can increase annual rainfall driven aquifer replenishment from 60,000 acre feet to 80,000 acre feet per year. This would lower their water import requirement to 50,000 acre feet per year. If the California Coastal Commission had approved the proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant, which was designed to produce 55,000 acre feet of fresh water per year, 2.5 million people living in northern Orange County would be on track to be completely independent of imported water.

While desalination and wastewater recycling ought to be part of a diverse and resilient portfolio of water supply infrastructure investments, the big numbers are still found in what falls out of the sky. Which brings us back to Los Angeles County. Can enough megatonnage of atmospheric river rainfall be harvested to slake the thirst of this megapolis?

It’s a tough problem. Not only because these intermittent deluges deliver torrents that are barely contained in a 400 foot wide and 35 foot deep concrete culvert they still call the Los Angeles River. Also, because it’s not just how much water has to be processed, it’s what’s in the water. Consider this excerpt from Los Angeles Waterkeeper, “LA’s water watchdog,” describing what happens during a major storm:

“In Los Angeles, our concretized LA River and all its tributaries turn into the city’s largest sewer, carrying pesticides and herbicides from our homes, oils, and grease from our roads, heavy metals and other toxins from Los Angeles’ businesses, and trash, bacteria, and other contaminants from local communities straight into our waterways.”

That’s quite a spew. In Orange County, runoff travels over less mileage of contaminated surfaces on its way to aquifer storage, and those contaminants are filtered as they percolate, diluted within the aquifer, then treated again when pumped up for use. Many of the aquifers in the Los Angeles Basin, on the other hand, are contaminated.

Despite the additional challenges, Los Angeles County is pursuing many of the same strategies as Orange County. On average the county successfully harvests 200,000 acre feet per year of stormwater, about 15 percent of the total demand. In the very wet 2022-23 rainy season, LA County Public Works estimated that stormwater capture at groundwater recharge facilities totaled over 500,000 acre feet.

At the same time, the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power has begun groundwater remediation with the ultimate goal of relying on these massive aquifers to store millions of acre feet of imported water, recycled wastewater and storm runoff. In the meantime, long-standing efforts are now accelerating to “unpave” the city, especially upstream where the runoff doesn’t hit as many surface contaminants.

It isn’t clear, even with all of this, whether or not Los Angeles can ever become water independent without also relying on a combination of imported water and desalination. But independence of imported water is exactly what they’re planning. Through aggressive conservation programs, total water demand in Los Angeles County has dropped from nearly 2 million acre feet per year at its peak around 20 years ago to an estimated 1.35 million acre feet. Today, Los Angeles County recycles 134,000 acre feet of wastewater per year, with plans to increase processing capacity to just over 500,000 acre feet. The county intends to double its stormwater harvesting capacity, and currently withdraws an additional 270,000 acre feet per year from its aquifers through natural recharge.

The difference between total demand and the contributions from these various sources is made up for by imports from the State Water Project and the Colorado Aqueduct. Water imports into Los Angeles County have averaged around 800,000 acre feet per year in recent years, but with completion of planned projects and additional conservation those imports are projected to drop to under 100,000 acre feet per year.

The investments required for California’s cities to achieve near self-sufficiency in water supply are daunting. But these investments often bring the additional benefit of making the city a healthier and more alluring place for people and wildlife. These positive externalities generate intriguing cost-benefit questions. How much is it worth to plant new green roofs on top of old concrete buildings? What about buildings designed strong enough to actually grow trees on their roofs? Rewilding a city increases storm and drought resiliency, but also provides a deeper human benefit. Just like replacing concrete with mass timber, astroturf with grass, and underground culverts with daylighted streams, more nature, along with more nurturing architecture, are how cities become welcoming habitats instead of human warehouses.

The people designing the water future for California’s South Coast cities are doing an impressive job, but they might wish to consider the positive externalities of surplus water. What if Los Angeles County planned to increase their planned water supply capacity by 17 percent, instead of planning to reduce it by 17 percent? Both outcomes are well within the scope of feasibility, even if the more generous choice might cost more. But what is it worth, for example, to continue to use recycled wastewater to guarantee perennial flow in the Glendale Narrows?

It’s not just the kayakers who benefit. It’s the sightseeing public, the diners on the overlooking terraces, the grateful residents, the lucrative revitalized local culture. What is the economic and human benefit of creating a plethora of urban/wildland interfaces deep inside a city, using entirely artificial sources of water? How much water is actually lost, if after traversing the Narrows, this water finds its way back into spreading basins that double as birdwatching habitat? What if, in a prodigiously extravagant gesture, the entire Los Angeles River were to achieve perennial flow, all the way to the ocean, all year around?

Many of California’s most cherished natural assets are artifacts of human intervention. These managed gems can be enhanced, and new ones can be created, without attenuating the amenities that make life pleasant. It is not a zero sum game. It just depends on how you invest the money, how you design your monumental plumbing, how you harvest the pouring rain.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Opportunity Cost of the Delta Tunnel

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Last week in Sacramento at Cal Desal’s annual conference, one of the highlights was an appearance by Wade Crowfoot, California’s Natural Resources Secretary. In his remarks, and in answer to questions from the audience, Crowfoot sought to create the impression the Newsom administration is supporting desalination projects.

“The last thing we want to do is put cost-prohibitive constraints on desal,” he said, adding that the state needs to “clarify the permitting pathway.” He even said that California’s “regulatory agencies are getting the message that desal is good.”

But reality preempts rhetoric. In May 2022, Newsom’s appointees to the California Coastal Commission unanimously denied approval to construct a large scale desalination plant in Huntington Beach. At a capacity of 55,000 acre feet per year, this proposed twin to the Carlsbad plant, along with other investments already made or planned in runoff harvesting and wastewater recycling, would have made Northern Orange County, population 2.5 million, completely independent of imported water.

When it comes to desal big enough to matter, Crowfoot, and Newsom, have a long way to go before any civil engineering contractor, anywhere, decides to invest another 20 years and $100 million in engineering studies and permit applications just so they can be told no deal at the last minute.

Desalination deserves in-depth, fair minded examination that it doesn’t get. Not from regulators, not from legislative staff, and certainly not from the legions of journalists in California who for the most part just obediently regurgitate outdated soundbites coming from activists whose only answer to water scarcity is rationing.

Crowfoot’s remarks of most concern, however, were about funding water projects. He acknowledged that “cost is the challenge across most agencies” and then mentioned the state’s determination to fund the Delta Tunnel. While any advocacy either for or against the Delta Tunnel is a minefield, it might be productive to consider how the multiple billions the state is prepared to spend to build that behemoth might be otherwise spent. How many billions? The official estimate is $16 billion. Does anyone believe that? The Sierra Club recently estimated the ultimate cost at $56 billion. While the Sierra Club might at times engage in hyperbole, in this case they’re probably correct. Let’s split the difference. $30 billion.

For $30 billion, you might do the following: 

– Construct wastewater recycling and reuse plants from San Francisco to San Diego to eliminate nitrogen rich, PFAS laden partially-treated water from being dumped into the ocean, after being imported at great cost via aqueducts and pumping stations to be used only once. While $30 billion – at least in the regulatory environment we currently live with – may only pay to recycle a million acre feet per year, that’s twice as much as the 500,000 acre feet per year the State Water Resources Board currently predicts will flow through the Delta Tunnel.

– Build the Sites Reservoir, the Temperance Flat Reservoir, the Pacheco Reservoir, the Del Puerto Reservoir, and raise the Shasta Dam. This would create around 5 million acre feet of additional storage with a probable average annual yield of around 1.5 million acre feet. It would also generate hydroelectric power and offer potential for pump storage. And there would probably be enough money left over to repair and restore full capacity to the California Aqueduct, the Delta Mendota Aqueduct, and the Friant-Kern Aqueduct.

– Repair and upgrade the Delta levees, and build protected nurseries for smelt and salmon. Construct fish-friendly Delta diversion channels as proposed in the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley. Build pipelines/aqueducts to move water from these diversion channels into rapid aquifer recharge via “paleo valleys.” Look that up here. This innovative solution to the goal of taking a “big gulp during storms” should be receiving serious attention from Sacramento.

– Build 1 million acre feet per year of desalination capacity. With expected technological advances in desal, and reasonable regulatory reforms, there would be money left over. The energy cost to desalinate 1 million acre feet per year? About 400 megawatts, which is only around 1.25 percent of California’s current electricity consumption.

Compared to the Delta Tunnel, each of these four options will yield more water, for less money. And if the cost overruns on this proposed tunnel end up being comparable to the overruns we’re seeing for High Speed Rail, what Newsom and Crowfoot are preparing to ultimately eke out of state and federal funds for its construction might actually pay for all four of these alternative projects.

Crowfoot got one thing unambiguously right in his remarks on February 8 at the Cal Desal Conference. Regional water agencies face enormous funding challenges. For the state to put all of their biggest financial eggs into the Delta Conveyance ignores this fact.

This article was originally published in the California Globe.

Harvesting the Deluge

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A historic barrage of atmospheric rivers hit California. Across the Sierra Nevada and down through the foothills into the valley, rivers turned into raging torrents, overflowing their banks and flooding entire communities. California’s Central Valley turned into an inland sea, as low lying farms and grasslands were incapable of draining the deluge.

That was 1861, when one storm after another pounded the state for 43 days without respite. Despite impressive new terminology our experts have come up with to describe big storms in this century – “bomb cyclone,” “arkstorm,” and “atmospheric river” – we haven’t yet seen anything close to what nature brought our predecessors back in those pre-industrial times over 150 years ago. But we are getting rain this year. Lots of rain.

According to the National Weather Service, by the time 2024’s first two atmospheric rivers are done with California, the state will have been inundated with an estimated 11 trillion gallons of water. That’s 33 million acre feet, in just 10 days. Are we harvesting this deluge? In this new age of climate change, which purportedly portends years of drought whipsawing occasionally into a year or two of torrential rain, do we have the means to take those so-called big gulps into storage?

Rather than speculate over California’s glacial (poor choice of words) progress towards ways to harvest more water from storms in a state too warmed up to ever have a big snowpack again (except for last year, and maybe this year), how are we using the assets we’ve already got?

To answer that question, one must navigate the arcane recesses of the California Dept. of Water Resources website, and reference their “historical data selector.” Using this interface it is possible to determine for any day or range of days, how much water flowed through the Sacramento San-Joaquin Delta into the San Francisco Bay, and how much water was diverted into southbound aqueducts by the pump stations located near the City of Tracy on the southern edge of the Delta.

This data may be arcane, but it isn’t ambiguous. During the first 36 days of 2024, through February 5, 2.05 million acre feet have passed through the Delta and out into the SF Bay, and 356,000 acre feet has been pumped into aqueducts. That is, of the 2.4 million acre feet that flowed through the Delta so far this year, 15 percent of it has been saved. That’s not much. But the devil is in the details.

Around this time of year, to protect fish, the “Integrated Early Winter Pulse Protection Action” is put into effect. For two weeks, pumping is restricted to prevent the possibility of endangered fish – allegedly pushed downstream by storm driven accelerated current in the Delta – from getting trapped in the powerful pumps that lift water out of the Delta and into the aqueducts. But where is the evidence that turning down the pumps is doing any good? If this is about the endangered Smelt, and if they are so critical to the Delta ecosystem, where are they?

If the environmental benefits of restricted pumping during storms are debatable, the consequences are not. During the first 22 days of 2024, before the pumps were turned down, 24 percent of the outbound Delta flow was diverted into the aqueducts. On average, 36,000 acre feet per day flowed out of the Delta and into the ocean.

During the subsequent 14 day partial shutdown of the pumps, 89,000 acre feet per day was permitted to flow out to the ocean. Between January 23 and February 6, the Delta pumps were operating at a mere 27 percent of capacity during not one, but two major storms. During this period, if both Delta pumps had operated at full capacity, the daily flow from the Delta into the San Francisco Bay would still have been 187 percent more than the pre-pulse flow, and an additional 297,000 acre feet could have been diverted to flow south and into storage.

Turning down the pumps for these past two weeks, therefore, deprived Californians of a quantity of water that is arguably worth billions. Let’s not forget that our state legislature intends to spend $7 billion (before overruns) to restrict urban water use to 42 gallons per day per person and kill all “nonfunctional” lawns, in order to save around 400,000 acre feet per year.

The activists, ideologues, vendors, contractors, consultants, nonprofit corporations, journalists, opinion shapers, and experts that control and serve California’s state water agencies need to consider their credibility outside their own powerful echo chamber. Restricting Delta pumping during two big storms is another example of how they are squeezing the life out of farmers and urban water agencies, and by extension, the people of California. But watch out. Spring is coming, and it isn’t just rain clouds that are clearing up.

For the last 40 years, agency scientists have been able to set policy without serious opposition. This unwarranted bureaucratic power is based on the landmark case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.” It finds that “when a legislative delegation to an administrative agency on a particular issue or question is not explicit but rather implicit, a court may not substitute its own interpretation of the statute for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrative agency.”

What that ruling has done is empower activist bureaucrats hired by biased government agencies to present analysis developed internally or through contractors, and turn that analysis into policy, and if anyone challenging these expert opinions brings their own equally credentialed experts into the courtroom, the judge is required to defer to the government agency’s experts and disregard the plaintiff’s experts. But the precedent set by this 1984 case was challenged before the US Supreme Court last month, with a ruling expected later this year.

If courts are no longer required to defer to an agency’s expert, California’s water agencies are going to have a lot of explaining to do, starting with why they’re letting millions of acre feet of fresh water pour into the San Francisco Bay every year, during “bomb cyclones” that, even while they wreak fury on the state, also bestow plenty of water for fish and for people.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Comparing the Delta Tunnel versus Desalination

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Debates over the efficacy of water projects often focus on the monthly cost to end users. For example, in May 2022, a few days before the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny the final permit to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, the influential Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik fretted that it “might drive up the average household water bill in Orange County by $3 to $6 per month.”

Is that all? People of all incomes spend that much money every week buying cases of bottled water, or, for that matter, $3 will get you one-half of a Big Mac burger. Up to $6 a month is a manageable cost, and in any case water districts have programs to alleviate these costs for qualifying low income households.

One of the biggest concerns about desalination projects is the financial cost to build them. Another frequently heard criticism is that they use too much energy. But as with all things, the relevant question is compared to what?

From this perspective, a relevant comparison is the estimated cost for the Huntington Beach Desalination plant versus the estimated cost for the proposed Delta Tunnel. We must bear in mind that the Delta Tunnel, if it is ever built, probably won’t add one drop to California’s water supply. Every acre foot that makes it through that tunnel will probably be one less acre foot that gets moved into the aqueducts from existing intakes on the southern edge of the Delta. But let’s pretend this water is truly additive. How does the cost of this tunnel compare to a desalination plant?

Rather than evaluate these costs based on the eventual monthly price hike to the consumer, which is a complex exercise fraught with subjectivity, it is revealing to examine a simpler metric. How much does it cost to build the project, divided by the amount of acre feet it is projected to supply per year? After all, most of what goes into monthly water bills is recovery of the massive costs incurred to build the storage, delivery and treatment infrastructure.

For the Huntington Beach proposal, calculating this ratio is straightforward. It was to be an ungraded twin to the Carlsbad plant, estimated to cost $1.4 billion to produce 55,000 acre-feet of fresh water per year. That’s a capital cost of $25,455 per acre foot of annual supply. What about the Delta Tunnel?

The most recent official estimate of the cost is $16 billion, an estimate which brings to mind California’s high speed rail project which was once projected to cost $30 billion, and now is estimated to cost over $130 billion – if it ever gets built. According to the Sierra Club, the inflation adjusted currently estimated cost for the Delta Tunnel is $56 billion. Let’s split the difference, slightly favoring the low estimate, and figure the Delta Tunnel can be built for $30 billion. What about the throughput?

These numbers can be found in a useful summary published in ENR California this past December. Drawing data from the just released final environmental impact report for the Delta Tunnel, it’s latest design is 44.6 miles long with an interior diameter of 36 feet and a pumping capacity that can range between 600 and 6,000 CFS, which equates to between 434,000 acre feet per year and 4.3 million acre feet per year. Quoting the California Dept. of Water Resources, the ENR report states the current one-tunnel design is “still planned to yield about 500,000 acre-ft of water per year.”

Let’s imagine this tunnel gets built at the absurdly optimistic low price of $16 billion. In that case, at a yield of 500,000 acre feet per year, that’s a capital cost of $32,000 per acre foot, 26 percent more than desalination. A best case scenario? Let’s go with a $30 billion construction cost and an average movement of 1 million acre feet per year. That’s still $30,000 per acre foot, clearly more than desalination. And with desalination, you’re not fighting for your allocation every year.

Concern about the energy cost to desalinate ocean water also doesn’t hold up when compared to the pumping energy needed for interbasin transfers such as via California’s remarkable state water project. Transporting water from south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta all the way to Los Angeles requires six pump stations with a cumulative lift of nearly 3,300 feet. To move one million acre feet per year, the entire distance would require a continuous power input of approximately 400 megawatts, although some of that energy is recovered on the seaward side of the mountain as that water flows downhill into Los Angeles. The energy required to desalinate one million acre feet of fresh water from the ocean? Also 400 megawatts. There is a rough parity between the energy required to desalinate, and the energy required to move water from the Delta all they way south into Southern California.

When comparing the option of desalination with the option of the proposed Delta Tunnel, in terms of both financial cost and energy cost, desalination is a competitive option, if not clearly better. What is also clear about desalination in California is its potential to offer the final link in an integrated local water supply strategy that would put these megacities completely independent of imported water.

For example, the Orange County Water District, serving 2.5 million people, recycles 130,000 acre feet per year of wastewater, with projects underway to increase their capture and use of local baseflow and storm runoff to 210,000 acre feet per year. With capacious aquifers to store excess runoff in wet years, when these projects are completed they estimate their remaining import requirement to average only 50,000 acre feet per year, less than what the denied Huntington Beach desalination plant would have produced.

A similar story can be told for Los Angeles County, where projects that are either proposed or already in the works will bring their wastewater reuse up over 500,000 acre feet per year, with ongoing projects to harvest more local baseflow and stormwater expected to add another 550,000 acre feet per year. Depending on just how hard Los Angeles squeezes their residents with rationing, they are on track to be within 50,000 to 100,000 acre feet of being independent of imported water. Desalination could fill that gap.

Desalination offers a source of water that is local and impervious to disruptions in supply from other sources. It may not be the cheapest source of new water, but neither is the Delta Tunnel. There are proposals for fish friendly projects to withdraw additional millions of acre feet from the Delta during winter storms that could cost far less. Responsible regulators would investigate these options before saddling California taxpayers with another make-work financial debacle.

California’s farmers and urban residents have a shared interest in water abundance and a resilient infrastructure that supplies water from diverse sources. They should work together to advocate for common sense projects that achieve both of these objectives.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Klamath Basin “restoration” is at what cost?

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If you scan news reports and search results for Klamath Dams removal, the news is universally upbeat. “The river will run free again.” “A step towards justice.” “Largest river restoration project in American history!” But as waters now drain out of the reservoirs behind these half-demolished dams for the last time, unanswered questions persist.

How this project will impact the region’s agricultural economy, and whether or not it’s even the most environmentally worthwhile use of mitigation funds on the Klamath watershed is not beyond debate. In fact, if you speak with nearly everyone actually living along the middle and upper Klamath, you’ll get informed opinions and testimonials that are completely different from what you’ll find in the downstate press, or from press releases from the many NGOs, agencies, and government contractors partaking of this half-a-billion dollar taxpayer-funded bonanza, or via any mainstream social media or search engines.

It isn’t hard to figure out why opponents of dam removal have been drowned out. The population of Siskiyou County is 44,118. The population of neighboring Modoc County is 8,661. To save their farms and ranches, these people hold bake sales. The special interests chasing that half-billion in mitigation funds (likely just the first tranche) bring with them the combined weight of countless state and federal agencies, powerful environmentalist organizations, and assorted civil engineering and environmental vendors hungry for a huge contract. It’s no contest.

It would take volumes to adequately describe the sequence of events that has led to the removal of dams on the Klamath, or the observations and theories and events leading up to the decision. But voices that contradict the prevailing narrative and policies haven’t been heard. They would include the Siskiyou County Water Users, Klamath Basin Crisis (a Facebook group), and “Shut Down & Fed Up,” representing upriver agricultural communities. From talking with members of these organizations and others, a story emerges of deception, distortion, misrepresentation, harassment, betrayal, and ultimately, abandonment.

Here are questions that have not been answered to the satisfaction of the people most affected by the removal of the dams. It is in everyone’s interests, including the Native Americans who have been told that dam removal will restore salmon populations, to revisit these questions with honest debate between experts holding differing opinions. What if after all this work is done, the salmon still don’t recover? That is a distinct possibility, yet in the following questions there might, just might, lie more restorative alternatives.

1 – Where is evidence that salmon ever swam upstream into the upper Klamath River? Aren’t the canyons where the dams are built crossed by lava flows that prevent salmon from continuing upriver? Won’t the red band trout upriver just eat any introduced salmon, just like the bass do in the Sacramento-San Joaquin rivers?

2 – Is it true that once the dams are gone, it will be found necessary to blast “volitional passages” through natural rock formations that would otherwise prevent salmon from swimming further upstream? How is this consistent with restoring the river to its original natural state?

3 – Since increasing the flow of the lower Klamath to wash away the parasite Ceratomyxa shasta that kills salmon has not helped, why, just once, hasn’t the opposite tactic been tried? Why not reduce summer flows so the parasite, which lives on the banks of the river, will dry out and die?

4 – Isn’t it true that before dams and diversions were altering the natural flow of the Klamath, the flow from the upper Klamath downriver would nearly dry up most summers, with most of whatever summertime flow there was coming from springs and tributaries? Why then is there such an emphasis on summertime flows?

5 – Isn’t it also true that historically, most of the flow from the upper Klamath went into Tule Lake, and water would only flow naturally downstream in high volumes during floods?

6 –  Won’t maintaining healthy summertime flows on the lower river artificially be harder if these mid-river dams are removed? Won’t the water released from the bottom of those reservoirs be cooler than water that has to flow all the way across the high desert from the Upper Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon?

7 – When the four mid-river dams are removed, will water in Upper Klamath Lake behind the Link River Dam that normally is allocated to maintain the Tule Lake and irrigate the upriver farms be used instead to be sent downstream? And will that even be helpful (see #4, #5 and #6)?

8 – The sucker fish in the Klamath Lake are also threatened by parasites. Why has policy been to keep more water in Klamath Lake in an attempt to save the sucker fish, when historically the lake has been shallow and would recede in the summer? Don’t the parasites and predators that attack sucker fish spawn in the shallows on the edge of the lake and would die if they dried out?

9 – People owning property along the Klamath and its tributaries used to keep “hatchery boxes” along the banks, where they would keep salmon fry until they were big enough to release. This practice is now prohibited, allegedly to prevent disease. But might not the benefit of reviving private hatchery boxes outweigh the risks?

10 – Why hasn’t more attention been given to the harvesting of salmon by international fishing vessels, along with the rising population of killer whales and seals that eat salmon? Why aren’t there steps taken to remove seals that crowd the estuaries during salmon runs?

11 – Won’t increasing flows down from the volcanic river bed in the upper river result in introducing more phosphate into the water, which will stimulate the growth of algae?

12 – For the amount of money being spent to remove dams that might actually benefit salmon by retaining the capacity to release cold water into the lower Klamath River, why not remediate major tributaries on the river instead? Why not invest in restoring narrow channels in the Salmon River? Didn’t floods in 1964 alter the hydrology of that river, rendering the channel wider and shallower, destroying what had until then been ideal habitat for salmon spawning? Why not fix the Salmon River and other tributaries? It would cost a lot less.

And then there’s the 20 million tons of silt behind these dams, silt that will clog downstream gravel spawning beds for who knows how long.

All but forgotten, there are the farmers and ranchers who have given their lives to producing food for us to eat. Better to import beef from Brazil and barley from Canada. Is that it?

Everything we see and hear about the Klamath River dam removal project is positive. But nobody in any position to slow the momentum of this project wanted to consider the possibility that the Klamath River ecosystem and the species therein could have been restored faster, and for far less money, even while leaving those dams intact.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Water Rationing is the Worst Way to Build Resiliency

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When a public policy decision is flawed, and the reasons it is flawed are simple and obvious, and the consequences are huge and costly, the appropriate response for a concerned observer is to call attention to the looming debacle. Not just once, but over and over and over again. An example of an impending economic and environmental disaster is the special interest driven mad rush to deploy floating wind turbines off the California coast. It’s insane, and we must return soon to the topic of offshore wind in the context of California’s overall energy strategy. In the meantime, let’s take yet another look at an equally distressing policy disaster, the flawed implementation of a flawed piece of legislation, SB 1157 by Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles), otherwise known as urban water rationing.

The “rulemaking” phase of SB 1157 is now in the hands of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), which soldiers onward in what it might be fair to characterize as blithe indifference to the concerns of urban water agencies throughout the state. It’s hard to imagine why water agencies would object to these new rules, if all they want are new ways to raise their rates, squeeze their customers, and build their empires. Because that’s exactly what SB 1157 is going to do, and yet there is an ongoing and mighty chorus of executives and experts from these agencies who are putting the interests of their ratepayers first, and asking the SWRCB to back off.

California’s Office of Legislative Analyst – an office that is about as impartial as one may find within the massive Sacramento state bureaucracy, agrees. In a report released on January 4, 2024, the LAO has determined SWRCB’s proposed requirements as “too costly and too complicated,” claiming the proposed requirements go “beyond what DWR recommended, thereby reducing suppliers’ flexibility for how to achieve water use efficiency goals.” The recommendations LAO makes include “allow alternative compliance pathways for suppliers,” “simplify the process to apply for variances,” “clarify who should collect landscape data,” and to “align regulations with new law on nonfunctional turf” (to digress: There is no such thing as “nonfunctional turf”).

From the bowels of the SWRCB bureaucracy comes this steaming document, a “Proposed Regulatory Framework” for “Making Conservation a California Way of Life.” This document is only 14 pages long, but nonetheless constitutes a “framework” guaranteed to create full employment for data gatherers, analysts and compliance personnel in perpetuity, employing thousands of people and costing billions of dollars while not producing one drop of new water.

Notwithstanding the mind-numbing complexity of these proposed regulations is their fastidious, panoptic scope. For water agencies to determine their outdoor landscaping water supply budgets, they must categorize every square foot of every residential piece of real estate into “Irrigable Irrigated,” “Irrigable Not Irrigated,” and “Not Irrigated” areas, then calculate water budgets for every unique segment based on a formula that takes into account the targeted standard, the “effective precipitation,” the “evapotranspiration,” the landscape area, and the “unit conversion factor.” All of these variables, needless to say, will be in continuous flux, requiring continuous revisions. 

This sort of obsessive micromanagement would have Orwell, Hayek, and Rand turning in their graves, as it induces chronic dyspepsia in the living. Enough already.

An article published on January 5, 2024 in Cal Matters summarizes the LAO’s report, and includes quotes that provide insight into the mentality of the conservation crusaders behind SB 1157. An example of the catastrophe rhetoric that for years has effectively stimulated the collective amygdala of California’s voters comes from Felicia Marcus, a career environmentalist who until February 2019 was chair of State Water Board. “The goal is both to make each locality more resilient to the nightmare curveballs climate change is throwing at us, and to do it in a way that integrates efficiency first and foremost as the most cost and carbon effective measure in the long run.”

“Nightmare curveballs.” Is your limbic system activated yet? But “nightmare curveballs” are precisely why we would NOT want to ration our urban water supply down to a just-in-time minimum.

Also quoted in the Cal Matters article was Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute,” stating that “conservation and efficiency are the cheapest, fastest ways to meet California’s water needs as climate change renders supplies more variable and uncertain.” Well… maybe. And maybe not.

An independent study found the estimated cost to implement SB 1157 is $7 billion, to save an estimated 440,000 acre feet per year. You could desalinate 440,000 acre feet for that amount of money, and desalination is the most expensive option. You could also recycle urban wastewater, or invest in ways to harvest, store and treat urban storm runoff, and come up with 440,000 acre feet for far less than $7 billion. According to the Pacific Institute’s own 2022 study, wastewater recycling could yield up to an additional 3 million acre feet per year, and urban runoff harvesting could yield up to another 770,000 acre feet in dry years, and up to 3.9 million acre feet per year in wet years. Put the money there.

Not mentioned in the Cal Matters article in what was an otherwise useful summary of reactions to the current state of rulemaking to implement SB 1157: How much water? Give us the numbers! Could it be that in California’s urban water use trends, the numbers make a compelling case for more supply instead of more conservation? Judge for yourself. 

In 1995, per capita urban water use in California peaked at nearly 240 gallons per day. In 2018, per capita water use had dropped to about 160 gallons per day. This precipitous drop is also reflected in total urban water use, which peaked in 1995 at around 9 MAF, when California’s population was only 31.5 million. By 2018, total urban water use had dropped to 8 MAF and has held steady at that level ever since, despite the state’s population having risen to 39 million. 

Maybe we have squeezed all the conservation out of California’s urban centers as we can reasonably squeeze out of them, and maybe we should use all that money that SB 1157 is going to cost to increase our water supply, instead of installing the instruments of restriction and rationing.

Surplus water equals climate resiliency.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Newsom Should Fast Track a Fish Friendly Delta Diversion Project

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During a 2022 press conference outside a desalination plant under construction in Antioch, Gov. Gavin Newsom signaled a potential tectonic shift in how California addresses its water challenges. In a hopeful sign, Newsom said Californians need to move “away from a scarcity mindset to one more of abundance.”

Then last March, the governor issued an executive order to make it easier for local water agencies to capture runoff from that season’s epic storms to recharge aquifers. In November, he moved to shorten the review process for developing the planned Sites Reservoir north of Sacramento. These are welcome actions, but much more is needed.

Without more investment and regulatory relief, Californians face a future of chronic water scarcity. Our system of water storage and distribution is in trouble. We have depleted aquifers, nearly empty reservoirs on the Colorado River, and a precarious network of century-old levees that are one big earthquake away from catastrophic failure. Then there’s always the next severe drought.

Even if the governor aggressively pushes for more investment in water supply infrastructure and more regulatory relief so projects can go forward, the state is again staring down a budget deficit. Bonds to fund water infrastructure projects are going to have a hard time getting approval from voters already overburdened with among the highest taxes in America.

While creativity is demanded, Sacramento’s only consistent legislative solution is for us to use less water.

In one egregious example, lawmakers in 2022 passed Senate Bill 1157 to restrict indoor water consumption to 42 gallons per person per day, and ration water for outdoor landscaping to conserve up to 450,000 acre-feet per year by 2030. Yet an independent analysis said implementation, enforcement and needed system upgrades exceed the value of water savings, costing $7.4 billion over 10 years.

To put things in perspective, California delivers about 7.5 million acre-feet for urban consumption and about 30 million acre-feet for farm irrigation. Even in dry years, another 25 million acre-feet are diverted and used to maintain aquatic ecosystems; in wet years, that number can soar to more than 60 million acre-feet.

Spending money to enforce water rationing on California’s urban residents will not deliver new water. But it will have a divisive impact. Resentful urban residents will demand that farmers, who use much more water than cities, make proportional cuts.

There is a better approach: urban water agencies and farm water agencies working together to create abundant water for everyone. The potential implementation costs of SB 1157 may be enough to fund a fleet of desalination plants with 450,000 acre-feet per year of perennial output. But it is in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where that money could be put to transformative use.

Imagine allocating a mere 200 acres on an existing delta island to divert up to 30,000 acre-feet per day into aquifer storage for subsequent use by farms and cities. Because these islands are below sea level and protected by levees, infiltration beds of gravel covering perforated water-harvesting pipes could be built, with a parallel levee constructed to form a channel. Once that work is complete, openings could be cut into the existing levee on both ends of the new channel to allow water to flow through.

Extensive study has already been performed on this proposal, promoted by the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley, a “coalition of San Joaquin Valley community leaders, businesses, water agencies, local governments and agricultural representatives.” The next step is to build a $1 million pilot project to serve as final proof of concept.

The total project cost is around $5 billion for an infiltration channel, settling ponds, pumps and new aqueduct transport to aquifer storage with interties to major existing north-south aqueducts. During storm events, even in dry years, it would be possible to divert and store 2 million acre-feet annually and much more in wet years. The excessive flow through the delta during California’s atmospheric rivers is well documented. This is hazardous, wasted floodwater. Diverting only an additional fraction of it will yield millions of acre-feet per year.

Like all hypothetical ideas with great promise, its proof-of-concept pilot project should be built and tested immediately.

A fish-friendly delta diversion project of this magnitude could be part of a larger project to harden the delta levees against earthquakes and severe storms. Bringing urban and agricultural water districts together to seriously evaluate a new proposal to divert massive quantities of storm runoff from the delta may require the power and charisma of the governor’s office.

Newsom, who seems to understand the problem in calling on us to abandon a “scarcity mindset,” has a tremendous opportunity to make that a reality.

This article originally appeared in Ag Alert.

Challenging the Water Orthodoxy

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Along with energy, water abundance is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for conditions we value and aspire to achieve: prosperity, affordability, resilience, and equity. But judging from California’s restrictive policies over the past fifty years, continuously escalating in severity and scope, you would think the opposite is true. California state water policy, despite occasional rhetorical nods towards the value of abundance, remains resolutely committed to enforcing water scarcity.

The laws and regulations that reflect this bias may come from the legislature, but their impetus comes from the culture. Environmentalism that is often extreme and often misguided and unbalanced is promoted by powerful nonprofit organizations and their donors, and reinforced by journalists and commentators who tend to be remarkably uninterested in explanations that might challenge the scarcity orthodoxy.

An example of this is found in a December 27 article in the Los Angeles Times, “Their land is sinking. But Tulare Lake farm barons defy calls to cut groundwater pumping.” Apart from the omissions, this is a good article that makes good points. Nobody denies that groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley has been severely overdrafted. Nobody disputes the fact that in the Tulare Lake Basin, and elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley, aquifer depletion has led to land subsidence between 5 and 30 feet.

Also beyond debate are the consequences – damaged aqueducts, roads and rail, degraded levees and greater flood risk to local towns, collapsing aquifers with permanently reduced capacity to recharge, and shallower wells, often serving homes and communities, that have gone dry. It’s a problem. But the LA Times article only told half the story. And, of course, it’s framed as “farm barons” against the world. Here’s the rest of the story.

The reliability of water supply under the State Water Project (SWP) has changed drastically in the past 20 years. In the first 30 years of operation, the SWP supplied 100 percent of contracted supplies in all years except those of extreme drought. However, in the past 20 years the SWP has provided an average supply of only 34 percent of contract water for agricultural and 66 percent for residential, municipal, and industrial. In 2021 the SWP only delivered 5 percent of contracted water, only 20 percent In 2020, 35 percent in 2018, 20 percent in 2015, 5 percent in 2014. Even in years with excessive rainfall, such as in 2017, only 85 percent was delivered. So far in 2024, even though reservoir levels are above normal for this time of year, the SWP has only guaranteed farmers 10 percent of their contracted allocation.

When State Water Project deliveries are cut off, farmers must deplete groundwater to survive.

There are alternatives.

A good resource for anyone striving to offer balanced reporting on California’s water policies are the articles and posts coming from the Center for California Water Resources Policy and Management, an organization that conducts and compiles scientific research and data to “guide the state and federal resource agencies toward long-promised adaptive management.” In the Center’s article “The State of California’s salmon management policy, factors are identified that may have a more decisive impact on healthy populations of salmon, smelt, and other delta species than the current priority, which is to systematically increase the amount of water that must be left in the rivers as “unimpeded flow.” For example, “Current hatchery operations, ocean salmon fishery practices, and non-native predatory fish regulations all undermine the goals established by State law intended to enhance natural production of salmon.”

Mismanaged salmon hatcheries. The far greater impact of commercial fishing on salmon populations. Excessive protection for introduced predators. Before we cause additional damage to California’s farm economy and ration water to its cities, why aren’t these other policies being reevaluated?

An analysis by Politifact disputes this statement made by Congressman Kevin McCarthy, “While California’s population has doubled since the 1970s, we haven’t completed a single major (water) storage project in that time.” But in its debunking it demonstrates a common affliction and perennial crutch of any biased observer – scope insensitivity. In contradicting McCarthy’s assertion, Politifact writes that the “state had added more than 1.6 million acre-feet of water storage since 1979.” That sounds like a lot! Nope. There is critical missing context. Prior to 1979, the state added a total of 50 million acre-feet of storage capacity, almost all of it built in the 1950s and 1960s.

In that more pertinent context, McCarthy is right – for nearly 50 years, we have done almost nothing to significantly improve California’s ability to harvest and store storm runoff. There are millions of acre feet available per year of additional fresh water if we make the investments to capture it. According to data provided by the California Department of Water Resources and compiled by the Public Policy Institute of California, Delta outflows to the ocean between 1980 and 2021 averaged 15 million acre feet per year. Just capturing one-third of that water – most of it during very wet years such as the 2022-23 water season just ended – would guarantee water abundance in California forever, and all the prosperity, resilience, affordability and equity that would follow as a consequence.

There are plenty of ways to deliver water abundance to California’s farms and cities without causing environmental havoc. Scarcity is not an inevitable byproduct of being environmentally responsible. If Californians are serious about setting a positive example for the world, we must recognize that many of the environmental policies we have adopted are harming the environment more than they are helping the environment, at the same time as they are damaging our economy and our communities, and destroying the American dream. There is an inspiring, entirely feasible alternative. We can choose abundance.

This article was originally published in the California Globe.

The Price of Scarcity

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How much water does $7 billion buy?

In so many ways that it almost defies description, California’s lawmakers have relied flawed logic to justify recently passed laws that will impose punitive urban water rationing. Rather than undertake the Sisyphean task of enumerating them, let’s just focus on one critical factor: the opportunity cost.

California’s urban water consumption is already down from over 9 MAF/year in the 1990s to only around 7.5 MAF/year today despite adding 8 million people to the state’s population over the past 30 years. Practical conservation measures have already been taken, so now the state legislature wants us to kill “nonfunctional” lawns (and the trees that depend on lawn irrigation), and limit indoor water use to 42 gallons per day. The cost to implement these destructive, draconian edicts is estimated at over $7 billion. The benefit? An estimated savings of around 400,000 acre feet per year (this Dept. of Water Resources study estimates total savings of 340,515 acre feet per year – ref. page 61).

This is ridiculous. Not because Californians don’t face water scarcity. They do. The big reservoirs on the Colorado River, Lake Power and Lake Mead, stored over 50 MAF behind the dams 20 years ago, and now they’re nearly empty. As a result, California is likely to lose at least a million acre feet a year, maybe more, from its Colorado River allocation, because the water’s not there. In the San Joaquin Valley, groundwater pumping has long exceeded natural recharge by 2 MAF/year, and to restore those aquifers before they collapse, at least another 2 MAF/year has to stay underground. And then there’s the ever present threat of multi-year droughts.

So if we’re looking for 3 MAF/year or more just to eliminate acute water scarcity in California, isn’t there a better way to spend $7 million than merely to squeeze another 400,000 acre feet out of our urban residents? Let us count the ways.

Fish Friendly Delta Diversions: The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta encompasses about 500,000 acres of waterways, levees, and farmland. Imagine allocating a mere 200 acres on an existing Delta island to divert up to 30,000 acre-feet per day into aquifer storage for subsequent use by farms and cities. Because these islands are below sea level and protected by levees, infiltration beds of gravel covering perforated water harvesting pipes could be built, with a parallel levee constructed to form a channel. Once that work is complete, openings could be cut into the existing levee on both ends of the new channel to allow water to flow through. Extensive study has already been performed on this project, with the next step being a pilot project to serve as final proof of concept. The cost for the pilot? Under $1 million. The estimated cost to implement? The total project cost for an infiltration channel, settling ponds, pumps, and new aqueduct transport to aquifer storage with interties to major existing north-south aqueducts: under $5 billion. During storm events even in dry years it would be possible to divert and store 2 MAF/year using this system, much more in wet years. Why isn’t every water worrier in California talking about this?

Build Desalination Plants Everywhere: Cue the skeptics. But the choice of the word “everywhere” wasn’t merely trolling. Credible plans to build inland plants to desalinate the Salton Sea are being taken seriously by environmentalists, as they should be. And to reduce the salt even in a reduced and managed Salton Sea would require a massive desalination plant; one mainstream study put the needed capacity at 100,000 acre feet per year. That is twice the capacity of the Carlsbad desalination plant that supplies up to 10 percent of San Diego County’s water. Desalination is a burgeoning, welcome salvation, providing desperately needed water in every other arid, ocean bordering metropolis on earth. For $7 billion, even using Carlsbad prices, Californians could construct desalination plants with a total capacity of 350,000 acre feet per year, and altogether they would only draw 140 megawatts of electricity. With emerging technologies – and perhaps some welcome regulatory reform – desalination plants would use even less energy and cost far less to build.

Build the Sites Reservoir – Now: When the decision was made in 1963 to build the San Luis Reservoir, the 2 MAF behemoth was completed in four years. It was part of the 1957 Water Plan. Also part of that plan were 48 other prospective locations for off-stream storage. For nearly 70 years, the Sites Reservoir has been the on-again, off-again twin to San Luis. Scaled down to 1.5 MAF of capacity, and no longer planned to have a pump storage component, the Sites Reservoir is nonetheless a vital next step in delivering water security to Californians. At an estimated cost of $4 billion and an estimated yield of 500,000 acre feet per year, this reservoir should have been completed years ago.

Stop Leaving So Much Water in the Rivers: This unimaginable heresy defies the legislative momentum of decades, and threatens those institutions that thrive on conflict, litigation, scarcity, emotional arguments, and apocalyptic hyperbole. Setting aside that dark but accurate assessment of what we’re up against, let’s consider the case in favor of arresting the trend. To begin with, if we want to save salmon, why aren’t we raising the limits on bass fishing? Bass, a nonnative predator, eat salmon. And if we want to save smelt, why not put smelt hatcheries next to nurseries in managed wetlands that exclude the nonnative Mississippi Silverside predators, only releasing them once they’re big enough to evade them? Why aren’t we planting shade trees along our waterways to get the water temperature down that way? Why aren’t we upgrading our water treatment plants so we don’t have to goose the flow of the rivers just to flush nitrogen out of the SF Bay and elsewhere? Why don’t we thin our forests not only to prevent superfires, but so more rainfall will percolate, feeding the springs and streams? Why don’t we recognize that flood irrigation has its place in modern agriculture, not only because it desalinates the soil, kills rodents, and primes the ground for a winter cover crop, but because the water recharges aquifers, taking pressure off river withdrawals for farm irrigation?

There are a lot of things that can be done for $7 billion that increase the supply of water, instead of imposing restrictions on urban residents that diminish their quality of life. Lowering indoor water use is in many respects a pointless exercise anyway, since the supposedly wasted water flows to a treatment plant where it is put right back into rivers. Along the coast, these treatment plants are being retrofit so the wastewater is pumped right back into the system. How is indoor water ever therefore wasted, if Californians average a comfortable 60 gallons per day instead of the to-be-mandated 42?

The real opportunities to achieve water abundance in California will not come from cutting back urban water use by 400,000 acre feet per year at stupendous cost. And while it is tempting for critics of urban water rationing to point to the thirsty farms, consuming a much greater 30 MAF/year, that is dead end thinking. Yes, we can take a million acres of irrigated farmland out of production. That would save 3-4 MAF/year. But if that’s all we do, instead of seizing the opportunity to invest in more water supply projects, we will just add food scarcity to water scarcity. We are all in this together, North and South, farm and city. We should be working together, and speaking with one voice, demanding investment in abundance, rather than paying for imposition of scarcity.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.