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Water Security: Ignore the Elephant in the Room

Our new state senator, Josh Becker, hosted a webinar about water issues in the state on May 27th that reiterated some of the points made during the Burlingame study session I covered here.  Gary Kremen, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Santa Clara Valley Water District sounded the alarm when he said "we're beyond concerned, we're a little scared".  That was the same day that Santa Clara implemented the latest water restrictions, but Kremen also said "Santa Clara County cannot make it on conservation".  He also noted that recycled water costs 4-5 times as much as water from the usual sources.

There were two speakers from academia, Dr. Newsha Ajami, Director of Urban Water Policy, Stanford's Water in the West Program and Felicia Marcus, Former Chair, State Water Resources Control Board, and fellow at Stanford's Water in the West Program.  Ajami pushed the need for future development to have a "zero water footprint" — the "net-zero development" that was mentioned during the B'game session.  The idea revolves around recycling on-site (similar to "purple pipe" but on-site) and having developers go find water to buy on long-term contract.  That seems like a stretch to me especially if a developer would need to provide water for 25-40 years or more.  The bureaucratic overhead seems enormous and the costs would be impossible to predict.

Dr. Ajami also made a critical point about reservoir capacity that was news to me.  She said the state "has already built reservoirs where they work best" and that we should be transitioning to groundwater storage going forward.  Couple that with her assertion that desalinization is "not viable now" and you have a recipe for near term turmoil as we go into a serious drought.

The Q&A part of the webinar was the most concerning to me.  Right at the very end of the session, Sen. Becker read a question about adding housing in the face of this scary water scenario.  This is the elephant in the room–a pair of elephants actually–commercial and residential development.  Becker's 10 second "non-answer" was that he was working in Sacramento to get more money.  No mention of what that money would go towards; especially given all of the options mentioned during the session are outrageously expensive, hard to implement and/or so far in the future that they won't remotely help our situation anytime soon.  The little joke about "brown being the new green" referring to lawns did nothing to ease that concern.  When you couple the two sessions together you see we are in for a rough ride and nobody wants to look at the elephant.

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16 responses to “Water Security: Ignore the Elephant in the Room”

  1. Peter Garrison

    Re: Housing. It would be interesting to know how many homes are now “ghost homes” owned as investments but not occupied.

  2. Paloma Ave

    Josh Becker is another out-of-state carpetbagger who has decided to locate here in California. Just like Weiner in San Francisco, he will toe the party line and want to enforce housing mandates, inflicted on us by the democrats who now control the state.
    He has betrayed the vast majority of city and counties who DO NOT want single family housing OUTLAWED, by voting yes for SB 9. (It really doesn’t matter what the voters want, it matters what the party agenda is!).
    Liberals a question for you? HOW OFTEN WILL YOU CONTINUE TO PICK UP THAT BAR OF SOAP THAT SLIPPED OUT OF YOUR HAND IN THE PRISION SHOWER?

  3. resident

    Is slightly scared like slightly pregnant?

  4. Joe

    First, let’s start with the fun part of today’s SF Comicle piece about the drought. They note that they now have a “Data Spotlight” where “The Chronicle this year hired five journalists who will use data-driven techniques to cover news stories across the Bay Area. The team’s work will appear in the newspaper on Sundays and Mondays.”
    Yikes! So what the hell were they hiring before. Data idiots? And what about the paper on Tuesdays thru Saturdays? Are those issues just Herb Caen fishwrap? Well, you know the answer to that rhetorical question.
    Now on to the drought. Headline “Drought water restrictions unlikely in the Bay Area”. Our five little data mavens apparently missed the Santa Clara Valley declaration last week. How can something be “unlikely” when it has ALREADY HAPPENED?
    Nevermind. At least they are getting up to freshman-level knowledge about where we get our water and what the current levels are. But man, it’s gonna take a lot of youthful “data-driven techniques” and homework to just get the basics right. Here. Read the firm grip on the obvious for yourself:
    “The consequences of running out of supply are too great,” said Steve Ritchie, assistant general manager for water at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “That cannot happen.”
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Here-s-where-the-Bay-Area-s-water-actually-comes-16220701.php

  5. Joe

    From the Comicle yesterday:
    California’s rain year just ended – and the data shows we’re in trouble
    Jan Null, a forecaster who runs Golden Gate Weather Services, compiled California rainfall data for the most recent season and compared it to historical seasons in one-, two-, three- and four-year periods.
    Some of the two-year totals are also among the driest in history, especially in the Northern, Central and Southern Sierra.
    Rainfall for the past season was 44% and for the past two seasons was 52% of normal in the Northern Sierra — the “most critical watershed in the state,” feeding into the Shasta, Oroville and Whiskeytown reservoirs, among others, Null said.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/California-s-rain-season-just-ended-and-the-16285932.php

  6. Joe

    This is so so disappointing. Why can he not see the forest for the trees?????
    DJ headline screams “We’re really worried” in big print. The water guy says:
    “We’re really worried. Not just this year, but especially next year,” Gary Kremen, vice chair and board member at the Santa Clara Valley Water District, said. “The system that we have was built for 10 million people in this state. Now we got four times as many. We didn’t allocate water for the environment. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re trying to upgrade the infrastructure.”
    —Yet the latest state budget allocates $3B in a $293B budget for water upgrades—
    Then we get:
    (Assemblyman Marc) Berman said, “There is enough water for current users, but we all need to use less water more efficiently. I think it’s important that we don’t let one challenge, the drought, exacerbate an already existing housing crisis by creating a false rationale to stop producing housing, especially denser infill housing.”
    —who is creating the “false rationale” here?
    https://bit.ly/3jYC2Ws

  7. Peter Garrison

    “denser infill housing…”
    Stack and Pack.
    The restaurants and golf courses are being used for this subsidized housing or as they say “affordable housing” but somebody’s got to pay for it and it’s not the government and when you take away all these amenities, who wants to live here in a little box with nothing to do.

  8. Mom

    San Mateo County added to drought list
    All Californians asked to reduce water, local officials push conservation

  9. JP

    CHRONICLE PLEA TO SLASH WATER USAGE
    CORRECTION PLEA TO SLASH BUILDING

  10. Paloma Ave

    JP – The state of California does not like it when someone/anyone try to introduce ‘common sense’ into the conversation.

  11. JP

    It’s just education, right???
    At its Monday night meeting, the City Council also adopted a water shortage contingency plan which ensures the city has legal authority to execute water use practices in the plan and adopted standards for prohibiting wasteful water practices permanently. The motion, previously discussed at a June 21 meeting, passed 4-1 with councilmember Michael Brownrigg voting no.
    “I just don’t like this approach of telling homeowners that they’re basically breaking our rules if they don’t have a trigger on their hose among other things,’’ he said.
    He said he continues to think that the best way to get people to save water is to price water more expensively if more water gets used.
    “I am assured by staff that they are not here to be punitive, they are here to educate. And that people will have warnings,” said O’Brien in response. “So I look at it as an educational process.”

  12. Joe

    I could not have said it better myself:
    Drought of Leadership
    Editor,
    Surprise. Surprise. Its back. Yes, our yearly drought. I would guess that eight of the last 10 years we have been under some form or water rationing. The last water storage dam was built in 1975 (during Jerry Brown’s rein) with no more storage added since then. In 1975, the population in California was 22 million.
    Today it’s 40 million, which should not be shocking to anyone because a sixth grade arithmetic student could have predicted it by extending the population growth curve from 1975 to the present.
    So, here we are in another water rationing year whose full impact will likely be felt when it becomes mandatory after the recall election is over. But, instead, what we do have is an expensive high-speed rail that was supposed to have been cancelled at least two years ago. I just hope they order enough water tankers for the train that can help distribute water.
    Is there a moral to this impending disaster? Choose your elected officials wisely because they are the people who are supposed to lead, plan and manage, among other things, the resources to support the present population.
    Victor Carboni
    San Mateo
    https://bit.ly/3r5M3mq
    And one could say pretty much the exact same thing about wildfires……

  13. Joe

    Calmatters is reporting that “As drought ravages California, water has become one of the state’s hottest commodities — pushing thievery to record levels. Bandits are pumping water from rivers and lakes to sell on a burgeoning black market, while other thieves plug into city hydrants under the cover of darkness and top up.”
    And a regular Voice reader emailed me this link from the NY Times–I don’t have an account but you may:
    A Drought So Dire That a Utah Town Pulled the Plug on Growth
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/us/utah-water-drought-climate-change?referringSource=articleShare

  14. Joe

    From Calmatters.org today:
    California’s environment is not cooperating with Gov. Gavin Newsom.
    By Aug. 16, local elections offices must start mailing recall ballots to Californians. That same day, state regulators could begin issuing formal orders to temporarily block thousands of farmers, landowners and others from pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed — the result of the state water board voting unanimously Tuesday to authorize the aggressive action for the first time in California history.
    The move — which illuminates the increasingly dire California drought — was slammed by state lawmakers who represent Central Valley growers, with Democratic Assemblymember Adam Gray of Merced calling the orders “one of the most destructive measures possible,” CalMatters’ Rachel Becker reports. Meanwhile, local governments are also cracking down: The city of Roseville on Tuesday announced a mandatory 20% reduction in water use for all residents.
    Also Tuesday, Lake Oroville, one of the state’s largest reservoirs, reached its lowest level since September 1977. It now measures 643.5 feet above sea level; if it falls lower or within the range of 630-640 feet, its power plant could shut down due to insufficient water for the first time in history. U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, state Sen. Jim Nielsen and Assemblymember James Gallagher, all Republicans, gathered at Oroville Dam on Tuesday to “decry Governor Newsom’s lack of leadership and gross mismanagement of the state’s water, power and forests/wildlands.”

  15. Joe

    Here is a guy who seems to understand the problem and even propose a solution!!!
    SACRAMENTO — There was an unusual twist at Wednesday’s gubernatorial recall debate in Sacramento: A Democrat participated for the first time.
    And that Democrat, 29-year-old millionaire Ventura County real estate investor Kevin Paffrath, jump-started the hour-long debate with some unusual ideas.
    Paffrath, who has never held elective office, proposed to solve California’s water shortages by building a pipeline to the Mississippi River.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/A-water.jpgpeline-to-the-Mississippi-River-16412788.php

  16. Joe

    Another day, another report of not having enough water–well, not having Any water from the State:
    California water officials acknowledged Wednesday that another painful year of drought is likely, and warned the many communities receiving water from the State Water Project that they may get no water at all next year, except in cases of emergency.
    The 0% water allocation projected for next year follows this year’s allocation of just 5% of what the water agencies requested. Consequently, many are already feeling a squeeze.
    In the Bay Area, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, Alameda County Water District, Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Solano County Water Agency, in addition to the Tri-Valley’s Zone 7, get some portion of water from the state project.
    https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-drought-State-anticipates-virtually-16666856.php

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