Like many other big deals in Sacramento in recent years, this one, too, was composed in large part of black boxes, deferrals, fudges and borrowing — $11.1 billion in general obligation bonds in this case– for large water projects, some as yet unspecified, plus a fair amount of pork having little to do with water.

From 30,000 feet, the agreement, in the form of five bills, touches nearly all the major issues in California’s complex water picture: flood control, protecting the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem, securing more water for the big San Joaquin Valley growers, many of them suffering the effects of a severe drought, reducing water consumption, monitoring and replenishing the state’s overdrawn ground water and addressing the increasingly severe effects of global warming.

We don’t yet know whether the deal will lead to the construction of a peripheral canal to take Sacramento River water around the ecologically overstressed Delta, for delivery to those growers and to Southern California cities. Nor do we know how much of the new storage capacity will be the costly surface dams the growers love and how much will go into the Valley’s depleted underground aquifers.

What we do know is that the deal did little to guarantee effective ground water monitoring by the state or to require more efficient use of water by agriculture, which still consumes roughly 80 percent of the state’s water. It aims to reduce urban water use by 20 percent but requires no similar effort by growers. And it’s still the taxpayers who’ll have to pay off the bonds – with interest a total of as much as $22 billion — not the farmers, developers and flood plain property owners who will be the major beneficiaries.

Water is a fixed – and probably declining – resource. The only way it can be stretched is by conservation, recycling of waste water and by more efficient use. This deal takes the first baby steps in that direction, but only by promising more goodies to agriculture and by taking most of the money to pay for it not from the beneficiaries but from schools, universities, the old and the sick, and from the taxpayers, present and future. Next November, when they get to vote on the bonds, they’ll have the last word on that.

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Source: California Progress Report

Peter Gleick, president of Oakland, calif.-based Pacific Insitute, a policy group, will testify before Congress tomorrow. According to excerpts of his planned testimony provided to Earth2Tech, Gleick will argue that considering energy and water together could offer substantial economic and environmental benefits.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair and ranking member of the committee, calls for in-depth research into the energy-water relationship. Besides the DOE, other government agencies would be called to conduct studies if the bill is passed. The Bureau of Reclamation would be directed to evaluate energy use in storing and delivering water from reclamation projects and identify ways to reduce energy use. The Energy Information Administration would be required to continually report on the energy consumed in water treatment and delivery. And the National Academy would be asked to study water use in the production of transportation fuels and different types of electricity generation. The work could lead to better national policies, such as those promoting the use of reclaimed water or phasing out crop subsidies that promote the wasteful use of water.

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Source: Earth2Tech

Municipal and regional water managers are recruiting an army of lawyers and preparing to go to war for resources. At stake is the West’s main water supply — a sum of water that most climate models expect to shrink as greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb and the temperatures of the Earth’s surface and seas rise.

And some battles have already begun.

CLE International, a company that prepares continuing legal education sessions for lawyers across the country, held a session Feb. 26-27 in Reno to share with water lawyers, water managers and concerned citizens the latest laws, strategies and problems facing Nevada and the West.

Nevada is home to numerous disputes over who owns and who should own the water in more than 230 hydrologic basins, water managers at the event said.

In Northern Nevada, locals are hammering out agreements that would protect property owners’ water rights while allowing rivers to run freely.

Negotiations on some of these water allotments have been going on for decades.

At the same time, ranchers and environmentalists are fighting the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s plan to pump hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water it has acquired rights to out of rural eastern Nevada and pipe it hundreds of miles to Las Vegas.

On both sides are those battling to preserve a way of life for local residents — ranchers need water for cows, sheep and their fodder; environmentalists are trying to save animals and wild lands and the Water Authority is trying to save the Las Vegas Valley from the threat of doom should its measly portion of the Colorado River peter out.

There are more than a dozen bill draft requests in the Nevada Legislature proposing changes to water law.

Nowhere in the West is water such a key issue as in Las Vegas.

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Source: Las Vegas Sun

Here’s an article that appeared in the New York Times today regarding a ban on diverting water from the Great Lakes. I certainly believe that the fresh water issue is imminent, and the discussion in Congress certainly supports that contention.

Bart Stupak has taken the position that the ban doesn’t go far enough leaving loopholes that do not bode well for the future:

(From the NYTimes article by Susan Saulny) “Because these concerns remain unaddressed,” Mr. Stupak said in a statement, “I regret that I have to urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the compact until proper protections are put in place.”

“I see no reason why we must rush this process when our nation’s most precious natural resource is at stake,” said Mr. Stupak, whose district borders three of the lakes, calling the bottled-water exemption a loophole that could be used for large-scale diversion, exactly what the compact seeks to prevent.”

From Chris Woodka of the Pueblo Chieftan:

Nestle Waters North America, Salida and the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District are working on a deal that would allow the bottled water giant to ship up to 200 acre-feet of water a year to its Denver plant, possibly to market as spring water.

The spring is located in Nathrop, north of Salida.

Essentially, Nestle would take advantage of the Upper Ark’s augmentation plan to use Salida’s water to replace the water it pumps from a well near a spring on property it is buying near Nathrop. Salida would sell the company excess water for 20 years, and the Upper Ark’s augmentation plan would allow the water to be used to replace flows, since Salida’s water cannot be used outside the city without a change in court decree.

Unfortunately, those charged with protecting the Arkansas River seem happy to see the water leave the basin (from the same story):

Some have asked why the Upper Ark would support moving water from the basin, but Scanga believes bottling water is no different than his family business, meat packing and marketing, where animals are raised on water in one basin, slaughtered and shipped all over the country.“It’s the same thing, putting water in a bottle or putting water in an animal,” Scanga said.

We’d like to go on record as suggesting bottling water is not the same as raising livestock – and the laws in place seemingly recognize that reality.

Little Local Opposition

I spoke to Pueblo Chieftan reporter Woodka about the deal, and he says local opposition is light; while some have questioned the removal of so much water from the basin – and the odd thinking of Scanga (the man charged with protecting the basin’s water) – there isn’t much in the way of widespread opposition to Nestle’s proposed water mining operation.

Still, even if those charged with protecting the watershed are OK with the removal, the other impacts to the area are the same facing rural communities everywhere.

Truck Impacts to the Area

One of the biggest is an increase in truck traffic: Mapquest tells us Nestle’s Denver plant is approximately 140 miles from Salida, and the story suggests Nestle wants to pull as much as 65 million gallons of water annually. Given an average 6,000 gallon water load (water’s heavy, so tankers typically carry less than a gasoline tanker might), that means the area’s looking at 60 truck trips per day (30 trucks coming and going) – every day of the year.

In addition, the tankers will likely take US 285 – a winding road that takes in several high passes in the Rocky Mountains, a reality which suggests Salida’s going to see a lot more truck traffic in the summer months than the winter.

A Recurring Pattern

This attempt to remove water from the Upper Arkansas River neatly follows Nestle’s operations in other areas; they establish the bottling plant, then begin tapping other water sources in the area – increasing impacts like truck traffic, noise, pollution, and water withdrawals from underground sources – with little or no economic return to the area.

Let’s hope Colorado wakes up before it’s too late.

Source: StopNestleWaters.org

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I encourage everybody to see this film, to blog about it, to talk about it with your friends and remember that this kind of abuse is possible not only in third world countries, but here in the US. So listen, dig deeper into the news, don’t just trust what you see on mainstream media.

Thanks Ms. Segovia for sharing this with us along with another interesting project called Take Back the Tap. You can rest assured that Nuprana.com will always support initiatives like this one.

Our focus is water conservation and we are committed to creating awareness about this issue and protecting our watersheds. Our ultimate goal is to prevent water shortages that have the potential to create situations like this, where people are abused by the ‘owners’ of their water. How can this be happening when we haven’t yet reached a real water crisis? The only explanation possible is CORRUPTION. We must make sure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again, particularly as water becomes more scarce and hence more valued.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in a state of crisis, both as an ecosystem and as a water supply. Almost half of the water used for California’s agriculture comes from rivers that once flowed to the delta, and more than half of Californians rely on water conveyed through the delta for at least some of their water supply. It is imperative that we recognize what both the recent court decisions and the scientists are saying: We’re taking too much water from the delta.

Given that agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of delta water consumption, reducing withdrawals from the delta will inevitably affect farmers. We have two options, two very different paths to reduced agricultural water use. One is to choose to let events evolve as they will, which may lead to growing disruptions in the agricultural sector, uncertainty about the reliability of food production, and the weakening of a vital component of our traditional economy. The other is to work toward a carefully planned and efficient agricultural sector, long-term protections for land and water resources, and the production of more high-valued crops grown with efficient irrigation systems that are effectively managed to respond to weather and crop conditions.

By changing what crops are grown and how we grow them, the report concludes that we can achieve substantial water savings, ranging from 0.6 million to 3.4 million acre-feet of water annually, and for far less than building new, centralized water storage. In fact, if we look at water savings in “dam equivalents,” the scenarios examined in the study could save as much water as three to 20 dams the size of those being proposed.

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

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When your livelihood depends on water, that’s good advice.

Farmers, cities, industrial water users and a host of fish and waterfowl have common interest in dependable and clean water supplies. That interest exists in times of plenty and in times of drought. Planning makes it easier to manage when the water becomes scarce.

It’s good that the Oregon Legislature took a forward look in 2007 and appropriated $750,000 for the start-up of the Oregon Water Supply and Conservation Initiative. It’s too bad that it took so long; for all practical purposes Oregon’s streamflow is all spoken for from spring to fall and several groundwater aquifers give indication of periodic pumping in excess of recharge.

Oregon is a latecomer in big picture water planning alongside neighbors California – which got started in the 1950s – and Idaho, which did its first plan in 1976. Both are currently updating existing plans, while Washington is in the third year of creating regional plans for Puget Sound drainages and the Columbia Basin. Oregon has done little interstate water planning, although the Columbia and Snake rivers are significant parts of its northern and eastern boundaries. It’s not that Oregon is without water planning until now. The sometimes-controversial basin planning program of decades past gathered data on expected water production and use, giving a legal vehicle for policy-making as it related to a specific basin.

However, those basin plans are limited to describing water supply and use, setting out some basin-wide management policy and establishing protocols for considering applications for additional water right applications. Interbasin transfers are little more than footnotes in selected plans.

Between the federal Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, new fields of environmental water planning emerged over the past three decades. A body of forestry research that began in the Five Rivers Basin of Oregon’s Coast Range provided direct links between upslope timber management, water discharge rates and water quality. In Eastern Oregon, influence of spreading juniper forests was tied to declining water production.

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Source: Capital Press

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But before yanking out the Marathon and replacing it with concrete or AstroTurf, it’s best to check out the myriad landscaping rules, regulations and ordinances individual municipalities enforce. Just because Los Angeles homeowners can put, pour or plant nearly anything in their frontyards doesn’t mean Long Beach residents can too.

Equally confounding is that some cities are promoting water conservation, while still requiring that yards be at least half grass. Officials are scrambling to catch up with a conservation movement that many of its residents already have embraced.

“It’s hard, because changing the zoning ordinances is a long process,” said Jesse Brown, assistant planner for Burbank. “It can take a year and needs City Council approval.”

Add to that the different philosophies among city planning departments, and headaches are born.

“We have almost no regulations whatsoever,” said Michael O’Brien, a planning associate for Los Angeles.

“If you want to plant a drought-tolerant garden, you can,” said Glendale’s Neighborhood Services Administrator Sam Engle. “As long as you follow the guidelines.”

And therein lies the rub, or shrub, if you will: If you’re going Sahara, check in first with local government.

Longtime Burbank homeowners Margie and Louis Dell had Laramee Haynes do the checking for them. The Pasadena landscaper told the couple that they could implement their drought-tolerant design, which included pebbles and recycled concrete, as long as they met the city’s requirement that no more than 45% of their front- and street-facing yards be hard-scaped.

He tore out their tired turf and replaced it with flowering paprika yarrow, lilac verbena, red California fuchsia, deer grass and oak trees, all anchored by redwood mulch. Window planters are filled with succulents.

The driveway, once a solid mass of concrete, now is made of pebbles and broken recycled concrete. A brook filled with recycled water flows through the backyard and spills into a pond stuffed with goldfish that feed on mosquitoes and algae.

The Dells got fired up to make the changes after attending a Burbank water conservation workshop.

A trip to the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley, where a botanist explained drought-tolerant landscaping, sealed the deal. The nonprofit organization promotes native gardens and offers more than 300 varieties of native plants for sale.

“Our neighbors love our garden,” Margie Dell said of her new landscaping, which requires watering only twice a year. “They want to know how to do it.”

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Source: Los Angeles Times

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The Department of Environmental Protection, along with members of six regional water resources committees, will accept testimony on the draft state water plan that is being developed in accordance with the Water Resources Planning Act.

Developing the plan is the first step in analyzing problems and needs associated with specific water-related activities, such as stormwater management, flood control and navigation, state water officials say.

“This document will serve as a blueprint that guides sustainable water use throughout the commonwealth for the next 30 years,” said DEP Deputy Secretary for Water Management Cathy Curran Myers.

By the end of 2008, the Water Resources Planning Act requires the DEP to develop a new state water plan that includes inventories of water availability, an assessment of current and future water demands, an evaluation of resource management alternatives, and proposed methods of implementing recommended actions.

“Our water resources are important to our economy and our quality of life, so it’s essential that we have a plan in place that ensures that we are good stewards of these precious assets,” Myers said.

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Source: Environmental News Service

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