Tag Archive for: water rationing

Water Rationing is the Worst Way to Build Resiliency

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.

Climate Discussion at Orange County Water Summit 2023

AUDIO: The climate change panel at the Orange County Water Summit, October 13, 2023. My remarks begin at 14:20, 30:45, and 48:25. Main point? Senate Bill 1157, which will limit indoor water use to 42 gallons per person per day by 2030, will cost an estimated $7 billion (before overruns) and save an estimated 413,000 acre feet per year. This yields an extremely poor cost/benefit. That amount, 413,000 acre feet, is less than one-half of one percent of the water Californians withdraw, on average in dry years, to serve the needs of the state’s farms, cities, and to maintain ecosystems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_KVyruHqhs&t=748s

California Legislature Destroys Incentive to Achieve Water Resiliency

The California State Water Board is currently drafting the regulations needed to implement Senate Bill 1157, which is possibly the most misguided, unnecessary, intrusive, expensive disaster of a law ever passed by the state legislature.

Passed and signed by Governor Newsom in 2022, SB 1147 requires California’s water agencies to limit residential indoor water use to 47 gallons per person per day starting in 2025 and 42 gallons in 2030. The theme promoted by the State Water Board as they conduct hearings and solicit public comments is “Making Water Conservation a Way of Life.” Rationing would be a more apt description of what’s coming for California’s households.

It isn’t as if conservation hasn’t been a way of life in California for decades. Despite the state’s population growing to over 39 million today, total urban water consumption in the state has been falling each year since the mid-1990s. At just over 7 million acre feet per year in 2022, urban water consumption hasn’t been this low since 1985, when the population of the state was only 26 million.

As California’s water bureaucrats move towards implementing SB 1157, the officially stated goal is to reduce total urban consumption by 400,000 acre feet per year by 2030. Put into the perspective of California’s total water withdrawals per year, this is very small potatoes. Diversions for agriculture average 30 million acre feet per year, more than four times the urban use, and diversions — captured rainfall that is released from reservoirs during the summer and fall — to maintain ecosystem health range between 20 million acre feet in dry years to over 60 million acre feet in wet years. A 400,000 acre foot reduction in urban water consumption represents barely more than one-half of one percent of the amount of water California diverts and manages even in its driest years.

For the uninitiated, SRIA stands for “Standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment,” an analysis that is required for any proposed state regulation that may have an economic impact exceeding $50 million. In March 2023, the State Water Resources Control Board submitted a SRIA to the California Department of Finance. It evaluated the impact of conservation mandates on more than 400 cities and water agencies, and concluded that over the period from 2025 through 2040, the financial impact would be a net benefit of $1.2 billion.

But despite weighing in at an impressive 186 pages, this study is flawed. For example, consumers (with subsidies from water agencies) will have to purchase high-efficiency toilets and washers at an estimated total cost of $1 billion. If only 10 million of California’s 13 million households had to purchase these upgraded appliances, that would be $100 per household, not nearly enough. Yet the “benefit” to residential suppliers is estimated at $5 billion. How? Recouping capital investments and paying overhead constitute most of a municipal water bill, and water agencies under this regulation will have to help subsidize consumer purchases, install dual meters to measure indoor vs outdoor water use, hire more staff to monitor and enforce use restrictions, and meanwhile, continue to upgrade their facilities to cope with, for example, PFAS contaminants. Then they have to spread these fixed costs and additional costs over fewer units of water sold to their ratepayers. Where is this $5 billion in “savings” to consumers going to come from?

Independent experts agree that the SRIA was flawed. Last month, MESA Water District commissioned a review of the State Water Resources Control Board’s SRIA, and tore it apart. With respect to the overestimated benefits of these regulations, MESA stated (1) “It significantly overstates supplier variable production costs and appears to double count these costs,” (2) it bases its estimates of avoided water production cost primarily on wholesale water rates even though these rates embed a sizable portion of fixed costs which in the long run are not avoidable, and (3) “it mistakes the underlying causes for escalating wholesale water rates and consequently overstates the rate at which truly avoidable costs will escalate in the future.”

With respect to the underestimated costs of these regulations, MESA writes (1) “It uses constant unit costs for conservation measures despite assuming a rapid and massive ramp-up of these programs in the first five years of the regulation,” (2) “it underestimates customer costs by ignoring the time-value-of-money costs of shifting future expenditures closer to the present,” (3) it underestimates the costs of mixed use meter to dedicated irrigation meter conversions by only counting the initial installation and inspection costs and ignoring the annual maintenance, billing, and meter replacement costs,” and (4) it grossly underestimates the costs of program creation and reporting as well as the costs to implement the new ‘Best Management Practices’ for commercial, industrial and institutional customers.”

All told, the MESA analysis estimates a net cost of $7.4 billion. For 400,000 acre feet per year of water.

The cost of water rationing isn’t merely felt financially. Imagine having to report how many people live in your home in order to qualify for your 42 gallon per person per day water allocation. Imagine having to justify your “outdoor water budget” in order to keep your outdoor landscaping healthy. It is not necessary to put ourselves through this. Cost-effective supply-side solutions are plentiful. In the water season that just ended in California, over 25 million acre feet of water passed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and out to the Pacific. This is more than twice what is required for the health of Delta ecosystems, and if that water had been stored it would have offered enough supplemental supply to withstand several years of drought.

There are many ways to store this water that fulfill reasonable environmentalist concerns. For example, channels cut into Delta islands can have gravity-fed French Drains that move water without harming fish. Feasibility studies indicate that a 200 acre site could move 15,000 acre feet per day during storms, and this water could be stored in vacant underground aquifers that are, just in the San Joaquin Valley, estimated to have a capacity of 75 million acre feet.

Other ways to realize massive increases in urban water supplies were described in detail last year in a study released by the prestigious Pacific Institute. They estimated that just through capturing urban runoff, up to 3 million acre feet could be stored each year, and that by recycling urban waste water, capturing another 2 million acre feet per year is possible. Even if these figures are optimistic, they accurately identify two additional paths to water abundance that are necessary investments anyway. Harvesting rainfall through daylighting streams and diversions into aquifers will prevent flooding and will help mitigate toxic runoff from urban surfaces. Recycling and reusing urban wastewater will eliminate the nitrogen pollution still present in treated outfall. Other options to increase water supply are additional reservoirs (SitesTemperance FlatPachecoShasta enlargement, etc.), as well as desalination. There are plenty of ways to achieve water abundance in California.

Abundance and resilience are synonymous. Water rationing will not achieve the resilience that Californians are going to need in the future, whether it’s to adapt to prolonged droughts and bomb cyclones, or to cope with other potential disruptions to a precarious network of pipelines, pumping stations, and aqueducts. Precisely the opposite policy should be California’s legislative priority.

Water agencies need to be incentivized to increase their supply capacity, not reduce it to a fragile minimum that lacks any margin for error.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

California Bureaucrats Embrace Water Rationing

On October 4 the California State Water Board held a hearing to discuss how it will implement Senate Bill 1157, passed by the state legislature in 2022, which lowers indoor water-use standards to 47 gallons per person starting in 2025 and 42 gallons in 2030. The title of the hearing was “Making Water Conservation a Way of Life.”  Rationing would be a more apt term for what’s coming for California’s households.

It isn’t as if conservation hasn’t been a way of life in California for decades. Despite the growth of the state’s population to over 39 million today, total urban water consumption in the state has been falling each year since the mid 1990s. At just over 7 million acre-feet (MAF) per year in 2022, urban water consumption hasn’t been this low since 1985, when the population of the state was only 26 million.

That’s not enough, however, for California’s water bureaucrats, and the environmentalist organizations they answer to. As they move toward implementing S.B. 1157, their officially stated goal is to reduce total urban consumption by 400,000 acre-feet per year by 2030. Put into the perspective of California’s total water withdrawals per year, this is small potatoes. Diversions for agriculture average 30 MAF per year, more than four times the urban use, and diversions — captured rainfall that is released from reservoirs during the summer and fall — to maintain ecosystem health range between 20 MAF in dry years to over 60 MAF in wet years. A reduction of 400,000 acre-feet in urban water consumption represents barely more than one-half of 1 percent of the amount of water California diverts and manages even in its driest years.

To implement such a massively intrusive regime of rationing for such a meager result is perhaps a textbook example of diminishing returns. Anyone living in California, or visiting from out of state, has seen evidence of what has already been done. Faucets in commercial buildings and airports that squirt out barely enough water to get your hands wet and automatically turn off before you’ve rinsed away the soap. Washing machines that use almost no water, violently tossing and damaging delicate clothing, taking hours to complete a cycle, and requiring multiple cycles to get clothes clean. Dishwashers so ineffective that dishes have to be hand washed prior to being loaded into the dishwasher. Flow restrictors on shower heads that make it impossible to rinse shampoo out of long hair. Yet according to the state legislature, these measures don’t go far enough.

Next on the list are lawns, and by extension, trees. It is a fact, perhaps willfully ignored by environmental activists masquerading as responsible investigative journalists, that when lawns are allowed to die, the mature trees growing on those lawns also die, because the root system is adapted to surface watering. And what’s the matter with lawns, anyway? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, turf lawns are on average 30 degrees cooler than asphalt and can be as much as 40 degrees cooler than artificial turf. Lawns not only lower the urban heat-island effect, they absorb runoff during storms to reduce flooding and recharge aquifers. As for toxic fertilizers, widely applied to lawns, these can be regulated or restricted. But instead, California’s legislature is banning lawns on commercial properties. Expect water agencies, faced with draconian mandates to reduce their supply, to impose similar bans on homeowners.

None of this is necessary. California’s original water plan, written in 1957, called for an eventual statewide system capable of delivering 40 MAF to farms each year, and 10 million acre feet to cities. As it has turned out, what they envisioned was never completed, but it is nonetheless the most remarkable system of interbasin water transfers in the world, delivering around 30 MAF per year to California’s farmers and around 7 million acre feet to the cities. Compared to the magnificent projects completed in the 1950s and 1960s, it would not take much additional investment to bring the total for cities back up to 9 million acre feet, which is where it was in the 1990s.

Skeptics will point out that California may be experiencing more severe droughts, but they will also acknowledge that there will in some years be winters such as the one we just lived through, where the entire state is inundated with prolonged and heavy rains. In the water season just ended in California, over 25 MAF of water passed through the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and out to the Pacific. This is easily more than twice what is required for the health of delta ecosystems, and if that water had been stored it would have offered enough supplemental supply to easily withstand several years of drought. There are many ways to store this water that fulfill reasonable environmentalist sensibilities.

For example, channels cut into delta islands can have gravity-fed French drains that move water without harming fish. Engineering studies indicate that a 200-acre site could move 15,000 acre-feet per day during storms, and this water could be stored in vacant underground aquifers that are, just in the San Joaquin Valley alone, conservatively estimated to have a capacity of 75 MAF.

Other proposals also offer large-scale solutions to achieve water abundance. In a 2022 study, the Pacific Institute estimated that just through capturing urban runoff, up to 3 MAF could be stored each year, and that by recycling urban wastewater, capturing another 2 MAF per year is possible. And despite environmentalist objections, desalinating water from the Pacific Ocean has the potential to augment other local sources and render California’s massive southern coastal cities completely independent of imported water.

One of the trump cards wielded by environmentalists who want to ration California’s water is the connection between water and energy. They’re not wrong about the connection, but they overstate the problem. While energy is required to heat, treat, recycle, desalinate, and pump water, most of that energy is used for water heating. Overall, about 20 percent of California’s total energy consumption is allocated to water operations, but 80 percent of that is for heating. To put this in perspective, consider desalination, which is the next most energy-intensive water operation. Desalinating 1 million acre-feet of water per year would require a 400-megawatt input. That represents a 1.25 percent increase in California’s total electricity consumption, which in 2022 averaged 32 gigawatts. If California goes electric, something the state legislature is also determined to accomplish, they’ll have to find around 100 gigawatts, and allocating enough to desalinate a whopping million acre-feet of ocean water per year would require less than one-half of 1 percent of that.

Californians who are serious about climate change, unless they’re completely dominated by special interests and environmentalist extremists, need to take away the state’s many regulatory barriers to nuclear power and lobby the federal government to do likewise. They need to consider a more reasonable all-of-the-above approach to energy development, utilizing their abundant reserves of natural gas and oil, and commit to achieving energy abundance, which is a prerequisite to water abundance. As it is, the California legislature is doing the opposite.

What is being put in place today in California is a misguided set of laws that are removing the incentive for water agencies to invest in more water supplies. These laws will actually fine water agencies if they deliver too much water to their urban customers. To achieve the resilience that Californians are going to need in the future, whether it’s to adapt to prolonged droughts or to cope with other potential disruptions to a precarious network of pipelines, pumping stations, and aqueducts, precisely the opposite policy should be California’s legislative priority. Water agencies need to be incentivized to increase their supply capacity, not reduce it to a fragile minimum that lacks any margin for error.

An entirely new mentality must inform California’s voters and policy-makers, one that rejects rationing and embraces abundance. It is out of character for Californians, blessed with an innovative culture that inspires the world, to impose extreme restrictions on their residents. Water is life. Having as much as we need, affordable and abundant, is a goal that is achievable and sustainable. It’s time for Californians to reject extremist mandates and restore the quality of life that is in keeping with their heritage.

This article originally appeared in the National Review.

How Much Water Went Into Growing the Food We Eat?

The rains bypassed sunny California in January and February 2020, encouraging talk of another drought. California’s last drought was only declared over a year ago, after two wet winters in a row filled the states reservoirs. To cope with the last drought, instead of building more reservoirs and taking other measures to increase the supply of water, California’s policymakers imposed permanent rationing.

This predictable response ignores obvious solutions. Millions of acre feet of storm runoff can not only be stored in new reservoirs, but in underground aquifers with massive unused capacity. Additional millions of acre feet can be recovered by treating and reusing wastewater, and by joining the rest of the developed nations living in arid climates who have turned to large scale desalination.

All of this, however, would require a change in philosophy from one of micromanagement of demand to one that emphasizes increasing supply. To understand why a focus on increasing supply is vastly preferable to reducing demand, it helps to know just how much water California’s urban residents consume compared to other users.

As a matter of fact, the average California household purchases a relatively trivial amount of water from their utility, when compared to how much water they purchase in the form of the food they eat. For this reason, reducing residential water consumption will not make much of a difference when it comes to mitigating the effects of a prolonged drought.

To illustrate this point, it is necessary to determine just how much water is available to Californians, and how much of that water is being consumed by residential households in California. When making this analysis, one must not only estimate how much water California’s households purchase from their utility, but how much water is embodied in the food they eat.

Total Annual Water Supply and Usage in California

Here’s a rough summary of California’s annual water use. In a dry year, around 150 million acre feet (MAF) fall onto California’s watersheds in the form of rain or snow, in a wet year, Californians get about twice that much. Most of that water either evaporates, percolates, or eventually runs into the ocean. In terms of net water withdrawals, each year around 31 MAF are diverted for the environment, such as to guarantee fresh water inflow into the delta, 27 MAF are diverted for agriculture, and 6.6 MAF are diverted for urban use. Of the 6.6 MAF that is diverted for urban use, 3.7 MAF is used by residential customers, and the rest is used by industrial, commercial and government customers.

Put another way, Californians divert 65 million acre feet of water each year for environmental, agricultural and urban uses, and the planned permanent 25% reduction in water usage by residential customers will only save 0.9 million acre feet per year – or 1.4% of total statewide water usage. One good storm easily dumps ten times as much water onto California’s watersheds as would be saved via a 25% reduction in annual residential water consumption.Armed with these facts, there’s a strong argument that cutting back on residential water consumption will not make a significant difference in California’s overall water use. There are additional facts that can put this argument into an even sharper context: How much water do California’s households consume in terms of the water that was required to grow the food they eat, and how does that amount compare to the water they purchase from their utility for indoor/outdoor use?

The “Water Footprint” of Food per Ounce and per Calorie

While the information to determine this is readily available, it isn’t typically compiled in this context, so here goes. The best source of comprehensive data on the “water footprint” for various types of food comes from the Water Footprint Network, a project initially funded by UNESCO. An excellent distillation of that information was produced in April 2015 by Kyle Kim, John Schleuss, and Priya Krishnakumar, writing for the Los Angeles Times. Information on calories per ounce was found on the website “fatsecret.com.” Information from these various sources is summarized on the following table.

As can be seen on the above chart, when evaluating the water efficiency of various food sources, it is misleading to rely only on gallons per ounce, since the number of calories per ounce are highly variable. But putting these two variables together to calculate a gallons per calorie measurement is quite useful. Clearly, meat products require a huge amount of water per calorie. The most efficient sources of meat protein are found in chicken, which at 0.37 gallons per calorie is around four times as water-efficient as red meat. Some sources of protein from vegetables are surprisingly efficient, including avocados at 0.20 gallons per calorie, and the almond – much maligned as a water waster – at 0.15 gallons per calorie. But we digress.

How much water does it take to feed the average household in California, and how does that compare to the amount of water they buy from the utility for indoor/outdoor use?

Total Annual Consumption of Water-in-Food per Household

The next table, below, provides this estimate based on a typical diet. The estimate of 2,000 calories necessary to sustain the average human (men, women, children) comes from WebMD. The breakout of food consumption by category, while somewhat arbitrary, relies on data on “the average American diet“c ompiled by researcher Mike Barrett, writing for the Natural Society website. In turn, Barrett relied on USDA and other government sources for most of his data, which is reflected here.To summarize, in one year, the average American consumes a quantity of food that required 1.3 acre feet of water to grow. In turn, at 2.91 people per household in California, the average household consumes a quantity of food per year that requires 3.9 acre feet of water to grow.

Average Annual Water Use per California Household

Putting all of this together yields a revealing table, below, that shows that the average California household purchases a relatively trivial amount of water from their utility, when compared to how much water they purchase in the form of the food they eat. By dividing the 3.7 million acre feet of water used by residences each year in California by the 12.8 million households in California, the average annual water consumption per household is 0.289 acre feet. By contrast, the amount of water that is eaten, so to speak, by the average California household is 3.9 acre feet, thirteen and a half times as much.

By the way, it is irresistible to point out that drinking water, that quantity each human requires for their daily hydration, based on the 0.5 gallon per day recommendation from the Mayo Clinic, comes out to a paltry 0.0016 acre feet per year per household – not even a rounding error when compared to the other uses. Think about that the next time you have to ask for your water at a California restaurant.There is no Reason Water Cannot be Abundant and Affordable

For decades, when it comes to water, California’s policymakers have prioritized demand restrictions instead of supply enhancements. This is consistent with their priorities in other critical areas, certainly including energy and transportation. “Induced demand,” the idea that if you build it, more will use it, is the nightmare axiom that governs this policy. It certainly would never have to do with the possibility they’d rather put all those operating funds into their pay and pensions instead of expanding public infrastructure.

The problem with this, however, is that eventually the conservation option begins to yield diminishing returns, and then all you have left is punitive rationing. And once via punitive rationing you have wrung all of the redundancy and surplus out of the system, you have no resiliency if any part of the system fails. That is where California is today. The abundance choice is the only viable option if Californians are to improve their quality of life. In no particular order, here are some reality checks that California’s voters and elected officials ought to consider:

(1)  Projects that increase water supply via sewage reuse, runoff storage via reservoirs or aquifers, and desalination, are options that benefit all users, urban and agricultural.

(2)  Increasing the supply of water from diverse sources creates system resiliency which can be of critical benefit not only in the face of persistent drought, but also against catastrophes that may, for example, disable a pumping station on a major aqueduct.

(3)  The energy costs to desalinate seawater, approximately 4.0 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter, are overstated. Desalination plants can be co-located with power plants, eliminating power loss through transmission lines, whereas far-flung pumping stations consume significant amounts of electricity. Depending on transmission loss and desalination plant efficiency, the amount of lift beyond which desalination consumes less power than pumping is only about 1,500 feet.

(4)  Public investment in water saving home appliances, for example via tax rebates to consumers to purchase them, by contrast, do not increase the overall supply of water.

(5)  It is nearly impossible to engage in excessive use of indoor water in a household, because 100% of the sewage is treated and released as clean outfall to the environment. Moreover, sewage is increasingly treated and reused as potable water, and eventually 100% of indoor water waste will be cycled immediately back for reuse by households.

(6)  One preferred way to reuse household sewage is referred to as “indirect potable reuse,” where the treated water is percolated into aquifers where it is eventually pumped back for household reuse. This practice has the virtue of banking the water against supply disruptions, recharging the aquifer which is especially beneficial in coastal areas where there can be salt water intrusion, and even, as water is repeatedly cycled through the aquifer, causing an ongoing improvement to the quality of the water in the aquifer as treatment progressively reduces levels of undesirable residual toxins.

(7)  While achieving 100% reuse of sewage will render indoor water conservation pointless, the virtues of outdoor water use are understated. Healthy landscaping, consisting of abundant vegetation including lawns, reduce the incidence of dust-borne pathogens, reduce the incidence of asthma, and clean and moisturize the air. Replacing grass playing fields with artificial turf introduces toxins, causes more ACL and other sports injuries, and retains heat – often to the point of making these faux fields unplayable unless they are, ironically, watered.

(8)  Simply giving up consumption of red meat would reduce the average household’s water consumption by nearly 2.0 acre feet per year. By comparison, the average Californian household’s total water consumption from the utility averages 0.29 acre feet per year. That is, just replacing consumption of red meat with an equivalent caloric intake of chicken will save the average household seven times as much water as they buy from the utility for all uses, indoor and outdoor.

Policies designed to reduce household water use are a good idea, but must be kept in perspective. What has already been done is more than enough, and priorities now must shift towards investment in infrastructure to increase the supply of water. Nearly all water diversions in California, about 90%, are either to preserve ecosystem health or to supply agriculture. Indoor water overuse is becoming a myth, and will become entirely irrelevant as soon as 100% sewage reuse capacities are achieved. Outdoor water use should not be thoughtless, but allowing grass and perennials to die, or converting landscaping to “desert foliage,” is a cultural shift that is not necessary or desirable.

Along with investing in infrastructure to increase the supply of water, public education to help Californians adopt healthier diets would have the significant side benefit of being sound water policy. A trivial change in patterns of food consumption yields a major reduction in water required for food. For example, a public education campaign that caused a voluntary 10% reduction in red meat consumption (from 25.0% of all calories to 22.5% of all calories) would reduce California’s water consumption by 2.5 million acre feet per year. By comparison, total outdoor residential water consumption in California is estimated at only 1.8 million acre feet per year.

Perhaps, in lieu of renouncing escalating and entirely unnecessary mandates to reduce household water use, those of us who love our lawns might at least be granted a waiver if we were to present an annual affidavit to document our below-average consumption of red meat. Our smart refrigerators might actually submit the report to the utility, sparing us the paperwork.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Water Rationing Law Exemplifies the Malthusian Mentality of California’s Legislators

As reported in the Sacramento Bee and elsewhere, on May 31st Gov. Jerry Brown “signed a pair of bills Thursday to set permanent overall targets for indoor and outdoor water consumption.”

After pressure from the Association of California Water Agencies and others, the final form of these bills, Assembly Bill 1668 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, and Senate Bill 606 from state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, offers water districts more flexibility in enforcing the new restrictions. But the focus of AB 1668, limiting indoor water use to 50 gallons per resident per day, is a step too far. Way too far.

There’s nothing wrong with conserving water. But urban water consumption in California is already low, and squeezing even more out of Californians will be costly and bothersome without making much difference in the big picture. Here is a table showing California’s overall water consumption by user:

Total Water Supply and Usage in California – 2010

As can be seen, in a state where total human water diversions total around 65 million acre feet (MAF) per year [1], in 2010 residential customers only consumed 3.7 MAF [2, 3]. According to more recent data obtained by the Sacramento Bee from California’s State Water Resources Control Board, by 2017 the average California resident consumed 90 gallons per day, which equates to around 4.0 MAF per year. Slightly more than half of that is for indoor water, which means that on average, Californians are already consuming less than 50 gallons per day per resident!

So why the new law? We must immediately rule out the desire to save significant amounts of water. On average, Californians are already in compliance with the new restrictions on indoor water consumption, meaning only a minority of households, those over the new cap, will be forced to reduce consumption. And while AB 1668 also mandates individual “water budgets” for outdoor water consumption, even if they cut all outdoor water use by another 20%, that would only save 400,000 acre feet. But at what cost?

THE COST TO FURTHER REDUCE INDOOR WATER CONSUMPTION

Here is a fairly recent analysis of what it costs to implement comprehensive indoor water savings [4]:

Cost to Retrofit a Home to Reduce Water Consumption

That’s a lot of money. But why? How many households are still “overusing” water, if the average consumption is only around 50 gallons per day?

For what it would cost Californians who are not taking their clothes to the laundry mat, who prefer to wash their dishes in the sink, who are not willing to stand under shower heads that cannot rinse soap out of long hair, who don’t want to purchase side loading dishwashers because it hurts their back to load and unload them, how much water will actually be saved? And how does one “overuse” indoor water? Doesn’t it flow down to the sewage treatment plant, where these plants release all that water back into the streams and aquifers, or even in some cases pump the water back uphill to be reused by residents?

THE COST TO FURTHER REDUCE OUTDOOR WATER CONSUMPTION

For outdoor water use, the solutions are even more draconian, and, of course, are disproportionately aimed at people who happen to live in homes with yards. People with lawns where their children play, people with trees that provide shade, people with aesthetically pleasing hedges that offer privacy, people with who love to grow flowers and vegetables – people who love living things. In the short run, these people will be visited by water agency bureaucrats, who will assign a “water budget.” How much will that cost, forcing local water agencies to reach out individually to 12.5 million residential property owners?

In the long run, the costs to manage outdoor water use will get much higher. Every home will need to have two meters, one to measure indoor water use, one to measure outdoor water use. These meters, increasingly, will be “smart,” able to monitor time-of-day use in anticipation of variable pricing depending on when you water. (Don’t water your plants after 9 a.m.!) And eventually, first in new construction, and later in retrofits, every home will have two sources of water supply – one pipe to provide potable water for indoor use, and a separate pipe to provide marginally less potable reclaimed water for outdoor use.

This is epic folly. These conservation measures, as described, are going to cost consumers tens of billions of dollars. When fully implemented, the total annual savings might be around 500,000 acre feet. That’s less than one percent of California’s total human water diversions for agriculture, the environment, commercial, industrial, and residential use.

And not one dime of this money will be instead paying for water treatment, water storage, or desalination projects that could add millions of acre feet to California’s annual water supply.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE MALTHUSIAN MENTALITY

Thomas Mathus was an English cleric and scholar living in the early 19th century who developed the theory that global population increases exponentially, while global production increases arithmetically. His theory, and the eventual collapse of civilization that it implies, has enjoyed lasting and ongoing influence. In California, it found its earliest expression in a 1976 speech by Gov. Jerry Brown, who announced that we had entered an “era of limits.” For over forty years now, Governor Brown, and like-minded environmentalists and the politicians they’ve influenced, have embraced the Malthusian vision. But there is an alternative.

One of the most thoughtful and bipartisan visions to counter the Malthusian mentality is offered by the so-called EcoModernists, who in April 2015 published the “EcoModernist Manifesto.” The powerful premise they offer to confront the Malthusians is this: “Both human prosperity and an ecologically vibrant planet are not only possible, but inseparable. By committing to the real processes, already underway, that have begun to decouple human well-being from environmental destruction, we believe that such a future might be achieved. As such, we embrace an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future.”

The devil is in the details, of course. What “real processes” are they referring to? One of the authors, Michael Shellenberger – who just ran as a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in this week’s primary – offers concrete examples. Shellenberger, who runs the nonprofit “Environmental Progress” in Berkeley, is a progressive Democrat. And yet he strongly advocates nuclear power, desalination plants, and permitting suburban housing developments on California’s vast tracts of cattle rangeland.

There is a convergence possible here, of pro-growth progressive Democrats joining independent voters and Republicans to embrace ecomodernism instead of malthusianism. In practical terms, this would mean rejecting rationing of water, energy, land and transportation, and instead investing in infrastructure for the 21st century.  In ideological terms, it would mean rejecting environmentalist extremism rooted in pessimism in favor of economic growth rooted in optimism.

THE HIDDEN AGENDA OF CALIFORNIA’S MALTHUSIANS

California’s voters have not questioned Malthusian policies, partly because they’ve been oversold the environmentalist agenda, and partly because too many of them have been convinced that nothing matters more than the color of their skin or the consequences of their gender status. As a result, leftist oligarchs have been left free to consolidate their interests. Water rationing is just one manifestation of policy-driven artificial scarcity. This Malthusian policy also informs suppression of energy development, land development, and sensible investment in road and freeway upgrades. Public money is diverted to preposterous projects such as high-speed rail, while private investment in energy and housing is proscribed to exclude all but the wealthiest players. And those politically connected billionaires then make outrageous profits when their products – energy, utilities, housing – are produced at constant costs but sold at scarcity driven sky-high prices.

The reason Malthusian ideology constitutes the conventional political wisdom in California has little to do with the environment. It has to do with power and profit. These spectacularly wealthy special interest billionaires have coopted politicians, mostly Democrats, to spew the rhetoric of environmentalism and identity politics because it makes them richer, at the same time as it has made everyone else poorer. Everyone knows that California has the highest cost-of-living in the United States. But less understood is where all that money is going. It is going into the pockets of left-wing billionaires. To ensure government complicity, government unions get their cut, in the form of staggeringly over-market rates of pay and benefits.

POLICIES SHOULD NURTURE ABUNDANCE, NOT ENFORCE RATIONING

Permanent water rationing sets a horrific precedent. It also is just the wrong way to solve water scarcity. Let farmers sell their water to cities without losing their grandfathered water rights. For that matter, reform the water rights that allow farmers to buy water for next to nothing. Invest in more surface and ground storage to harvest storm runoff. Build desalination plants on the coast of Los Angeles County – BIG ones like they use in the Middle East, producing millions of acre feet per year – using less energy than the Tehachapi pumps.

Water is life. People should be able to use as much water as they are willing to pay for, and if they are required to pay a slight premium for overuse, that can fund investment in more water infrastructure. But the law as written will impose punitive fines for overuse. For less money than the cost of implementing water rationing, Californians could experience water abundance. From fragrant lawns to a rejuvenated Salton Sea, to not having to choose between taking a shower or doing the laundry, Californians can enjoy a better quality of life.

We don’t have to live in a society defined by Malthusian struggle. We can create abundance of water and energy in ways that are largely if not completely decoupled from environmental harm. Conservation has its place but when it is the only solution and is not accompanied by increasing supply it reveals its hidden agenda: Greed for money on the part of the firms that manufacture the instruments of conservation, greed for power on the part of the politicians that enforce conservation, and a contempt for the aspirations of ordinary people on the part of environmentalists who have let their principles run amok.

Nobody should have to submit to monitoring of how they use water and submit to punitive fines if they use more than their ration. The idea that everyone has to submit to draconian restrictions on their water use is ridiculous. It comes from a Malthusian mentality that is admirable in moderation and tyrannical in the extreme.

REFERENCES

Permanent Water Rationing is Coming to California, January 17, 2018

Increasing Water Supply Must Balance Conservation Measures, February 21, 2017

California’s Misguided Water Conservation Priorities, August 27, 2016

FOOTNOTES

(1) Total Precipitation in California during wet, average, and dry years:
California Water Supply and Demand: Technical Report
Stockholm Environment Institute
Table 2: Baseline Annual Values by Water Year Type and Climate-Scenario (MAF)
http://sei-us.org/Publications_PDF/SEI-WesternWater-CWSD-0211.pdf

(2) California water use by sector:
California Water Today
Public Policy Institute of California
Table 2.2, Average annual water use by sector, 1998–2005
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf

(3) California urban water use by sector:
California Dept. of Water Resources
2010 Urban Water Management Plan Data – Tables
Download spreadsheet “DOST Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, 7a, 7b, & 7c: Water Deliveries – Actual and Projected, 2005-2035”
http://www.water.ca.gov/urbanwatermanagement/2010_Urban_Water_Management_Plan_Data.cfm

(4) Cost for water efficient appliances:

Water Saving Potential of water-efficient appliances (Source: USGS)
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-percapita.php

California Water Plan Update 2013 Chapter 3 – Urban Water Use Efficiency
http://www.water.ca.gov/calendar/materials/vol3_urbanwue_apr_release_16033.pdf

Cost to purchase and install various water-saving appliances:

Cost (including installation) for a tankless water heater
https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/cost-of-tankless-water-heater/

Cost (including installation) for a water efficient dishwasher
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/04/dishwashers-that-save-water-energy-and-money/index.htm

Cost (including installation) for a water efficient clothes washer
ps://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/kitchens/install-an-appliance/

Cost (including installation) for a low flow toilet
https://www.remodelingexpense.com/costs/cost-of-low-flow-toilets/

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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The Scarcity Profiteers Are Coming For Your Water

Have you experienced water faucets that spray tiny jets of water onto your hands? You know, those eight tiny jets of water, each about 1.0 millimeter in diameter, that are emitted with so much pressure that the paltry quantity of water bounces off your skin before you can get it wet enough to apply soap, and makes rinsing the soap off nearly impossible? You can find these water faucets in airports and other public places, where they constitute a minor annoyance. But wait. Thanks to California’s state legislature, they’re on their way into your home.

You’ll just love your personal space filled up with these expensive gadgets. For example, these faucets will probably require voice-activation, turn off after ten seconds, and send a report to your utility in order to help you manage your usage patterns. Smart faucets. Smart washers. Smart dish washers. Smart shower heads and smart toilets – all coming your way, thanks to the California State Legislature and their partners, the scarcity profiteers of Silicon Valley.

You’ll love how all these water-sipping, next-generation durable goods can go “down,” get hacked, don’t work very well, and require annual warranty payments. You’ll also love purchasing bargain basement annual software upgrades, but only affordable, barely, if you join their green team club for life special VIP program. You’ll love how the control panel on your washer will look like the bridge of a starship, and can only be operated after you’ve mastered the virtual version of a two-inch thick instruction manual.

California’s ruling coalition of government employee unions, extreme environmentalists, and high-tech billionaires are at it again, this time with a water conservation bill, AB 1668, that is going to impose a mandatory limit of 55 gallons per person per day on indoor water consumption. Bring on the gadgets.

To put the impact of this bill into perspective, consider what it would cost to retrofit a household to reduce indoor water consumption:

COST TO RETROFIT A HOME TO REDUCE WATER CONSUMPTION

The biggest cost on this table is the cost for a tankless water heater or a hot water circulation system, necessary if we don’t want to waste water while waiting for it to get hot. Because there’s no good solution to that problem, this is a significant source of water waste that is blithely ignored by water conservation activists. It’s reasonable to expect people in a developed, wealthy nation like America to wait until they have warm water before washing their hands, shaving, hand washing dishes, or showering. And there is no way a person is going to bring their indoor water usage down to 55 gallons a day without either performing all these tasks with cold water, or by installing a system to deliver instant hot water.

But if every Californian did their best to comply with AB 1668, could they reduce their water usage to 55 gallons per day? The next table shows how much they could save, using USGS data. Please note the USGS data is for America, not for California, where decades of conservation incentives have already yielded tremendous reductions in use. Per capital indoor water use in California isn’t anywhere near 139 gallons per day. More on that later.

PER CAPITA POTENTIAL WATER SAVINGS USING WATER EFFICIENCY APPLIANCES

Apart from water efficient toilets which save water and don’t require lifestyle changes, there’s not much here that isn’t expensive and inconvenient. Notwithstanding the fact that Silicon Valley moguls are salivating over the prospects of subsequent mandates that will require all these retrofit appliances to be “smart,” they aren’t going to make life better. Low flow shower heads require longer duration showers, especially if you have to rinse shampoo out of long hair. Consumer reports offer mixed reviews on low water consumption dishwashers and washing machines. Some of us like to wash our dishes by hand – in many cases because it’s less time consuming. And who wants to pull wet clothes out of side loading washers? As for waiting for hot water to make it to faucets, there’s no inexpensive and effective solution.

Enforcing the 55 gallon indoor limit will also be costly not only for California’s residents, but for every water utility in the state. After all, to regulate indoor water consumption, you have to measure indoor water consumption separately from outdoor water consumption. And, of course, residential outdoor water consumption is also in AB 1668’s cross hairs. To accomplish this, AB 1668 calls for dedicated outdoor water meters, separate from indoor water meters, and it calls for water utilities to prepare a water “budget” for each customer parcel based on the size of the parcel and other factors such as the local climate.

THE COST/BENEFIT OF RESIDENTIAL WATER RATIONING

Since AB 1668 proposes to effectively ration residential water consumption, at staggering expense, it’s worthwhile to explore the cost and benefit of this policy. If we assume that five million of California’s 12.5 million households still have legacy appliances, just the retrofit would cost these unlucky homeowners $37.5 billion. But it doesn’t end there, because the water utilities would have to install indoor/outdoor meters on around 10 million households (some households are in multi-family dwellings with no yard or a shared yard). Assuming the cost to install these meters and conduct site visits to assign individual outdoor “water budgets” at $1,000 per household means another $10 billion will have to be spent – i.e., implementing AB 1668 will cost $47 billion.

But how much water would actually be saved, for $47 billion? According to the most authoritative study available on current indoor water consumption, the average Californians uses 62 gallons per day. (ref. California Water Plan Update 2013 Chapter 3, page 12, 1st paragraph “Indoor Residential.”) This means that if California’s 40 million residents got their indoor water use down to 50 gallons per day from 62 gallons per day, it would save 537 thousand acre feet per year (0.54 million acre feet). This is a minute fraction, less than 1%, of California’s total water diversions for environmental, agricultural, and urban uses.

AB 1668 is not about saving water. It’s about control. It’s about power and profit for special interests. Otherwise we could just expand sewage treatment plants, which we should do anyway. How can you waste indoor water if it can go down the drain, to be treated and pumped right back up the hill for reuse?

Let’s keep this in perspective by imagining best case scenarios whereby indoor and outdoor residential water use is dramatically reduced. If Calfornia’s 40 million residents reduced their household water consumption by another 20%, it would only save 0.74 million acre feet per year. An impossible 40% reduction? Savings of 1.5 million acre feet per year. For one-tenth the cost, the proposed “off-stream” Sites Reservoir could easily capture over 2.0 million acre feet each year in storm runoff. Just one good storm dumps ten times that much water onto California’s watersheds.

TOTAL ANNUAL WATER SUPPLY AND USAGE IN CALIFORNIA

So what could Californians do instead with $47 billion? We’ve looked at this before. Limiting ourselves to water infrastructure, here’s a list:

WAYS TO CREATE WATER ABUNDANCE IN CALIFORNIA

First of all, market-based incentives can eliminate water scarcity at almost no cost. For example: Allow farmers to sell their water allotments at market rates without losing their vested rights. Or permit utilities to engage in mild price hikes that encourage people to use less water, instead of resorting to punitive tiered pricing or rationing. These alternatives, to some extent, have already been tried. They work. But if you accept the premise that increasing the absolute supply of water in California is desirable – here are the capital costs for water infrastructure that would create water abundance in California for decades to come.

  • Desalinate 1.0 million acre feet of seawater  –  $15 billion.
  • Reclaim and reuse 2.0 million acre feet of sewage  –  $10 billion.
  • Build the Sites Reservoir for off-stream storage of 2.0 million acre feet of run-off  –  4.4 billion.
  • Build the Temperance Flat Reservoir for 1.3 million acre feet of storage  –  3.3 billion.
  • Aquifer recharge to store runoff – there isn’t even a good study exploring this option at a statewide level.

As can be seen, all of these water infrastructure projects could be built for $32.7 billion. They could be financed via infrastructure bonds, increased rates to consumers, redirection of funds currently being squandered on high-speed rail, or even redirection of proceeds from carbon emission auctions.

What California’s ruling junta prefers, however, is to create a surveillance state defined by expensive scarcity. In the 1950s and 1960s, California’s legislature approved and implemented what remains the finest system of inter-basin water transfers in the world. But today, after over 30 years of neglect, at the same time as California’s population has doubled, California’s water infrastructure is crumbling at a time when it should be expanded. The reasons for this are plain enough. Special interests have replaced the public interest.

THE SCARCITY PROFITEERS

Instead of building water infrastructure to increase supplies of water, public employee unions want to see tax revenues pour into their pockets and into the pension funds. High-tech billionaires want contracts to build “smart” appliances and monitoring systems to enforce water rationing. Extreme environmentalists, and the trial lawyers who get incredibly wealthy representing their organizations, want more legal bases upon which to file lucrative lawsuits. Sadly, major corporate agribusinesses often acquiesce to this abuse of residents because they’ve decided that a bigger slice of a smaller pie is all they can hope for from this legislature.

Until Californians realize there will be no end to these encroachments on their freedom and prosperity until they resist, California’s ruling junta will prevail. California will be a harder and harder place to live. If ordinary Californians value their freedom, they will form a coalition with farmers, energy companies, civil engineering firms, and construction unions to demand water abundance. They may rediscover the vision and leadership that built a water infrastructure that is still one of the wonders of the modern world.

REFERENCES

Assembly Bill 1668, “Water management planning” Text (Source: California Legislative Information)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1668

Residential Water Use in California:

Water Saving Potential of water-efficient appliances (Source: USGS)
https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-percapita.php

California Water Plan Update 2013 Chapter 3 – Urban Water Use Efficiency
http://www.water.ca.gov/calendar/materials/vol3_urbanwue_apr_release_16033.pdf

Cost to purchase and install various water-saving appliances:

Cost (including installation) for a tankless water heater
https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/cost-of-tankless-water-heater/

Cost (including installation) for a water efficient dishwasher
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/04/dishwashers-that-save-water-energy-and-money/index.htm

Cost (including installation) for a water efficient clothes washer
ps://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/kitchens/install-an-appliance/

Cost (including installation) for a low flow toilet
https://www.remodelingexpense.com/costs/cost-of-low-flow-toilets/

Total precipitation in California during wet, average, and dry years:

California Water Supply and Demand: Technical Report
Stockholm Environment Institute
Table 2: Baseline Annual Values by Water Year Type and Climate-Scenario (MAF)
http://sei-us.org/Publications_PDF/SEI-WesternWater-CWSD-0211.pdf

California water use by sector:

California Water Today
Public Policy Institute of California
Table 2.2, Average annual water use by sector, 1998–2005
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf

California urban water use by sector:

California Dept. of Water Resources
2010 Urban Water Management Plan Data – Tables
Download spreadsheet “DOST Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, 7a, 7b, & 7c: Water Deliveries – Actual and Projected, 2005-2035”
http://www.water.ca.gov/urbanwatermanagement/2010_Urban_Water_Management_Plan_Data.cfm

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