Farm Bureau Estimates Drought Costs

The California Farm Bureau has put a potential price tag on the water shortage: $1.4 billion in five San Joaquin Valley counties. The county-by-county breakdown:

• Fresno: $730,122,184
• Kern: $566,700,000
• Kings: $58,475,195
• Madera: $8,194,728
• Tulare: $3,300,000
  

Survey of Local Water Use Restrictions

The Press-Enterprise reports on new a new conservation measure the Inland Empire's Western Municipal Water District has imposed -- allowing consumers to water lawns only every other day -- and surveys similar measures other water districts have taken.

SF Wants Bay Area Aquifer Reserves

San Fransico wants to build up a water reserves in a San Mateo county acquifer - enough reserves to last much of the Bay Area seven and a half years.

Climate change has reduced the Sierra snowpack that feeds the city's main supply source, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and made supplies increasingly uncertain. To prepare for future droughts, SF has turned to the acquifer plan.

But San Mateo cities like Daly City and Millbrae currently rely on the acquifer for their water. San Francisco is negotiating a proposal with the cities under which they would reduce their pumping in exchange for surplus Hetch Hetchy water.

Peripheral Canal Opposition

Capital Weekly on opposition to the Peripheral Canal. Among the arguments critics cite: the Delta planning process hasn't include enough transparency or public input; the canal would cause environmental problems; the canal would provide a supply-side answer to a demand-side problem; and the state can't afford an infrastructure project this large.

Says assemlywoman Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo): “The canal would be [one of] the biggest public constructions ever made in the United States, equivalent to the Panama Canal, and I want to make it clear I will not vote for a Panama Canal.”

WSJ on CA Water

The Wall Street Journal runs two stories about California water.

One focuses on the new Carlsbad desal plant - the largest in the Western Hemisphere. It hits on the problems environmentalists have with desal: too much energy and too much damage to marine life. Surfrider's Joe Geever says the Carlsbad plant, for instance, would end up "killing everything that floats" near it. Camp Pendleton and Huntington Beach have desal plants in the works.

The other reviews current water supply problems and says lawmakers have promised to tackle water once they have sorted out the budget mess. Ideas being considered:

• Build a peripheral canal
• Build more storage facilities to capture the water that, due to climate change, now falls as rain rather than snow
• Improve the current supply by better managing groundwater and fixing leaky pipes and other existing infrastructure problems
• Use more conservation measures. Says an Association of California Water Agencies spokesperson: "This is a forever change, that customers will have to start internalizing."

SB 457 and 458

Restore the Delta, a Stockton-based advocacy group that claims to represent to Delta interests, held a rally and press conference in Sacramento yesterday.

The group is trying to build support for two bills Lois Wolk (D-Davis) has sponsored and that would give Delta communities more control over the hub of the California water supply system.

SB 457 would require the Delta Protection Commission to review general regional plans and ensure they are consistent with the resource management plan. To support the commissions activities, the bill would place a per acre foot tax on Delta water.

SB 458 would create a new conservancy -- the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy -- charged with supporting "efforts that advance both environmental protection and the economic well-being of Delta residents in a complementary manner."

CA Recieves Most Fed Water Recycling Funds

California projects have received 98 percent of stimulus funds directed to water recycling projects. The project that received the most funds was an Oxnard facility that will recycle wastewater, inject groundwater, and desalinate groundwater.

New California Graywater Rules

In response to the drought, the Department Housing and Community has released proposed new graywater rules. The new rules would allow Californians to use graywater in more ways and for more purposes.

Graywater is untreated wastewater that does not include toilet discharge or other bodily waste. Since the last severe drought in the early 1990s, state law has limited the use of wastewater. Californians have been able to use it only to irrigate and that irrigation has had to be done by systems below the surface.

Last summer, the legislature passed SB 1258, which required the DHC to develop newer and looser graywater rules. The DHC had planned to implement the new rules in 2011 but has released them early becuase of the drought.

The new rules could take effect as early as August 4.

David Hayes Profile

Fresno Bee profiles Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes - now the federal official in charge of addressing California's water problems.

Tucson: Commercial Projects Must Recycle Rainwater

The AP says Tucson is the first city in the country to require new commercial projects to recycle rainwater. Under a new municipal ordinance, commercial projects must supply half their landscaping water needs with recycled rainwater.

Climate Change May Force New Ways of Allocating Water Rights

LA Times reports on the impact the drought. The Central Valley - in particular the part depending on the Westlands Water District - has suffered because Westlands "is often last on the long list of groups receiving water from this federal project."

A Pacific Institute researcher predicts that California might ultimately have to develop a new system of water rights: "'We have a new climate reality, and our old structure for allocating water will not work for the future ... Fish are just one sign of an ecosystem that's collapsing.'"

LA Water Cops

NPR airs a story on water cops - the Los Angeles DWP inspectors who respond to reports that property owners are watering during prohibited hours.

Peripheral Canal Moves Forward

Contra Costa Times reports on the steady progress of plans for a 50-mile aquaduct that would cut through the eastern Delta and divert water south without having to pass through the structurally and environmentally unsound channels California now uses.

The story includes interviews with northern Central Valley farmers who claim the canal could threaten their water rights and allow Bay saltwater to seep into their water supply. Says a sixth-generation farmer from Clarksburg: "This is being framed as a fish-versus-people issue, when in actuality it's a people-versus-people issue."

National Water Act

The U.S. House has passed National Water Research and Development Initiative Act. The act, sponsored by Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), would empower NOAA to create a task force that, according to Water World, would "guide federal water research, development, demonstration, data collection and dissemination in order to respond to changes in U.S. water use, supply and demand."

Interview with SD County Water GM

A Q&A with San Diego County Water Authority GM Maureen Stapleton. Among the questions:

• Would California take a hit if the water level at Lake Mead drops below 1,205 and triggers a required water supply renegotiation with Colorado River basin statins?
• Why has San Diego purused desalination rather than, like Orange County, passing on desal and investing in wastewater treatment?
• Should San Diego restrict plant turf like Las Vegas now does?

Drought Politics in CV

GOP launches new Central Valley ads blaming the drought on Democrats. Estimates put the turnout for yesterday's Fresno water march at close to 4,000.

Gleick on Drought Myths

In his SF Chronicle column, Peter Gleick says Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was given some misinformation on his recent trip to Fresno. Gleick says that three water myths have arisen during discussions of the drought:

• "Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley are receiving "just 10 percent of their allocation this year."
• "Water shortages are causing massive new farm unemployment."
• "Farmers are bearing disproportional impacts of water shortfalls because of court rulings in favor of fish."

Stimulus Funds to Long Beach Desal

The Interior Department has awarded $134 million of economic stimulus grants to water reclamation and reuse projects, including $3 million for the Long Beach Water Department's desalination plant.

The grants are a portion off the $1 billion set aside in the stimulus package for water projects across the west.

Carmel River Diversions, Steelhead Salmon

Environmental groups have sought a court order that would force the California American Water Company to reduce its diversions from the Carmel River by as much as twenty-five percent.

The groups argue that diversions, at existing levels, are contributing to the decline of endangered steelhead salmon populations.