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Tag: water conservation
Southern California Water Wholesaler Plans To Ration Water To Cities, Districts

Southern California Water Wholesaler Plans To Ration Water To Cities, Districts

By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Southern California’s water wholesaler is planning to wield its powerful hammer to force more urban conservation this year by cutting water deliveries.

Faced with dwindling regional reserves and a fourth year of drought, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is expected to vote next week to ration imported water that it supplies to 26 water districts and cities, something the agency has done only twice before.

The cuts, which would take effect July 1, were in the works well before Gov. Jerry Brown imposed a 25 percent mandatory restriction on urban water use last week. But they are expected to provide a powerful incentive for local agencies to curb demand and help meet the governor’s conservation goals.

Local agencies that need more water than the MWD allocation will be required to pay punitive surcharges of up to $2,960 an acre-foot for the extra deliveries.

For purchases well beyond the allocation, that would increase the price of fully treated MWD water by roughly four times.

The MWD board, made up of 37 representatives of the agency’s member districts, will decide the size of the cutback, which could range from 10 percent to 20 percent, or 200,000 to 400,000 acre-feet less than MWD typically delivers. An acre-foot of water is enough to supply two households for one year.

The effects will vary from area to area. Cities that have already been conserving, such as Los Angeles, will probably feel fewer impacts. In areas that have been slow to conserve, water districts will have to strengthen restrictions and boost local rates to avoid financial penalties the MWD will impose on excess demand.

Metropolitan, which imports water from Northern California and the Colorado River, last rationed deliveries in 2009 and 2010, during the previous drought. Then, local districts responded so well that none had to buy high-priced water.

But because continuing conservation efforts have lowered water use in most parts of the Greater Los Angeles Area in recent years, districts may find it harder to stay within their allocations this time.

“The question is how much more can people squeeze out in conservation than they’re already doing,” said Dennis Cushman, assistant general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority.

The current drought is one of the most punishing in modern history. Irrigation deliveries have been slashed, forcing growers to idle more than 400,000 acres of cropland last year. Groundwater levels in some parts of the San Joaquin Valley have plunged to record lows as farmers drill more and deeper wells. Some small communities dependent on local sources have run out of water.

The levels of major reservoirs in Northern California are higher than they were a year ago. But the mountain snowpack that in a normal year provides the state with about a third of its water supply hit a record low for April 1.

Last week, Brown used a snowless Sierra Nevada meadow as the backdrop to announce the first statewide mandatory restrictions on urban use in California history.

Metropolitan customarily provides about half of the Greater Los Angeles Area’s water supplies. The agency began the drought in 2012 with record amounts of water reserves stashed in groundwater banks and regional reservoirs. But as the drought lingered, the water wholesaler has drawn heavily from its backup supplies to meet regional demands. Some customers have raised concerns that the MWD is depleting its stockpile too quickly.

“It’s a big number,” Cushman said of the 1.1 million acre-feet Metropolitan pulled out of storage in 2014 — enough water to supply 2.2 million households for a year.

That left 1.2 million acre-feet in storage, down from a peak of 2.7 million acre-feet at the end of 2012. The MWD also maintains a supply of 640,000 acre-feet that it would only tap in an emergency, such as an earthquake that damages the state’s major aqueducts.

“I get the concern about our storage levels,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, Metropolitan’s general manager. “We are pulling them down. (But) it is what they’re there for. It is for dealing with drought.”

Reducing deliveries will slow, but not stop, the drop in reserves. Kightlinger said Diamond Valley Lake, the agency’s big Riverside County reservoir, will probably fall this year to its lowest level since it was filled after construction more than a decade ago.

Still, Kightlinger said, “With prudent management, we’re good for another two, three years of drought.” If the drought persists beyond that, he said, his agency would have to make more draconian cuts.

Martin Adams, senior assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that if present trends continue, the city this summer will have reduced its water use by 10 percent since late 2013, putting it in a decent position to weather a cut from the MWD.

“The word’s gotten out and the L.A. populace is really responding well,” he said. “We hope that … is enough to get us through whatever (the MWD) does.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In California’s Drought, People Speak Up About Water Waste

In California’s Drought, People Speak Up About Water Waste

By Thomas Peele and Andie Waterman, San Jose Mercury News

The expanse of verdant lawn ringing a large vacant construction site in Santa Clara, California, sets off Brian Johns.

For Vickie Chang, it’s the city of Albany’s sprinklers that spray her when they go off each night along her street. And Dave Pearce is peeved by the water he sees gushing straight into San Francisco Bay from the leaky Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct pipeline while he kayaks along the Peninsula.

As California contends with a protracted drought, people who are dutifully following the “brown is the new green” philosophy are seething at the sight of freshly irrigated sidewalks and lush green lawns.

“That just torques my jaw,” Herb Gomes says of the emerald baseball and softball fields at Ohlone College in Fremont, where he often walks his dog. “I’m doing my part — my lawn has turned brown!”

But those ball fields will be irrigated and stay green until sometime next year, when they are scheduled to be replaced with artificial turf, a college spokeswoman said.

Despite calls from Gov. Jerry Brown for 20 percent cutbacks in water use and the first-ever state mandate to restrict outdoor watering, there is no consensus on how green is too green. Rules on watering are different from community to community, and so is compliance.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District received almost 240 reports of water waste — mostly sprinklers spraying pavement or running off into the street — in August alone, four times the number of complaints earlier in the year. Calls to the East Bay Municipal Utility District soared in July, when it received 211 complaints.

The state outdoor water rules, which took effect in August, have empowered water conservers to speak out “now that their concerns are being backed by the state,” said Nelsy Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for EBMUD.

Johns frequently passes that vacant lot in Santa Clara that’s ringed with grass. “A multi-acre lawn around the site of a building that hasn’t even been built yet takes the cake,” he wrote.

A spokesman for the lot’s owner, the Sobrato Organization, didn’t want to discuss the grass or why it’s irrigated. The head of the city water department said he’d send an inspector to check it out.

Pearce was aghast when he spotted the Hetch Hetchy leaks pouring from a trestle that carries the giant pipes across the bay. “One of the state’s most iconic water systems should be setting a better example for conservation,” he said. “This is more than just a public-image black eye.”

Those leaks cost the region’s largest water provider, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, more than a quarter-million gallons a week, its spokesman said — enough to supply water for about 360 people in San Francisco for seven days. But they won’t be fixed — or even patched, the spokesman said, before a new water tunnel under the bay opens later this year, taking the old pipes out of service.

Chang just wants to stay dry and not see water dumped in the street. “My car gets pretty wet and so do I,” she said, complaining about the city sprinklers that soaked her street, Key Route Boulevard, “profusely at night.”

A green median is the kind of extravagance that June Boudreau just doesn’t understand.

She got so fed up with her Almaden Valley neighbors’ ill-pointed sprinklers “watering the gutter,” as she put it, that she began stuffing notes in their mailboxes, urging them to stop.

“They are in denial,” she said of people ignoring the state’s water crisis. “They don’t want to be bothered. I don’t think anyone is taking the drought seriously.”

Robb Willer, a Stanford sociology professor who studies public attitude about climate change, isn’t surprised by the growing sense of injustice among water conservers.

Still, some will refuse to curtail their own water use no matter whose jaws get torqued, he said. “Those who do take more than their share, they’re very likely telling themselves that something about their situation is special and different.”

But, you know, there’s this drought. So what should people, even the special ones, be thinking?

That “we have a real problem,” answered John Coleman, president of the Association of California Water Agencies and an EBMUD director. “They need to fix their sprinklers. They need to conserve.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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States, Cities Get Creative About Recycling Water

States, Cities Get Creative About Recycling Water

By Jessica Moulden, Stateline.org

WASHINGTON — Overwhelmed by severe drought, the Oklahoma legislature passed a law this year to help communities make the most of their water resources by treating and reusing wastewater.

As drought spread over 80 percent of the state, Oklahoma cities expressed interest in reusing water but lacked clear guidance from the Department of Environmental Quality on how to do it. A bill signed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin at the end of May directs the state agency to design a process for creating water reuse projects and to establish rules and permitting requirements.

“Oklahoma is challenged, not just today but looking down the road,” said state Sen. Rob Standridge, who sponsored the bill along with fellow Republican Rep. Scott Martin. “Water is turning into an extremely important natural resource. It’s hard to envision a plan that doesn’t require some type of reuse.”

Oklahoma is one of many states reusing wastewater to address water shortages. The practice isn’t new — California began reusing wastewater in the early 1900s — but it is increasingly popular as huge swaths of the United States struggle with drought.

According to the U.S Drought Monitor, 30 percent of the United States was grappling with moderate to extreme drought at the end of June. In California, which is in its third year of drought, river levels are so low that salmon are being trucked upstream instead of swimming their annual migratory route. A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed that 40 out of 50 state water managers expect shortages in their state during the next decade.

In a separate study, GAO reported that 36 states used reclaimed water in 2013, up from 23 states in 2003. Some of the wastewater comes from toilets, but most comes from sinks, showers, washing machines, and dishwashers, and it is highly treated so it can be used again.

Flowing through purple pipes so plumbers can distinguish it from other utility lines, recycled water can be used in a variety of ways. Municipalities use it to water golf courses, parks, school yards and road medians, fill lakes, and enhance natural wetlands and to fight fires. It can serve as irrigation for crops, commercial nurseries and grazing pastures. Energy producers can substitute it for freshwater in cooling towers and manufacturers can use recycled water throughout the production process. In the Northeast, reclaimed water is sometimes used to make snow at ski resorts.

The main concern about reusing wastewater is the potential effect on environmental or human health. There are limited studies on the subject, but so far there are no documented cases of disease outbreaks from using reclaimed water. The risk from recycling wastewater as drinking water doesn’t appear to be any higher, and in some cases may even be lower, than the risk present in current drinking water systems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Even NASA has reduced the need for freshwater in space by turning astronauts’ urine and sweat into clean drinking water.

Nevertheless, water reuse currently accounts for less than 1 percent of total water usage in the U.S., according to the National Academy of Sciences. The academy concluded that the amount of wastewater that currently isn’t being recycled could be great enough to “play a significant role” in the country’s overall water resource picture. Just along the coasts, an estimated 12 billion gallons of treated wastewater is discharged into the ocean or estuaries each day. That’s equivalent to 27 percent, or more than a quarter, of the public water supply.

While states mull water plans and conservation measures, and in some cases fight among themselves over water resources, some cities are taking the next step and finding ways to quickly supplement their drinking water supplies.

Earlier this month, Wichita Falls, Texas, launched a wastewater-to-drinking water project. The city declared a drought catastrophe in May, a designation so severe that restaurants cannot serve customers water unless they request it. The direct-to-tap project is viewed as the most immediate solution to increasing water supplies for the city.

In California, the San Diego County Water Authority Board recently approved San Diego’s request to build a direct-to-tap system to increase water supplies. San Diego is already spending $1 billion to deliver water to residents through a new desalination plant by 2016, a strategy that is controversial for its high cost and environmental impact. Orange County, about 90 miles north, is spending $142 million to expand its potable reuse program by 2015.

Drinking treated wastewater might have an obvious “eww” factor on the surface, but all water loops continuously through use and reuse, whether it happens naturally through the hydrologic cycle or it is intentionally captured and reused. Even water that is discharged after treatment and not reclaimed finds its way back into drinking water supplies. For example, treated wastewater in Dallas-Fort Worth is discharged into the Trinity River, which feeds Houston’s water supplies downstream.

Some cities and states are interested in expanding beyond wastewater. Minnesota, for example, is focusing on managing storm water as some portions of the state deal with heavy rains, while others suffer drought. The Minnesota Twins baseball team is reusing storm water that falls onto its field to irrigate and clean the stadium, reducing the team’s use of city water by 50 percent.
And in San Francisco, the Public Utilities Commission recently hosted a meeting with representatives from federal, state, and local government to discuss on-site water treatment systems for uses other than drinking, such as flushing toilets in office buildings. Participants came from Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Santa Fe, Milwaukee, and Seattle.

Photo: Los Angeles Times/MCT/Michael Robinson Chavez

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