Michael George is a water rights lawyer and a former executive of Western Water Company and American States Water Company. He recently joined Sutter Securities Incorporated, a San Francisco-based investment bank, where he focuses on developing and financing water and energy conservation projects. In the following article, exclusive to TPR, George details the state's dreary water supply outlook while allowing that ongoing drought conditions appear to be driving innovation and cooperation around the state and region.
Michael George
First the bad news: the drought is real, it's upon us, and it's likely to get worse. In its most recent survey of the Sierra snowpack, the Department of Water Resources confirmed that 2009 will be another in a disheartening string of dry years: the snowpack contains only about 60 percent of the state's normal water content. Although the Colorado River watershed enjoys slightly above normal conditions in 2009 to date, eight years of drought on that system-along with increased demands from other users-means that the Southland will see little 2009 supply relief from that source.
Unlike prior droughts, however, the drought of 2009 compounds the physical drought with a regulatory drought. In a series of cases aimed at protecting the environment, federal courts have constrained the use of the pumps which take water from the Delta and deliver it to the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project. Based on these protective orders, the pumps can operate only in the "window" between the beginning of July and the end of September. Except for that three month period, the state's primary water management infrastructure operates on a severely limited basis, limiting imports to the service area of the Metropolitan Water District.
Southern California is not suffering this drought alone, however. The Central Valley's water supply has also been severely curtailed, threatening not just crops but the economy, ecology and communities from Lodi to Bakersfield. In addition to suffering the same Delta capacity constraints that are hitting Southern California, the east side of the San Joaquin Valley has recently agreed to forego up to 20 percent of its historic water supply to help restore fisheries in the San Joaquin River downstream of Friant Dam.
In response to the substantial curtailment of water imports as well as to depleted reservoirs, on April 14 Metropolitan imposed mandatory restrictions on water use throughout the Southland. (By late April, when winter runoff usually replenishes the state's water storage, every major water supply reservoir south of the Delta was at less than 50 percent of capacity. Ominously, regional groundwater supplies have also been depleted in the prior dry years, and imported replenishment water has been scarce.) Under Metropolitan's "Water Supply Allocation" program, everyone will feel the pinch. Local retail water agencies have responded with a variety of demand management plans to help us through 2009. However, the prospects for reliable water supplies will require more than a return to more normal patters of precipitation. (In light of the anticipated and unexpected impacts of climate change, we may not be able to refer to "normal" in the way water managers have used that term in the past.) Even if wet years ahead restore reservoir levels, we still face the effects of the regulatory drought as well as the need to rebuild regional groundwater levels, which have been drawn down to a disconcerting level.
Notwithstanding all that bad news, however, there are some glimmers of hope which might, with proper nurturing, develop into genuine good news.
The first hint of potential good news is that the pernicious and wide-spread effects of the drought have catalyzed cooperation to solve the problem. One example is the coordination of public awareness campaigns by public and private water utilities to inform Southern Californians that water conservation must be taken to a new and more efficient level if we are to make it through the summer months. These campaigns not only call for conservation, they provide practical tips for making it happen. In a similar response to reduced water reliability, Central Valley farmers have adopted a variety of new conservation programs and the Association of California Water Agencies recently adopted new agricultural water conservation principles.
The crisis of 2009 has even led to productive discussions among many of the parties who often distort the arcane politics of water in our state. Water utilities, agricultural advocates, and environmentalists have long argued over the condition of the Delta, but that debate has produced far more heat than light. For example, the 2008 special session of the legislature, called to address the state's water "problem," failed to reach consensus because of hold-outs on the issue of creation, cost, and impacts of proposed new surface storage reservoirs. As water politics led to policy stalemate, the Delta moved closer to the ecological tipping point.
Recently, however, there appears to be a growing, crisis-fomented consensus for incremental improvement of the water infrastructure-even while the storage debate rages on. Governor Schwarzenegger has received the report of his Delta Vision Task Force. The report recognizes that the Delta-the switching yard of the water supply system and a delicate and valuable ecosystem-must be stabilized to meet both ecological and economic demands. By embracing the twin goals of environmental stewardship and water supply reliability, the "post-partisan" Task Force pointed toward practical steps for stabilizing the Delta. Both water supply advocates and environmentalists can agree that some steps need to be taken to manage the pernicious effects of excessive water diversions, invasive non-native species, contaminated agricultural and wastewater run-off, weakened levies, and other impacts that make the Delta, even in its current deteriorated condition, unsustainable. In this environment, it may be possible to move forward with improvements, while deferring rancorous debate over more controversial issues.
The notion of incremental improvement, however, is always at risk of sabotage by water interests who fear that "their" particular issue will never be addressed if overall system pressure is reduced. Thus, we have seen reservoir advocates stymie the CalFed process at one point and conservation-only advocates at another. Similarly, in-Delta agriculture advocates are preparing to block implementation of any aspects of the Delta Vision. Apparently, they prefer an unsustainable status quo to a future in which their agricultural practices and implicit subsidies would be at risk in a global solution to state water issues.
So, while we suffer through the 2009 drought, Californians might take some solace that practical, consensus-based solutions are being developed. Among the near-term strategies: installing fish-protection gates, reinforcing some crucial levees, and stockpiling emergency repair supplies. Longer-term: assuring adequate fresh water flows, managing salinity intrusion, and reducing water export impacts through "dual conveyance" both through and around the Delta. Implementing those solutions will, of course, require more than the emerging consensus among the interested parties. Thus, Californians must be ready to hold water agencies and politicians accountable for the crucial follow-through. Financing, particularly in light of the recurring budget problems and the more general economic maladies, will surely challenge implementation as well. Nonetheless, with public demand for practical solutions, there may be some good news to go along with the bad news of the 2009 drought.
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