[Sustain] Blue Gold Water Blog

[Martin Zehr]

Dear All,

This is an invitation to register for and contribute to Blue Gold, the
European Water Partnership's water blog at www.questjournalists.com or
www.ewp.eu. Blue Gold serves as an information and discussion platform for
the water community and welcomes members and contributions from across the
globe. The more the merrier. We want to hear your news as well as your views
and comments.

We look forward to welcoming you to Blue Gold. And please feel free to
distribute this invitation within your networks.

Best regards,

James M. Dorsey
Moderator


Monday, September 10, 2007
Turning Delta ruling into opportunity
By Peter Gleick - Special To The Bee
On Aug. 31, a federal judge acknowledged what many people have long known-we
have run up against the limits of our water supplies. U.S. District Judge
Oliver Wanger ruled that state and federal water managers must change how
they operate California's water system to reduce environmental harm.
It now seems inevitable that the total amount of water taken from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will have to be scaled back. While the details
and magnitude of these changes still must be worked out, we're already
hearing the predictable cries of catastrophe, economic collapse and
impending doom.
This crisis has been coming for a long time, but it isn't a surprise and
need not be a disaster.
We now have the opportunity to discuss issues that have long been ignored or
considered taboo: inappropriate water rights and allocations, groundwater
management and use, real land-use planning, and water-use efficiency.
In the past, we've always assumed that we could grow as fast as we wanted,
wherever we wanted, and find new water sources to meet our demands. Over the
past century, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars building dams,
reservoirs, aqueducts and pipelines to realize this vision of California.
The complex water management system we built has permitted 37 million of us
to live, work and play here.
But we are beginning to understand that our manipulation of the water
system, based on 19th and 20th century ideas, hurts the natural environment.
We are killing our rivers, deltas, wetlands, birds and fish. While we didn't
recognize or care about those impacts in the last century, we do now. The
judge's decision shows that the system we built must be modified to address
the environmental and economic challenges of this century.
The water use of the agricultural sector should be re-evaluated. Our farms
consume 80 percent of the water used by California, but produce far less
than 10 percent of our jobs and revenue. We must continue to have a healthy
agricultural community, while using less water. To grow more food with less
water, we must improve irrigation efficiency, monitor and measure all
groundwater use, choose to grow fewer water-intensive crops and develop new
rules to encourage these improvements.
Current water rights regimes in California, combined with inappropriate
federal subsidies for water and certain crops, have locked in a higher level
of waste and inefficiency than we can afford.
Land-use planning also needs to be re-evaluated. It makes little sense to
permit uncontrolled development in floodplains, only to pass flood risks
from developers to homeowners or the state. It is myopic to build McMansions
on prime farmland with landscaping that sucks up water faster than farms,
with no assurance that a reliable water supply will be available.
Conservation needs to be redefined. It needn't mean brown lawns, shorter
showers or mandatory rationing. It is about doing what we want, but with
less water.
We use far more water today than is necessary, whether for flushing our
toilets, growing food or making semiconductors. Our conservation efforts
have eased this inefficient use, enabling us to grow our economy and
population over the past several years without increasing our water demand.
But far more could be done.
Efforts to improve water-use efficiency have slacked off in the past decade.
Even without the judge's wake-up call, our water agencies and utilities
should have been implementing new efficiency programs to deal with the
drought. The faster we reduce inefficient uses, the longer we can delay or
avoid mandatory cutbacks.
While predictions of economic disaster arising from the Delta decision may
come true, they don't have to. But it will take a re-evaluation of our ideas
about water-use and political courage by the governor, Legislature and water
users to have open and honest discussions about how to redesign our water
system so that it is smart, efficient and sustainable. Only then can we
transform this water crisis into an opportunity.

US House of Representatives Form Water Caucus
Some members of both parties in the US House of Representatives are forming
a Congressional Water Caucus to promote scientific information and
discussion about water resources and use, according to the American Water
Works Association's WaterWeek newsletter said.
Co-chairs of the new caucus, launched in mid-August, are Reps. Bart Stupak
(D-MI), John Linder (R-GA), Jim Costa (D-CA), George Radanovich (R-CA) and
Grace Napolitano (D-CA). The caucus has 29 other original members - 17
Democrats and 12 Republicans.
In a letter to House members, the caucus members set forth 12 principles of
water policy they will pursue, including: ensuring an adequate supply of
fresh water for all US citizens, considering "all available technologies"
for increasing the water supply while safeguarding the environment,
implementing strategies for water reuse, reducing bureaucratic "red tape"
for local communities seeking to build water infrastructure, encouraging
federal support for "groundwater banking" for sustainable water supplies,
and collecting and sharing water data to determine the effectiveness of
policies.
Of the caucus's original members and in addition to the co-chairs,
California has the largest number of caucus members at 12, followed by Texas
(4), Maryland (2), and one each from Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon.


Court ruling means big California water crunch
A federal judge's August 31 decision ordering cutbacks in water deliveries
from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to other parts of California has
water managers throughout the state warning of multi-year shortages,
conservation mandates and negative effects on the economy, The San Diego
Union-Tribune reported.
"We are in for a tremendous shift in the way we operate our agencies and
access . water supplies for our customers," Gary Arant, general manager of
the Valley Center (CA) Municipal Water District, was quoted in the story as
saying.
US District Court Judge Oliver Wanger's decision last week was aimed at
protecting the Delta smelt, a type of small fish that lives in the
Sacramento Delta. Huge volumes of water from the Delta are sent through
canals and aqueducts to as far away as San Diego and Los Angeles, and it's
estimated that the ruling will reduce those water deliveries anywhere from
14 percent to 37 percent, the article said.
Among other reactions, the decision was praised by environmentalists and
criticized by Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger.
Water managers and others quoted by the Union-Tribune outlined these likely
results of the court ruling: water price increases to promote conservation,
mandatory lawn-watering and other use restrictions, addition of heavily
treated wastewater to reservoirs to supplement drinking water supplies, and
cutbacks in new-home building permits and water service to businesses.
Mark Watton, general manager of the Otay Water District, was quoted as
saying, "We are really in sort of a short-term crunch here over the next two
to six years."