[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PERSPECTIVES ON CALIFORNIA WATER SUPPLY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER AND POWER
of the
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Monday, January 25, 2010, in Los Angeles, California
__________
Serial No. 111-43
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Chairman
DOC HASTINGS, Washington, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Don Young, Alaska
Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Elton Gallegly, California
Samoa John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii Jeff Flake, Arizona
Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Grace F. Napolitano, California Carolina
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Louie Gohmert, Texas
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Rob Bishop, Utah
Jim Costa, California Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Doug Lamborn, Colorado
Gregorio Sablan, Northern Marianas Adrian Smith, Nebraska
Martin T. Heinrich, New Mexico Robert J. Wittman, Virginia
George Miller, California Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts John Fleming, Louisiana
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Mike Coffman, Colorado
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Jason Chaffetz, Utah
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming
Islands Tom McClintock, California
Diana DeGette, Colorado Bill Cassidy, Louisiana
Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Lois Capps, California
Jay Inslee, Washington
Joe Baca, California
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South
Dakota
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts
Frank Kratovil, Jr., Maryland
Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
James H. Zoia, Chief of Staff
Rick Healy, Chief Counsel
Todd Young, Republican Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Republican Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER AND POWER
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California, Chairwoman
TOM McCLINTOCK, California, Ranking Republican Member
George Miller, California Cathy McMorris Rodgers,
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Washington,
Jim Costa, California Adrian Smith, Nebraska
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Mike Coffman, Colorado
Jay Inslee, Washington Doc Hastings, Washington, ex
Joe Baca, California officio
Nick J. Rahall, II, West Virginia,
ex officio
------
CONTENTS
----------
Page
Hearing held on Monday, January 25, 2010......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Calvert, Hon. Ken, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 9
Chu, Hon. Judy, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California.............................................. 11
Costa, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California.............................................. 7
McClintock, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California........................................ 6
Napolitano, Hon. Grace F., a Representative in Congress from
the State of California.................................... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 4
Congressional Research Service report entitled
``California Drought: Hydrological and Regulatory Water
Supply Issues''........................................ 6
Statement of Witnesses:
Brady, Brian J., General Manager, Imperial Irrigation
District, Imperial, California............................. 38
Prepared statement of.................................... 39
Caballero, Hon. Anna, Assembly Member of the California State
Legislature, Representing the 28th Assembly District,
Sacramento, California..................................... 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Collins, Larry, Vice President, Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations, San Francisco, California........ 83
Prepared statement of.................................... 84
Connor, Hon. Michael, Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation,
U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C........... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Del Bosque, Joe L., Owner, Empresas Del Bosque Inc., Los
Banos, California.......................................... 89
Prepared statement of.................................... 90
Dunn, Lucy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Orange
County Business Council, Irvine, California................ 80
Prepared statement of.................................... 81
Famiglietti, Professor Jay, Ph.D., Department of Earth System
Science, University of California at Irvine, Irvine,
California................................................. 65
Prepared statement of.................................... 67
Gleick, Dr. Peter H., President, Pacific Institute, Oakland,
California................................................. 59
Prepared statement of.................................... 61
Kightlinger, Jeffery, General Manager, Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California, Los Angeles, California... 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 37
Luna, Miguel A., Executive Director, Urban Semillas, Los
Angeles, California........................................ 71
Prepared statement of.................................... 72
Parks, Dan, Assistant General Manager, Coachella Valley Water
District, Coachella, California............................ 50
Prepared statement of.................................... 51
Snow, Hon. Lester A., Director, California Department of
Water Resources, Sacramento, California.................... 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 23
Stapleton, Maureen A., General Manager, San Diego County
Water Authority, San Diego, California..................... 41
Prepared statement of.................................... 43
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON ``PERSPECTIVES ON CALIFORNIA WATER SUPPLY:
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES.''
----------
Monday, January 25, 2010
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Natural Resources
Los Angeles, California
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m., in
the Boardroom, The Metropolitan Water District, Los Angeles,
California, Hon. Grace Napolitano [Chairwoman of the
Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Napolitano, Costa, and McClintock.
Also Present: Representatives Chu and Calvert.
STATEMENT OF HON. GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mrs. Napolitano. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and
welcome to the Subcommittee on Water and Power's hearing. I now
will call it to order.
The purpose of today's hearing is to hold an oversight
hearing on ``Perspectives on California Water Supply:
Challenges and Opportunities,'' in Southern California.
I ask unanimous consent that Congressman Ken Calvert and
Congresswoman Judy Chu be allowed to sit on the dais and
participate in the Subcommittee proceedings today, and without
objection, I so order.
Congressman Costa will be joining us shortly.
After my opening statement, I will recognize all other
Members of Congress and the Subcommittee for any statement they
may have, or they can submit it for the record, as they choose.
Any Member of Congress who desires to be heard will be heard.
Additional material may be submitted for the record by
Members of Congress, by any witness or by any interested party.
The record will be kept open for 10 business days following
today's hearing, and a five-minute rule, with a timer, will be
enforced. Green means go, yellow indicates you have one minute,
and the red means stop or I will gavel.
I certainly want to extend my thanks to Metropolitan Water
for allowing us to use this beautiful facility and for the
hospitality for the witnesses and for us in hosting today's
hearing. It means a lot. It is convenient and central. I also
wanted to thank the Board members who are here. Board members,
would you please stand up. I don't want to miss anybody.
Members?
Water, ladies and gentlemen, is California's gold. Either
we have too little or too much recently, and this past week we
saw almost a year's worth of rain. Yet we are nowhere near
filling our dams, our rivers, our lakes or aquifers. It does
not mean that our concerns over drought and how water is
managed in California are over; far from it.
We are in the midst of a real challenge: Increasing
population, aging infrastructure, water supply restrictions,
water quality concerns, environmental concerns, etcetera. The
list goes on. It continues to grow with each year.
We are here today to continue a discussion, and this will
not be the last of our hearings in Southern California, in an
attempt to clarify California's water status, the water
situation that over the past three years has been intensifying
and reaching a dangerous and critical point. The dilemma we
face in Washington is how can we work together to meet the
challenge cooperatively and in a civil manner; that is, without
litigation.
Management of water in California is a cooperative effort,
balancing between State, Federal and local suppliers. The
resulting plumbing system is managed to meet the needs of over
30 million citizens who expect and are used to having a good
quality product to be delivered to them at a reasonable price.
Our desire today is to have a dialogue about how the water
situation in Southern California factors into the state's wide
approach to addressing the whole state's drought issues and
concerns. Everyone here today has a story to tell, and many of
you have asked to be heard, and we are asking that you submit
something for the record. Likely, all of you have suggestions
for some of those solutions. It is that dialogue about ideas
and suggestions on how we can most effectively work together
that we would like to have from you today.
The importance of this discussion and why we are in
Southern California is that the issue of water requires us to
hear from all parties and constituencies. Developing a logical
and doable approach to addressing the California water crisis
requires a statewide coordinated approach.
I believe we are seeing the manifestation of this in
California's legislative efforts in November, the December
Interim Federal Action Plan and last September's Memorandum of
Understanding between the State and the six Federal agencies,
or maybe it is seven. These are all good efforts to bring
direction, and now we need consistent and dedicated leadership
to be successful. Independent actions taken without commitment
will not result in a long-term solution.
There is not one answer that will solve the hurt that many
have felt and continue to feel under current water conditions.
A couple of storms are of some relief, but they are a
reflection of weather impact by variable ocean conditions. They
are not the long-term solutions to address the issues that
underlie our whole water dilemma.
There has been a great deal of conjecture and a lot of one-
way dialogue that the current water problems are due to the
current regulatory environment, and a lot of finger pointing in
the past. While making interesting theatre, they do not provide
action nor resolve the underlying problems.
In a December 2009 Congressional Research Service report,
they concluded that, and I quote, ``the current drought has
created a fundamental shortage of supply. Regulatory or court-
imposed restrictions, as well as the long-established state
water rights system, exacerbate the effects of the drought for
agricultural and urban water users.''
The combined effect of drought, the state water rights
system, the physical constraints of hydrologic plumbing system,
carryover surface and groundwater supplies, changing dynamics
of climate, and legally mandated regulations for water quality
and the environment all affect the delivery of water to
agricultural, urban and environmental systems of California.
It is very evident today, our water management in
California is supply limited. The challenge of all water users
is how to adapt and mitigate to live within our water means,
and not to have a reduction in service or quality and have a
loss in the critical environmental services for that water
quality.
Some have questioned why we are having this discussion in
Southern California rather than in the north. That is where the
drought is hitting the hardest. The answer is simple. The
drought is a statewide concern and demands that all portions of
the state be heard from, especially when two-thirds of
California's population is in Southern California.
When looking at the issue of water debate in California
over the last few years--I would say three or more--there have
been numerous meetings, hearings, and discussions in Northern
California and in the Central Valley. Curiously missing was
hearing from the people and the issues facing the citizens of
Southern California.
Citizens in this area feel the drought from both imports
from the Colorado River Basin and from Northern California. In
Southern California, we are experiencing the near-perfect storm
of reduced supplies, increased demand from rising populations,
and the steadily increasing complexity of legal, environmental
and administrative requirements. The recent court decisions
regarding the management of the Colorado River and the
Quantification Settlement Agreement potentially throws years of
negotiations and cooperation in jeopardy, and with it water
supplies for Southern California.
Water is a basic human right. How many of us think about
the water source when we turn on the tap in the morning to make
our coffee or drink our tea? How many of us think about the
journey that the drop of water has taken as it moves from the
Sierras or the Rocky Mountains to the reservoirs, the canals,
the water treatment plants, the pipes in our houses or
apartments? We all take it for granted. The reality is, as we
are finding out, that quantity, quality, and real-time supply
of water is critical to our health and well-being and to our
basic economy. Every citizen in California deserves a clean and
dependable source of water.
Today we are going to have three panels discuss three
different aspects of the water issues in California. The first
panel will discuss the Federal and State approach to the
current water solution. This will include a discussion of the
State of California's state water plan, followed by a
discussion of the November historic water legislation.
Last, we have asked the Department of the Interior to
discuss the Federal-Delta water plan, the impacts of the recent
QSA decision on the Colorado River water supply, and the role
of water reclamation and reuse to supplies here in Southern
California, and maybe even the support of the Administration's
2012 increase to $200 million to alleviate the $600 million
backlog of Title XVI recycling projects.
I would appreciate it if the people behind you can see.
Thank you so very much. Thank you for being here.
The second panel will focus on the issues associated with
water delivery to the citizens of Southern California. This
will include discussions associated with the water delivery
reductions from the two primary water supply sources of
Southern California, imports from Northern California and water
supplied from the Colorado River system, and the impacts
associated with recent court decisions and what constraints
this puts on supplying water to the citizens of the southland.
The last panel will address the science and information
needs that can help Federal, State and local water managers
make better decisions, and identify specific local and regional
impacts to the urban water users, to the fishermen, and to the
farmers.
We will use today's hearing to discuss, listen and,
hopefully, learn more about the water crisis in all of
California, and the coordinated efforts to address it. This
discussion needs to begin now, if we are to work together to
implement real solutions and real change, not just talk. We
have a challenge in front of us, and together I am positive we
can begin to identify those solutions.
With that, I would like to now yield to the Ranking Member,
to my right, of the Subcommittee on Water and Power,
Congressman Tom McClintock, for his opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Napolitano follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Grace F. Napolitano, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Water in California--either we have too little of it or too much.
This past week has resulted in almost a year's worth of rain. While the
increase in our water supply is appreciated, it does not mean that our
concerns over drought and how water is managed in California are over.
Far from it. We are in the midst of a real challenge--increasing
population, aging infrastructure, water supply restrictions, water
quality concerns, environmental concerns ``. the list goes on and
continues to grow with each year. We are here today to continue a
discussion about the California water situation. A water situation that
over the past three years has been intensifying and reaching a boiling
point. The dilemma we face in Washington is how can we work together to
meet the challenge cooperatively and in a civil manner.
Management of water conditions in California is a cooperative
effort--balancing between State, Federal and local suppliers. The
resulting plumbing system is managed to meet the needs of over 30
million citizens who expect a good quality product to be delivered to
them. Our desire here is to have a dialogue about how the water
situation in Southern California factors into the states-wide approach
to addressing the larger drought issues and concerns. Everyone here
today has a story to tell about how the drought has affected them or
their constituents and likely all of you have suggestions for
solutions. It is that dialogue about ideas and suggestions on how we
can most effectively work together that we want to have today.
The importance of this discussion and why we are here in Southern
California is that the issue of water requires that we hear from all
parts and constituencies. Developing a logical and doable approach to
addressing the California water crisis requires a statewide coordinate
approach. I believe we are seeing the manifestation of this in the
California Legislatures efforts in November, the December Interim
Federal Action Plan and last September's Memorandum of Understanding
between the State and Federal agencies. These are all good efforts to
bring direction and now need consistent and dedicated leadership to be
successful. Independent actions taken without commitment will not
result in long-term solutions.
There is no one silver bullet that will solve the hurt that many
are feeling with the current water conditions. A couple of days of rain
are certainly a nice relief but they are a reflection of weather
impacted by variable ocean conditions and are not the long-term
solutions to addressing the issues that underlie our water dilemma.
There has been a great deal of conjecture and a lot of one-way
dialogue that the current water problems are due to the current
regulatory environment. While making for interesting theatre they do
not help in resolving the underlying problems. In a December 2009
Congressional Research Service report, CRS concluded that ``the current
drought has created a fundamental shortage of supply. Regulatory or
court-imposed restrictions, as well as the long-established state water
rights system, exacerbate the effects of the drought for agricultural
and urban water users''.
The combined effect of the drought, the state water rights system,
physical constraints of the hydrologic plumbing system, carryover
surface and groundwater supplies, changing dynamics of climate, and
legally mandated regulations for water quality and the environment all
affect the delivery of water to the agricultural, urban and
environmental systems of California. The issue is very simple--today
our water management in California is supply limited. The challenge to
all water users is how to adapt and mitigate to live within our water
means and not have a reduction in service or have a loss in critical
environmental services and water quality.
Some have questioned why we are having this discussion in Southern
California rather than further north. The answer is simple--the drought
is a statewide concern and demands that all portions of the state be
heard from. When looking at the issue of water debate in California
over the last 3 years, there have been numerous meetings, hearings, and
discussions in northern California and the Central Valley. Curiously
missing was hearing from the people and issues facing the citizens of
Southern California.
Citizens in Southern California feel the drought from both imports
from the Colorado River Basin and from northern California. In Southern
California we are experiencing the near perfect storm of reduced
supplies, increased demand from rising populations, and a steadily
increasing complexity of legal, environmental and administrative
requirements. The recent court decisions regarding the management of
Colorado River water and the Quantification Settlement Agreement
potentially throws years of negotiations and cooperation in jeopardy
and with it water supplies for Southern California.
Water is a basic human right. How many of us think about it the
waters source when we turn on the tap in the morning to fill that
coffee or tea pot? How many of us think about the journey that the drop
of water takes as it moves from the Sierras or the Rocky Mountains to
the reservoirs, the canals, the water treatment plants and the pipes in
our houses or apartments? We take it for granted. The reality is as we
are finding out is that quantity, quality and real-time supply of water
is critical to our health and well being. Every citizen in California
deserves a clean and dependable source of water.
Today we are going to have three panels discuss three different
aspects of the water issues in California. The first panel will discuss
the federal and state approach to the current California water
situation. This will include a discussion of California's state water
plan, followed by a discussion of the November historic state water
legislation. Lastly we have asked the Department of the Interior to
discuss the Federal-Delta water plan, the impacts of the recent QSA
decision on Colorado River water supply and the role of water
reclamation and reuse to supplies here in Southern California.
The second panel will focus on the issues associated with water
delivery to the citizens of Southern California. This will include
discussions about impacts associated with water delivery reductions
from the two primary water supply sources of Southern California,
imports from northern California and water supplied from the Colorado
River system and the impacts associated with recent state court
decisions and what constraints this puts on supplying water to the
citizens of the southland.
The last panel will address the science and information needs that
can help Federal, State and local water managers make better decisions,
as well as help to identify specific ``local and regional ``impacts to
urban water users, fishermen and farmers.
We will use today's hearing to discuss, listen, and hopefully learn
about the water crisis in California and the efforts being made to
address it. This discussion needs to occur now if we are to work
together to implement real solutions. We have a challenge in front of
us, and together I am positive we can figure out solutions.
With that said, I am pleased to now yield to the Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee on Water and Power, Congressman Tom McClintock, for
his opening statement.
______
[NOTE: The Congressional Research Service report entitled
``California Drought: Hydrological and Regulatory Water Supply
Issues'' dated December 7, 2009, has been retained in the
Committee's official files. It can also be found at: http://
www.crs.gov/Pages/Reports.aspx?ProdCode=R40979
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM McCLINTOCK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. McClintock. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
First, I would like to express our appreciation for putting the
Central Valley into its busy schedule so that it can hear
firsthand of the economic damage and human misery that has been
caused by the Federal Government's decision to shut off 200
trillion gallons of water to Central Valley farms in order to
indulge the environmentalist tech project, the Delta Smelts.
In the absence of the Committee's cooperation, the Minority
Republicans just held such a hearing under our own auspices
this morning in Fresno. I can tell you that Secretary Salazar's
statement to the Committee last year in which he admitted the
government had the discretion to turn the pumps back on but
would not do so because, quote, ``that would be like admitting
failure,'' did not sit well with the people there, and the
Administration's absence was also noted.
This disastrous folly has destroyed a half-million acres of
the most fertile farmland in America and destroyed the
livelihoods that supported 30,000 struggling families. The
prices on grocery shelves here in Southern California are
directly affected by the loss of 500,000 acres of Valley
agriculture due to this decision, and on behalf of the people
of the Central Valley, from whom I have just heard this
morning, I again renew the Minority's urgent plea that this
Committee come to the Central Valley to see firsthand the
suffering that this policy has caused.
Today's hearing is about challenges and opportunities on
California's water supply. I found the questions raised in the
witnesses' invitations indicative of a concern that this
Congress has lost perspective on creating abundant water
supplies. Today, this Congress and this Administration seem to
have adopted the position that government's principal objective
should not be to create abundance, but rather to ration
shortages.
The Majority's questions to witnesses failed to mention the
need for more water storage or the costs and benefits of all
water supply infrastructure options. I must again remind the
Subcommittee of the obvious reality, that managing a water
shortage is not the same as solving a water shortage.
Having read some of the testimony presented to the
Committee today, I believe that we need to measure all water
proposals against the simple and obvious alternative of
renewing our commitment to the construction of new dams and
reservoirs. One of the last great dams was the Oroville Dam
which cost roughly $600 million to construct in 1968. Due to
the inflation adjustment, that is about $3.5 billion in today's
money. That dam produces 3.5 million acre-feet of water.
In other words, the modern-day, inflation-adjusted cost of
the Oroville Dam, including its massive power plant, comes to
about $1,000 per acre-foot, and yet this Committee has ignored
new dam construction in favor of such things as water recycling
projects that cost upwards of $18,000 per acre-foot. That is
insane.
In my district, it is the site of the Auburn Dam which
began construction some 40 years ago. The most complex part of
that dam, the giant footings cut into the surrounding bedrock,
were completed in the early 1970s, but then the objections of
the environmental left brought the project to a halt. That dam
today could be providing 2.3 million additional acre-feet of
water storage, 800 megawatts of the cheapest and cleanest
electricity available, and 400-year flood protection for the
Sacramento Delta, and all that is lacking is the political will
to proceed.
I think that this Congress has forgotten the policies of
the Pat Brown generation of builders, the visionaries who
created the Central Valley and state water projects. Instead,
we now write off any ideas of new storage and ignore the plight
of our nation's bread basket in the San Joaquin Valley. So
while valley communities--again, the bread basket of the
nation--run food lines with food imported from China, we seem
content to accept rationing as the way to resolve our water
crisis. I believe we can do a lot better than that. Thank you,
Madam Chairwoman.
Mrs. Napolitano. I am sorry, but the audience will please
refrain from any emotion of any kind. This is a hearing. No, I
am serious. We will ask you to be escorted out. Simply, we need
to proceed. We need to move forward and, yes, we agree with a
lot of things. So please, please, bear with us.
Mr. Costa.
STATEMENT OF HON. JIM COSTA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson, for this
hearing this afternoon. I think it is important that Southern
California clearly understand, as the people do in the San
Joaquin Valley that I represent, that their water supply is at
risk as well. I represent Ground Zero where the worst impacts
of the drought have been felt over the last three years--not
just because of below-average rainfall, but because of
regulatory constraints that make it extremely difficult for the
Federal and state water projects to provide water for the
intended purposes for which they were created.
The fact of the matter is that last year, while the
Governor and the Legislature were able to--and I want to
commend them for passing a very important water package that we
hope the voters will approve this November--those are longer-
term solutions, and they are far from being achieved. We hope
that they will be implemented but, in the meantime, California
is living on borrowed time.
Our water system is broken. The plumbing system and the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta system is broken. Initially
developed to provide water supply for the entire state,
approximately 20 million people. Today, we have 38 million
people living in California, with the prospect that in the year
2030 we will have maybe 50 million people--another 12 million
people. The water supply that we have today is already being
maxed out with all of the demands that are being placed upon
it.
The projects, when they were created in the Thirties,
Forties and Fifties, were intended to provide a sustainable
water supply for every region of California, but in 1992 we
passed the Central Valley Improvement Act. Good, bad or
indifferent, we now require those same projects not only to
provide a sustainable water supply for every region of
California, but we now ask them to restore fisheries and water
quality, primarily an ecosystem, which is commendable, to a
level that existed in the 19th Century.
The problem is, as you know, people point fingers, and they
are accusatory about what people shouldn't farm here. Well, I
take umbrage with that. Everybody likes to eat, and frankly, we
take for granted the food supply in this state and the food
supply that is provided in the most productive region in the
entire country, in the San Joaquin Valley that I represent,
that has been the hardest hit by this drought.
God forbid that Southern California faces the impacts that
we are feeling in communities like Firebaugh and Mendota and
down to Delano where you have unemployment levels from 41
percent to 36 percent to 32 percent, and they have food lines
with some of the hardest working people you will ever meet in
your lives, that normally would be working to put food on
America's dinner table, in food lines, in the richest country
in the world. Unacceptable.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this hearing in Southern
California is important, because the water supply for our
entire state is at risk, and what we are feeling today in the
San Joaquin Valley, if we don't correct and fix these problems,
will be felt in Southern California, and the boon of
California, the golden dream of California for a bright
prosperity, economic prosperity in the 21st Century, will be
erased. That is how serious this crisis is today.
So let's be clear. While the Administration has attempted
to provide some solutions in the last year, much more needs to
be done. We cannot have another year of a 10 percent water
allocation to the San Luis Unit. It simply will not work, and
the Administration needs to wake up and understand this.
We need to do everything we can to think out of the box. We
have a unique situation, and I will close on this point. As a
result of the biological opinion which went into effect
yesterday or today, we now--even though we had record rainfalls
last week, as you noted, Madam Chairwoman--we can't pump
because of the turbidity. We don't have enough water. We can't
pump because of the impacts on the species. We have too much
water; we can't pump because of the impact on the species.
Ladies and gentlemen, when are we going to use common
sense, and when will we be able to pump water to provide for
the San Joaquin Valley and for Southern California? That is
what we are talking about. So I, Madam Chairwoman, appreciate
this hearing. We have a lot of work that we have to do, and we
have to do it through cooperation. Politicizing the issue of
water, as we have noted for over a century, is not going to
solve these crises.
We have been fighting over water resources in the West and
in California all the way back to the days of Mark Twain when
he noted whiskey is made for drinking, and water is made for
fighting. Let us put the fighting behind us. Let us get some
practical solutions this year. My constituents cannot live
without some solutions this year. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Congressman Costa, and we agree
with a lot of what is being said, and this is the first hearing
in Southern California. There have been at least 16 hearings in
Central and Northern California in the last few years since I
have been in Congress. So allow us to be able to hear what is
going on.
May I add to your comments, Congressman Costa, that L.A.
County has, what, almost 14 million people. That is more than a
third of the state's population. L.A. City alone has almost 4
million. So, you understand, we recognize many of our water
agencies have done what they needed to do to address the water
shortage before we reached the proportions that some of the
other cities that don't have water meters in Northern
California.
Mr. Calvert?
STATEMENT OF HON. KEN CALVERT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Calvert. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you for
allowing me to sit on the dais with the Committee, and Mr.
McClintock for giving me this honor to do that. Typically, I am
happy to have a hearing focusing on important water challenges
in Southern California but today, I must admit, I have mixed
emotions.
The reason that I am conflicted is because, as I understand
it from Mr. McClintock and other leaders in the water world,
this group has been trying to get a hearing in the Central
Valley for folks there to talk about the suffering of what is
going on with this--one of the most devastating water shortages
of our lifetime.
The Minority Members of this Committee, as I understand it,
repeatedly request field hearings in the Central Valley to hear
from these folks. I would recommend that we do that soon, and I
would be happy to join in that hearing to listen to the people
who are suffering in the central part of our state.
Last year, Senator Feinstein said, quote, ``Our state's
water crisis is seriously impacting the San Joaquin Valley and
its communities, which depend on agriculture for their economic
survival. A lack of water threatens to decimate the Valley
economy, and some cities are already struggling with
unemployment rates between 25 and 45 percent. This crisis is
something that requires action and decisiveness.''
That was several months ago and, obviously, the problem has
only grown worse. Unfortunately, it appears to the people that
we continue not to acknowledge the crisis in the Valley. With
the current economic conditions throughout our state, we cannot
afford to ignore the water challenges before us. In addressing
the challenges, I believe there are some areas where increased
Federal involvement can be helpful. However, I also believe
there are other areas where California would be better off if
the Federal Government just simply got out of the way.
One matter that has emerged is a good example where Federal
involvement can be helpful. The uncertainty caused by the
recent judicial decision affecting the Quantification
Settlement Agreement, the QSA, is something, I believe, the
Department of the Interior must take an active role in dealing
with. An active participant in the QSA negotiations, as I was,
I can testify to the immense challenges and tough decisions
involved in that agreement. Strong leadership by the Department
of the Interior will be needed to ensure that the stakeholders
are able to maintain the stability and certainty that is
currently provided by the Quantification Settlement Agreement.
In Congress, the Water and Power Subcommittee has, on a
bipartisan basis, even if they are expensive, Tom, authorized
Federal funding for water recycling, other important water
projects that have helped California water districts stretch
the most out of our limited water supply.
The Federal Government should also play a role in the
development and exchange of technological advancements in water
supply infrastructure. However, as we are aware, Federal
assistance will continue to be limited due to our poor
financial condition. That being said, there are a number of
things that we can do on the Committee and through the
Administration and Congress to improve water in California and
the economic conditions that will not cost the American
taxpayers a single dime.
I firmly believe that it is the responsibility of this
Committee and Congress to exempt the Delta pumping operations
from the failed Endangered Species Act restrictions until the
Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is complete, and a comprehensive
solution for managing the Bay-Delta is in place.
The smelt population this past summer fell back to a
historic low set in 2005, and now is well below the high points
recorded in the late 1970s. Given these findings, I don't know
how anyone can say the Delta pumping restrictions are
benefitting the Delta Smelt. Meanwhile, the devastating
economic impacts are undeniable. As Mr. Costa pointed out, even
if we have significant rainfall and snow pack in the Sierras,
because of the interpretation of the biological opinions,
pumping can't take place. That is, I think, ridiculous.
Looking beyond the Delta, there are steps Congress should
take to reduce the regulatory load placed on water districts
constructing new water supply projects. If water districts are
going to invest local rate funds to reduce their dependence on
Federal water projects and other resources, we should not
artificially inflate the cost of these projects by imposing
unnecessary requirements. In other words, let us get the
Federal Government out of the way, and make it easier for
districts to provide an affordable and reliable water supply in
California for small businesses.
Then one last thing, Madam Chairwoman. I would be remiss if
I failed to express my condolences on the passing of two
legends in the California water world, former ACWA Executive
Director Steve Hall, and former Orange County Water District
Director and MWD Board member Wes Bannister.
Like many of you here, I had the pleasure of working with
both Steve and Wes to address major challenges to our local
area and state, like CALFED and the Quantification Settlement
Agreement. Steve and Wes were true leaders, consensus builders
who worked tirelessly to improve our state. To say they will be
missed is an understatement, not only as leaders but as
friends. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Calvert, and I now will
call on Ms. Chu.
Mr. Costa. Madam Chairwoman. I would just like to join with
Mr. Calvert.
Mrs. Napolitano. All of us, I think, would like to join
with that.
Mr. Costa. They were both wonderful individuals.
Mrs. Napolitano. Yes, I knew them both.
Mr. Costa. Steve's service is going to be on Friday in
Sacramento.
Mrs. Napolitano. Ms. Chu?
STATEMENT OF HON. JUDY CHU, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Ms. Chu. Well, thank you, Madam Chair Napolitano and
Ranking Member McClintock, my colleagues on the Water and Power
Subcommittee. Thank you for allowing me to participate and
provide this statement at today's very important hearing on
California's fragile water supply.
Two great issues face our state. First, many of our
districts have been so hard hit by the economy and double digit
job loss. Second, California faces such a dire water supply
shortage, we are approaching our third year of an ongoing
drought, and our economy is made up of many different sectors
which are impacted either directly or indirectly by the
availability of water. With the economy and water supply so
inextricably dependent on each other, it is imperative that we
start working together with a shared regional strategy to look
for solutions to help adapt and mitigate our state's water
supply.
I am proud to have a number of local and municipal water
districts in my district of the San Gabriel Valley who have not
only worked toward innovative water systems for clean-up,
reuse, recycling and storage, but have also waged a campaign to
raise awareness and educate businesses and residents about the
importance of water conservation. As a result, there has been a
significant reduction of water usage.
My hope is that we no longer look at our fragile water
aquasystem and supply as an issue of Southern California versus
Northern California, but that we come together as one state to
work together to ensure that we have a quality and dependable
water supply for our businesses, our farmers, our fisheries,
and our communities for many generations to come.
In Southern California alone, we have been able to use
Title XVI funds to help develop local water supplies and
augment and replace imported water. Consequently, we have been
able to reduce our water usage in Southern California by 18
percent, even in light of an increasing population. Imagine
what we would be able to do is we could come together and deal
with this crisis with a statewide approach and, of course,
include the important piece, which is active and engaged
participation from our Federal agencies.
We in Congress must be fully engaged, and with the
leadership of Chairwoman Napolitano, I look forward to working
together with my colleagues and our delegation on how Congress
can continue to stay engaged and bring better resources to deal
with this ongoing water supply source that our state is facing.
I thank the witnesses who have traveled from near and far
to provide their expert testimony, and I look forward to
hearing your perspectives on the challenges and opportunities
of California's water supply.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Congresswoman Chu. Thank you
for being with us and being part of this, because it affects
everybody in Southern California as well as those in Northern
California.
We move on to our witnesses. We have three panels, as
stated before, and witnesses will be introduced before they
testify. After we hear from a panel, we will have a question
and answer period. All your submitted prepared statements will
be entered into the record, and all witnesses are asked to
kindly, please, summarize the high points of your testimony,
because they will be on the record, and limit your remarks to
five minutes, and the timer before you that will be used to
enforce the rule.
It also applies to the question and answer period, a total
of five minutes for questions, including responses, applies to
our Members of Congress. If there are any additional questions,
if time permits, we may have a third round, but don't bank on
it. We have 13 witnesses.
The first panel, we have The Honorable Michael Connor,
Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of the
Interior, from Washington, D.C. The second witness is Honorable
Anna Caballero, Assembly Member of the California State
Legislature, representing the 28th Assembly District in
Sacramento, and the third panelist is The Honorable Lester A.
Snow--congratulations, sir, on your recent appointment as the
new Director of the California Department of Water Resources in
Sacramento.
We are very thankful that you were able to find the time to
be with us today. So we will begin with The Honorable Mike
Connor.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL CONNOR, COMMISSIONER, BUREAU OF
RECLAMATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Connor. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and members of the
Subcommittee. I am Mike Connor, Commissioner of the Bureau of
Reclamation. I am pleased to summarize my written statement and
give the Department's perspective on California's water supply.
Again, I am here with guarded optimism that the recent
storms, which I do understand have brought some local flooding
here in Southern California, have at least on the positive side
brought water supply improvements for reclamations in major
reservoirs in California, but this recent storm between January
15th up to January 20th started at Shasta, Folsom and Trinity
and New Melones Reservoirs improved by about 361,000 acre-feet
in total.
More rain followed this past weekend. A week of rain,
however, does not make up for three years of drought.
Notwithstanding improvements, the major CVP reservoirs still
only range from 60 percent to 77 percent of average storage for
this time of year. Nonetheless, we are hopeful that, as we move
through the rainy season, the positive trend will continue.
I should note for the record, though, in response to the
initial statements, that right now we are pumping from the
Federal facilities, the Jones Pumping Plant. In total, the
combined state and Federal pumps are pumping approximately
6,000 CFS. The Smelt Working Group did meet this morning, and
there were no recommendations to restrict the pumping at this
point in time. So that is where we are currently. There is a
restriction in place as a result of the NOAA Biological Opinion
that is currently the basis for the 6,000 CFS but, nonetheless,
there is substantial----
Mrs. Napolitano. Commissioner, would you restate that? We
have Mr. Costa who wants to hear you. You are not coming in
loud enough.
Mr. Connor. Oh, I am sorry.
Mrs. Napolitano. The last statement that you just made.
Mr. Connor. So in response to the comments earlier, with
respect, I just wanted to provide the Subcommittee a status
update on where we are with respect to pumping from the
combined state and Federal water projects. We are presently
pumping about 6,000 CFS from those facilities. The Smelt
Working Group did meet this morning to review the conditions.
There were no recommendations for any restrictions on the
pumps. Currently, there is a limitation provided by the NOAA
Biological Opinion that limits the negative flow in the Owens
and Middle Rivers to -5000 CFS. So currently that is what is
operationally keeping the pumping at 6000 CFS.
Mr. Calvert. Madam Chairwoman, just a technical----
Mrs. Napolitano. Can you wait until the questions later.
Mr. Calvert. All right.
Mrs. Napolitano. Please continue.
Mr. Connor. I should also note that recent rains have
helped storage in the Lower Basin of the Colorado River
watershed. Fortunately, Lake Mead has gained a little bit of
elevation this past week as less water was being used
downstream as a result of the wet weather. Overall, the current
trend is one of improvement from the water supply's
perspective.
It goes without saying, though, that drought impacts
California uniquely due to its large population, reliance on
imported supplies, and the intense competition for the use of
limited supplies.
At the end of the last California drought, which lasted
from 1987 to '92, California's population was just over 31
million. Today, there are roughly 7 million more Californians,
all of whom need water, and the agricultural production and
other economic activities supported by water. In this setting,
the Subcommittee's focus on water conservation is right on
point. Other means of enhancing supply are also appropriate to
consider.
One of the most successful Federal programs for water
conservation is the Reclamation's Title XVI program. In
Southern California this program has enabled reclamation to
support 26 water recycling or groundwater projects which at
full build-out will provide over 392,000 acre-feet of water per
year to communities in Southern California.
Last year, President Obama signed the American Recovery and
Investment Act, and this has provided an opportunity to make
meaningful progress in addressing the backlog of Title XVI
projects, and it will help reduce dependence on the
increasingly fragile Bay-Delta in the long term. All told, more
than 400 million, roughly 40 percent of Reclamation's Recovery
Act funding, has gone to California projects, significantly
more than any other reclamation state.
We are applying this funding to a mix of projects to
promote not just traditional water supplies but also
restoration efforts to improve the ecosystem and stabilize
Reclamation's own ability to delivery water. Still, concerted
efforts of water conservation cannot erase the fact that
Southern California depends on imported water for the majority
of its total annual water supply. Using 2004 as a reference,
within the Metropolitan Water District Service Area where we
are today, 1.8 million acre-feet came from the state water
project from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Another 700,000
acre-feet came from the Colorado River to the east. The
remainder of that imported supply, roughly 200,000 acre-feet,
comes from the Owens Valley.
As California continues to diversify its water supply and
promote conservation and efficiency, it is imperative that we
continue to improve conditions in the Colorado River Basin and
the Bay-Delta region. Notwithstanding drought, the Colorado
River apportionment to California this year will be the full
4.4 million acre-feet. Reclamation in the seven Basin states
and a number of partners have made great progress in the last
10 to 15 years in adjusting operational issues in the Colorado
River Basin and preparing for the day when demand exceeds
available water. This effort continues to be a work in
progress----
Mrs. Napolitano. Please continue. You have a minute left.
Mr. Connor. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And we look
forward to continuing our efforts to use water more efficiently
and to conserve storage, wherever possible.
With respect to the QSA, that is a matter that is currently
in litigation, but I will say that the Federal Government
believes it has valid agreements with the parties to the QSA,
and we intend to stand by those agreements.
Parts of the Bay-Delta are less certain at this time. The
importance of the Bay-Delta to Southern California's water
supply was starkly evident in 2009.
To address the issues associated with restricted water
supply and environmental conditions in the Delta, the
Department released an Interim Federal Action Plan for the
California Bay-Delta on December 22, 2009. In this document we
have detailed plans for a new path forward in the Bay-Delta
region.
Specifically, the Federal Government reaffirmed its
partnership with the State of California and its commitment to
coordinate a range of important actions with those of the
state. Most important is our joint work to produce the Bay-
Delta Conservation Plan. The BDCP is the most significant
effort underway to address long-term water issues in California
generally and in the Bay-Delta specifically. The Federal
Government is fully committed to the BDCP process and is now
more fully engaged than ever before.
We will ensure that Federal actions in this area complement
recently enacted California water legislation, with the
ultimate goal of being able to deliver water on a reliable
basis without continued harm to the Bay-Delta ecosystem.
In the meantime, we will continue to implement actions in
the near term to shore up water supplies for those water users
suffering significant shortage. In 2010 we will facilitate
final permitting construction of the Delta-Mendota and
California Aqueduct Intertie, which will allow greater
flexibility in operating the state and Federal pumps and allow
for recovery of water between the two systems. We expect to
initiate construction in June of this year and to complete that
in the fall of 2011.
Ultimately, the project is anticipated to restore
approximately 35,000 acre-feet annually of project water to the
CVP. We will also continue to work closely with the state to
facilitate voluntary water transfers, building on the 600,000
acre-feet of transfers that occurred in 2009. Maximum
operational flexibility will also be pursued in the scheduling
guidelines and water contracts.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this
important subject. I will be happy to answer the questions at
the appropriate time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Connor follows:]
Statement of Michael L. Connor, Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation,
U.S. Department of the Interior
Madam Chairwoman and members of the subcommittee, my name is Mike
Connor, Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. I am pleased to
provide the perspectives of the Department of the Interior (Department)
on the California water supply as we move into what may prove to be a
fourth year of drought in California. I will also address some of the
subcommittee's specific interests in water conservation, reuse and
recycling.
Last year, the water supply conditions confronting the Bureau of
Reclamation (Reclamation) and its customers in California, particularly
south of the Delta, brought about one of the most difficult years in
our history. This year may prove to be no less severe. Next month,
Reclamation's Mid-Pacific Region will announce its initial forecast of
agricultural, municipal and industrial water supplies from the Central
Valley Project (CVP), which will likely feature very low water
allocations. The actual numbers are still being determined by our
Central Valley Operations office using the latest snowpack and
streamflow data. Here in the Lower Colorado Region, a drought persists
on the Colorado River, but all states in the Lower Basin will receive
their full apportionments under the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) for the
Colorado River which was published by the Department on January 5th.
While there have been more severe droughts, never before has
drought fallen upon a state with so large a population, and so many
competing uses for its water. At the end of the last California
drought, which lasted from 1987 to 1992, California's population was
just over 31 million. Today, there are roughly seven million more
Californians, all of whom need water and the agricultural production
and other economic activities supported by water.
Here in southern California, local governments and agencies like
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) have
responded by partnering with state and Federal agencies to achieve
tremendous reductions in per capita urban water use. For example, the
City of Long Beach has reduced its per capita water use from 138
gallons per day in 2000 to 103 gallons per day in September 2009. In
addition to this tremendous reduction in water use through
conservation, the City of Long Beach announced in September 2009 that
water demand was 21 percent below the 10-year average water demand.
While market forces and the price of water play a role in this dynamic,
the region's inherently dry hydrology has instilled an acute awareness
of the value of water and its conservation in an arid region.
One of the Federal programs for water conservation is the
Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act, Title
XVI of Public Law 102-575. In southern California, this program has
enabled Reclamation to help fund the planning or construction of 26
water recycling or groundwater projects which at full build out will
provide over 391,650 acre-feet of water per year to communities in the
greater Southern California coastal areas of Los Angeles, Orange
County, San Diego and the Inland Empire. This amount of water is enough
to serve the needs of approximately 391,650 five-person households, or
approximately 1.96 million people. Before the enactment of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Federal investments in Title XVI
overall totaled about $389 million through FY 2009 and resulted in an
estimated 245,000 acre-feet of water made available in 2009.
The Title XVI program was established by Congress in 1992 to
provide Federal funding of up to 25% of a project's construction costs,
with all operations and maintenance funding provided by project
sponsors. While the program has provided more than $392 million in
funding for these southern California projects since its inception
through Fiscal Year 2009, including ARRA, the number of Title XVI
projects submitted to Reclamation for study and to this subcommittee
for authorization continues to expand.
In view of this and the serious water issues facing California, the
Obama Administration is taking actions that have brought and continue
to bring substantial Federal investment in California's water
infrastructure. As referenced above, last year President Obama signed
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This law has
provided an opportunity to fund many of California's water challenges
and projects, will help maximize the continued and future delivery of
water, and may reduce some of the demand placed on the Bay-Delta. All
told, more than $400 million, roughly 40 percent of Reclamation's ARRA
funding, has gone to California projects, significantly more than any
other Reclamation state. We are applying this funding to a mix of
projects to promote not just traditional water supplies, but also
healthy fisheries and habitat projects to recover, sustain, and protect
species' ability to reproduce and thrive. We understand our obligation
to protect aquatic resources in California together with our state and
Federal partners, and we know that the economic impacts of fishing
season closures on salmon fishing communities are felt no less severely
than in other sectors of the economy.
The Department effectively maximizes the value of its scarce
resources for Title XVI projects and complementary programs like Water
Conservation Initiative Challenge Grants. Challenge Grants, like Title
XVI, leverage non-Federal dollars to effectively and efficiently manage
water in communities where the need exists. Whereas Title XVI recycles
and reuses otherwise unusable water supplies, Challenge Grants provide
incentives for water users to actually use less water than would
otherwise be the case. The Department's Water Conservation Initiative,
which incorporates Title XVI and Challenge Grants, was a centerpiece of
our 2010 budget request, and will be a continuing priority of this
Administration going forward. In addition, last summer Reclamation
announced 16 awards totaling $5.6 million as part of the 2009 CALFED
Water Use Efficiency Grant Program. Even before the drought struck,
Reclamation had been putting significant effort and resources into
various initiatives intended to minimize the serious impacts from
periods of dry hydrology. Since 2004, Reclamation has awarded over $40
million in cost-shared financial assistance for 67 projects in
California under the competitive Challenge Grant Program referenced
above. The improvements resulting from these grants are projected to
create or conserve 177,000 acre-feet of water annually for agricultural
and urban uses.
Still, concerted efforts at water conservation cannot erase the
fact that southern California depends on imported water for the
majority of its total annual water supply. 1 The amounts
vary depending on the water year type. Using 2004 as a reference,
within the MWD service area where we are today, 1.8 million acre-feet
came from the State Water Project from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Bay-
Delta in the north. Another 700,000 acre feet in 2004 came from the
Colorado River to the east. The remainder of the imported supply,
roughly 200,000 acre-feet, comes from the Owens Valley. About 1.6
million acre feet, or 38 percent of MWD's overall supply in 2004, came
from local supplies, according to MWD's most recent Regional Urban
Water Management Plan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ All figures in this paragraph derived from the November 2005
Regional Urban Water Management Plan of the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California, pgs. A2-1, and table A.2-1 http://
www.mwdh2o.com/mwdh2o/pages/yourwater/RUWMP/RUWMP--2005.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notwithstanding drought, the Colorado River apportionment to
California this year will be the full 4.4 million acre feet, with the
potential for some surplus under the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) for
the Colorado River. The Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA),
executed by the Secretary of the Interior and other parties in October
2003, was a major milestone on the Colorado River and is important to
all who rely on the Colorado River. In short, the numerous Federal and
non-Federal agreements reached in 2003 result in a more efficient
management of the beneficial use of water in California under the
Consolidated Decree in Arizona vs. California and other authorities.
The QSA agreements help to ensure that California's long term use of
the river is within the State's 4.4 million acre-feet annual
apportionment under Federal law.
Validation proceedings relating to certain of the agreements
reached in 2003 are currently pending in California state court. These
are contested proceedings to which the United States is not a party.
The litigation is ongoing in 2010, and the Department does not intend
to comment on those proceedings. The Department has valid and binding
agreements with the California agencies that are parties to the 2003
Colorado River Water Delivery Agreement and we intend to stand by that
agreement.
The importance of the Bay-Delta to Southern California's water
supply was starkly evident in 2009. To address the issues associated
with restricted water supply and the environmental collapse in the
Delta, the Department released an Interim Federal Action Plan (Action
Plan) for the California Bay-Delta on December 22, 2009. In this
document, this Administration has detailed its plans for a new path
forward in the Bay-Delta. Specifically, the Federal government
reaffirmed its partnership with the state of California and its
commitment to coordinate actions with those of the state. Most
important is that Federal agencies are working in concert with the
State of California and local authorities in producing the Bay-Delta
Conservation Plan (BDCP). The BDCP is the most significant effort
currently underway to address critical long-term water issues in
California generally and in the Bay-Delta specifically. Consistent with
the Action Plan released in December 2009, Federal agencies are
bolstering their active participation in partnership with the State and
local authorities in the collaborative, long-term Bay-Delta
Conservation Plan (BDCP) process.
Simply put, we are committed to work closely with the state of
California, our Federal partners, water contractors, and all interested
parties to encourage the smarter supply and use of Bay-Delta water. In
2010, we will facilitate final permitting and construction of the
Delta-Mendota and California Aqueduct Intertie. The Intertie will be a
pipeline and pump station connection between the Federal Delta-Mendota
Canal and California Aqueduct. Connecting these two facilities will
allow greater flexibility in operating pumping systems which each have
their own export constraints, and allow for recovery of water between
the state and Federal systems. The Intertie's operations are included
in the new biological opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and the National Marine Fisheries Service for the Delta. Intertie
construction effects on terrestrial species were addressed in a
project-specific biological assessment in August 2009. We expect to
initiate construction in June of this year, and complete construction
in 2011.
Under the Action Plan released in December 2009, we will continue
to foster water transfers between willing buyers and willing sellers,
improve scientific knowledge of turbidity and Delta smelt, and use
results from a pending National Academy of Science study on how to best
balance water delivery needs with those of threatened and endangered
species. The Federal agencies also will work closely with the state in
developing mid and longer-term infrastructure options that can
potentially address the chronic conflicts that led the Delta Vision
report commissioned by Governor Schwarzenegger to conclude that current
water supply strategies are unsustainable in the face of the Bay-Delta
ecosystem collapse, climate change impacts and seismic risks.
Finally, we will work together to continue to deliver drought
relief funding and ensure integrated flood risk management, including
the prioritization of projects and activities for flood risk management
and related levee stabilization projects and navigation. The Action
Plan features participation from the Department, the Army Corps of
Engineers, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department of Commerce, and the Council on Environmental
Quality.
Of course, groundwater will continue to be an essential water
supply for many of California's coastal and inland communities. With
the combined impact of the drought and environmental needs, existing
groundwater sources are being significantly stressed. Within the
Department, the U.S. Geological Survey is actively engaged in expanding
the range of information available to water users and policymakers
regarding groundwater. The USGS developed the Central Valley Hydrologic
Model to assess water resources in the Central Valley, which is an
important tool to evaluate the impacts of drought on groundwater
conditions. Reclamation has helped fund new USGS work to combine use of
the Central Valley Hydrologic Model with new data collection to look
specifically at potential subsidence impacts on water-delivery canals.
This new hydrologic model can also be used by water managers to address
water issues related to conjunctive water use, recognizing the
interdependence of surface water supplies and groundwater.
According to the USGS, the San Joaquin Valley, which includes the
San Joaquin and Tulare Basins, has experienced large changes in
groundwater storage. In the early 1960s, groundwater pumping caused
water levels to decline to historic lows on the west side of the San
Joaquin Valley, which resulted in large amounts of surface subsidence.
In the late 1960s, the surface-water delivery system began to route
water from the wetter Sacramento Valley and Delta regions to the drier,
more heavily pumped San Joaquin Valley. The surface-water delivery
system was fully functional by the early 1970s, resulting in
groundwater-level recovery in the northern and western parts of the San
Joaquin Valley. Overall, the Tulare Basin portion of the San Joaquin
Valley, the hottest and driest part of the Central Valley, is still
showing declines in groundwater levels and accompanying depletion of
groundwater storage. This fact will affect the overall water supply
available to agriculture water users.
Reclamation remains focused on managing, developing, and protecting
water and related resources in an environmentally and economically
sustainable manner in the best interest of the American public. We know
that an emphasis on water conservation is key to the sustainability of
the state of California. I am committed to doing all I can to further
this mission and, to the best extent possible, meeting the needs of our
customers.
Thank you again for this opportunity to testify on this important
topic. I would be happy to answer any questions the subcommittee may
have.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Commissioner.
Now we will hear from Assemblywoman Anna Caballero.
STATEMENT OF HON. ANNA CABALLERO, ASSEMBLY MEMBER OF THE
CALIFORNIA STATE LEGISLATURE, REPRESENTING THE 28TH ASSEMBLY
DISTRICT, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Ms. Caballero. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. It
is quite good to be here today. Thank you for the invitation.
As you heard, I represent the 28th Assembly District, which
is primarily an agricultural community representing the Salinas
Valley, San Benito County, Watsonville and Delroy. It is a
major area where fruit and vegetables are produced, and I am
here today because we really have an opportunity to work in
partnership, and it is going to be absolutely critical.
I do apologize. I will make my comments very brief. I had
expected to have 15 minutes to speak. I was prepared to talk
about the recent legislation that was passed in Sacramento. I
will refer you to the documents that have been prepared by the
Water Resources Board to have detailed information, and so I
won't go into that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Ms. Caballero, would you just mention
where they are so that the public and Members of Congress would
know.
Ms. Caballero. Yes. The documents, Madam? The documents are
the Safe and Clean Reliable Drinking Water Act of 2010, which
is the water bond document, and then a Comprehensive Water
Package, which is four bills that we adopted at the same time.
You will see the Water Bond on the ballot, or you should, in
November 2010.
I wanted to take a minute today to reemphasize the issue of
the lack of water for the Central Valley, because it also
impacts the 28th Assembly District, which is San Benito County.
I apologize for reiterating the facts, but I think they
absolutely have to be discussed here today, because the fact
that we are not able to take care of the ecosystem and export
water at the same time has had a tremendous impact, negative
impact, on the Central Valley and San Benito County.
It is carving a huge depletion of groundwater reserves in
that area, and it is anticipated to create a significant loss
of land as the property starts to subside and you lose the
opportunity to store groundwater. But more importantly, 500,000
acres of farmland has been idled due to the lack of water. Over
21,000 jobs have been lost at a time when we can least afford
to lose those jobs, $1 billion in economic loss in the
agricultural sector.
Small businesses are at risk, and there are long food
lines, and you will hear today that many farmers are at risk of
losing their property. I have recently heard of farmers that
have been multi-generation farming that have lost their
property, absolutely unacceptable in one of the richest
agricultural valleys in the world and in our country.
You have heard that small communities in the west side of
the Valley, Mendota and Firebaugh, have faced 40 percent
unemployment and that people are standing in long food lines.
These communities can't survive another year with minimal
allocations, and we have heard this year that the allocation
will be five percent. While we are hoping that the region range
will change that. Five percent allocation means that there will
be no farming.
It is absolutely imperative that we work together, the
state government and the Federal Government, to do everything
we can to work collaboratively, and let me give you an example
of one of the frustrations. As we were negotiating the package
of bills, the water bills, in the fall, I had an opportunity to
travel to Washington, D.C., where we discussed with the
Administration the opportunity to invest in the Two Gates
Project, which would provide an opportunity for us to see if we
could separate the Delta-Smelt from the turbid pumps in the
Delta.
We understood that that was a high priority for the
Administration. We, therefore, put into our package of bills
$28 million in state funding and moved ahead very quickly on
that, because we wanted to see that project come to life. We
understood that the Federal Government had put up $10 million,
and recently learned last week that that project is off the
table.
It is very frustrating to have worked so hard to create an
opportunity to create a solution and then have it eliminated
without any discussion about why that happened and what our
next plan is.
So to wrap up, it is absolutely imperative that we come up
with some vigorous discussion about how we can solve this water
problem, how we can get water immediately to the Central Valley
at a time when we have such high unemployment here in the state
to put people back to work, which could make a big difference
and could show that, in fact, we are working together, the
state government with the Federal Government, to try to solve a
problem that has been created.
So I thank you for the opportunity to be here today and
look forward to continued discussions, and I want to recognize
the Chair. She has really been an advocate of a water solution,
and I appreciate the opportunity to testify.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you so very much for being here and
for your kind words. It is my understanding that Two Gates is
not off the table. It is just delayed because of certain
issues. So we look forward to hearing more on that.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Caballero follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Anna Caballero, Assemblywoman,
California State Legislature
Madame Chair Napolitano, my name is Anna Caballero and I represent
the 28th District in the California State Assembly. Thank you for
convening this hearing here in California on our water supply
challenges. We appreciate your drawing the attention of the Congress to
some of the difficulties we have experienced--and continue to
confront--on ensuring reliable water supplies for our state's
agricultural, urban and environmental needs.
While we benefited from a good amount of rain all over California
last week, our water challenges remain. This year's State Water Project
initial water delivery allocation was 5% of contract entitlements--the
lowest in history. Last week's rain and snow helped, but we will need a
substantial amount more than average to refill our water storage
reservoirs. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta remains in crisis, for
both its ecosystem and water exports. The recent drought has led to
depletion of our groundwater reserves. We have many challenges ahead
and, hopefully, with the State and the Federal Government working
together, we will take advantage of the opportunities that arise.
Last year, the Legislature stepped up to address some of the
critical water challenges California faces. We took important first
steps on several issues, but they are only the first. We need all
agencies, stakeholders and communities to step forward to make some
difficult decisions in the years ahead. The Legislature has set some
new directions, a path forward, but we need all critical players to
move forward on that path.
The Federal Government is one of the most important players in
California water. It holds the largest block of water rights in
California--about 7 million acre-feet. It has broad authority--and
responsibility--to address water and aquatic ecosystem problems,
particularly in the Delta. While the Congress has shown a ``consistent
thread of purposeful and continued deference to state water law,'' the
Federal Government has a long history of leadership in California water
issues. We need the Congress and the Obama Administration to step
forward to contribute to resolving some of our most pressing water
issues.
In last year's Delta/Water Legislation, we invited the Federal
Government to participate and offered contributions to facilitate that
participation. The best way to start the discussion of how we might
work together is a summary of the legislative package:
SB 1 (Simitian)/Delta Legislation: Reforms state
policies, programs and governance for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
(Delta), and establishes guidelines for developing a new Delta Plan.
Appropriates $28 million for the federal ``Two Gates'' project in the
Delta.
SB 2 (Cogdill)/Water Bond: Authorizes an $11.14 billion
water infrastructure bond for the November 2010 ballot. Funding
categories include drought relief, the Delta, water storage, integrated
regional water management, watershed conservation, groundwater quality,
and water recycling.
SB 6 (Steinberg)/Groundwater Monitoring: Creates a
statewide groundwater elevation monitoring system, relying on local
agencies in all basins to report the depth to groundwater.
SB 7 (Steinberg)/Water Conservation: Establishes a
statewide water conservation program, in a new ``Sustainable Water Use
and Demand Reduction'' part in the Water Code (Part) and reauthorizes
the Agricultural Water Management Planning Act. Sets an urban water
conservation target of 20% reduction in per capita water use by 2020,
allowing flexibility for local agencies to determine how best to
accomplish that reduction.
SB 8 (Steinberg)/Water Reporting & Appropriations:
Deletes water diversion reporting exemptions for diverters in the
Delta. Appropriates funding from bonds and a special fund for increased
State Water Resources Control Board enforcement staff and other Delta/
water projects.
As a package, these bills address several of California's water
challenges, but I wish to draw your attention, in a bit more detail, to
the Delta bill--Senate Bill 1 by Senator Joe Simitian. The Delta is
where we need the Congress and the Federal Government to engage the
most. The operation of the federal Central Valley Project translates
into several federal agencies taking action in the Delta--the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration--and federal courts intervening in those
activities.
We structured the Delta bill to invite the Federal Government to
engage with us in setting a new direction for Delta policy. In enacting
this legislation, we exercised the State's authority over the control,
appropriation, use, and distribution of water generally. In structuring
the development of a new Delta Plan, we required state agencies to take
actions that would engage the Federal Government, including requiring:
Delta Stewardship Council to consult with federal
agencies in developing the Plan.
Development of the Delta Plan consistent with federal
laws, including the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Clean Water Act
and the Reclamation Act of 1902.
Delta Stewardship Council to submit the Delta Plan to
federal agencies for approval, if the Delta Plan is adopted pursuant to
the federal Coastal Zone Management Act.
This last requirement, in particular, invites the Congress to
engage in thinking about a new federal law to improve federal and state
agency cooperation in the Delta. Section 85300(d) of the California
Water Code allows submission of the Delta Plan to any federal official
assigned responsibility for the Delta pursuant to a new federal
statute, anticipating that Congress may enact a new law in response to
the State's new statutory framework for the Delta.
Let me be clear: We invite you to work with us in the Legislature
in crafting a new legal relationship between the state and federal
governments in the Delta. Our legislation sets a new course, but
requires many decisions in the years ahead. It establishes a framework
for structuring the federal-state relationship, but only Congress can
enact laws to require federal agencies to work with us and follow our
State's leadership. We hope to have the opportunity to work closely
with you on the challenges we all face in the Delta
We need to craft an enduring relationship that ensures federal
engagement regardless of who sits in the White House. For eight long
years, the Bush Administration ignored its responsibilities in the
Delta. When Secretary Salazar showed up for a Delta helicopter tour
last year, we were delighted to welcome him to one of our greatest
water debates--the first time a Secretary of the Interior had visited
the Delta since Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited several times in 2000,
during development of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Mike Connor also has visited our state on
several occasions. We need to find a way to institutionalize that level
of federal engagement in protecting the Delta to achieve the co-equal
goals of ``providing a more reliable water supply for California and
protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem.''
Our two legislative bodies working together to fashion that
enduring relationship between our governments offers the best
opportunity for our State of California to overcome the challenges it
faces in water policy.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. The Honorable Lester Snow.
STATEMENT OF HONORABLE LESTER A. SNOW, DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA
DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA.
Mr. Snow. thank you, Madam Chair and members. I appreciate
the opportunity to talk about California's water issues. I
submitted a statement, but I will hit a few other points, not
directly within that statement.
I first want to indicate that both documents that Assembly
Member Caballero brought in are available on the Department of
Water Resources website for anybody who would want to access
them.
First, let me put a finer point on what I will call the
water supply update. As has already been mentioned, in 2009 we
finished that. That was the third drought year in California.
Last year, the State Water Project stood at a 40 percent
allocation. The West Side CVP was at a 10 percent allocation.
Water Resources started this year with a preliminary allocation
for our contractors of five percent. That is the lowest in the
history of the State Water Project.
Fortunately, the storm track that has already been
referenced--our snow pack is about 115 percent of normal to
this date. The reason I stress this date is, if this is the
snow pack we had at the end of the season, it would only be a
64 percent of average supply. We will do the snow survey on
Friday, and new updated appropriations on the 20th of February.
If the storm track holds, we will do a little bit better,
but actually, the fact that we are talking about a storm track
and whether it will bail us out is actually a symptom of the
problem that we have, and that problem is a water management
system that is no longer keeping up with our needs. As a result
of climate change, environmental degradation, and lack of
sustained investment in the system, our water system can no
longer meet the needs of the state.
We need a long-term, comprehensive solution. In order to
have a sustainable water resource system, our water management
system must permanently change to a diversified approach. That
means we have to look at energy, water and environmental
issues.
The Governor has consistently promoted the comprehensive
approach that ranges from conservation, recycling, habitat
restoration, to new reservoirs and new conveyance facilities in
the state. We are long past the point that a single project or
strategy can bail us out. Some might like to say, all we need
to do is more conservation. Some might like to say, all we need
to do is build one more reservoir. The fact of the matter is we
have to implement all of those options. The Governor has
consistently proposed an infrastructure investment strategy
that attempts to fund all of those activities, a diversified
approach.
Let me hit just a few points along those lines. Our entire
system is based around development and use of surface water and
the development of groundwater supplies. It is the stable
foundation of our water system. If we are conserving water, we
are conserving surface and groundwater that has been developed.
Therefore, recycling water, it is dependent on surface and
water supplies. We must reinvest in our surface and groundwater
systems in order to make it through this problem and deal with
the century to come.
Conservation is a great opportunity. There is much to be
saved and provided in terms of stability through our
conservation efforts. In terms of urban areas of California,
there is approximately 9 million acre-feet that is used in
urban California. Well over half of that is used outdoors.
There is great conservation potential to save outdoor water use
in urban areas, with little, if any, impact to lifestyle in the
state.
We estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million
acre-feet of additional conservation savings is available in
urban areas without affecting lifestyle. The Governor has
pushed and committed to achieving 20 percent reduction in use
by 2020, and the Legislature passed for the first time ever a
conservation bill. Implementing that conservation bill not only
will save water, but will actually reduce CO2 by 1.4
million metric tons.
Recycling water use: Today we recycle about 250,000 acre-
feet. There is a potential for as much as 2 million acre-feet.
Today we have about 160,000 acre-feet of desalination capacity,
with another 400,000 on drawing boards.
Now let me close very quickly with a couple of fundamental
points. Our future lies in fixing the Delta. That means
restoring habitat, changing conveyance, and addressing the
other stresses that are affecting the species beyond the water
system. It means passing the water bond. The water bond funds
new storage, conservation, recycling, local conveyance, and
habitat. We need to reinvest in our water future.
Finally, let me reiterate the point that the Commissioner
has already mentioned, the state's commitment to QSA. No matter
what the Judge has done, whether through appeal or whether
through a change in the contract, QSA will stay together, and
we will meet the needs of those agreements. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Director Snow.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Snow follows:]
Statement of Lester A. Snow, Director,
California Department of Water Resources
Introduction
Chairwoman Napolitano, and members of the Subcommittee, I
appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
challenges and opportunities facing California's water supply.
Recognizing the critical importance of a reliable water supply to
our economy and our environment, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's
administration has focused unprecedented resources and leadership to
address the state's water issues. Those efforts culminated this past
November with the passage of a comprehensive water package and bond
proposal that will reform, rebuild and restore California's water
system. At the federal level, focus and support from our California
Congressional delegation and the Obama Administration has been vitally
important in dealing not only with our current water crisis but also
the steps necessary for our long-term water reliability and security.
There is no single approach to managing California's water
resources or the entirety of our state's natural resources in the face
of ecosystem needs, the needs of a struggling economy, and the impacts
of climate change. However we have the opportunity to implement
programs and make management decisions based on strong science that
achieves a new level of sustainable and integrated resource management.
This may not be easy, but a sustainable resource management approach is
the only way we can move forward in the 21st century.
Today I would like to discuss current water conditions and how that
relates to Southern California's water supply. I would also like to
provide the Subcommittee with an overview of the comprehensive
legislative package I just mentioned, and finally discuss the
importance of a strong federal-state partnership to address the Delta
and other statewide water issues.
Water Supply Conditions
As you know, 2009 was a third straight year of drought in
California. We saw 500,000 acres of farm land fallowed or pulled out of
service. There are more than 60 water agencies with mandatory
conservation requirements. We have seen significant and alarming over
drafting of groundwater basins. Going into this winter, the carryover
in the state's major reservoirs was one-third to one-half below normal.
The latest Fall Midwater Trawl by the California Department of Fish and
Game, which measures fish populations, has the lowest indices on record
for delta smelt and longfin smelt. This is further evidence that the
Delta, through which much of the water supply for Central and Southern
California is conveyed, is an ecosystem in peril and in desperate need
of restoration.
Last month, the Department of Water Resources announced the lowest
initial allocation on record for the State Water Project--just 5% of
contractor requested amounts. The initial allocation is a very
conservative estimate of what we expect to deliver in 2010 as a
percentage of SWP contractors' initial requests for water deliveries.
At that time, our Sierra snowpack levels were well below normal. Over
the past 10 days, we have seen a marked improvement in conditions. But
even if we end this year with normal levels of snow and runoff, our
water supply outlook will not improve significantly. Regulatory
restrictions on Delta exports in the spring and early summer will make
it difficult to deliver water to Southern California, the Central
Valley, the Bay Area and coastal cities, even if it is available in our
reservoirs. Hopefully the current ``El Nino'' track of storms will
improve our water supply conditions without causing significant flood
damage.
Climate Change
Many factors contribute to our current water crisis. From recent
regulatory ecosystem protection measures to a multi-year drought,
combined with an overlay of climate change that is not only affecting
current conditions but will increasingly impact our water systems.
Climate change impacts, including less snowpack, higher flood peaks,
and sea level rise, create new uncertainties. By 2050, scientists
project a loss of at least 25 percent of the Sierra snowpack with more
of our precipitation occurring in the form of rain because of warmer
temperatures, increasing the risk of flooding. More variable weather
patterns may also result in increased dryness in the southern regions
of the state.
Many of the effects that could occur due to climate change can be
mitigated, in part, with the same water management strategies one would
employ when dealing with an extended drought.
DWR's strategy to mitigate the combined effects of climate change
and a decrease in the snowpack is multi-pronged and diverse. We are
building a diverse and comprehensive ``portfolio'' of water management
strategies that are effective in combination with each other, both in
the short-term and long-term.
In the short-term, DWR is promoting and financing programs which
increase public education and awareness about water use and improve and
increase water conservation and water recycling throughout California.
We are striving to improve our emergency response to both flood and
drought conditions. Of particular note, we activated our Drought Water
Bank program last year, and a Water Transfers Program for this year to
help alleviate statewide drought conditions. The Drought Water Bank
serves as the ``broker'' between parties seeking to market or sell some
or all of their legal water supplies to buyers who have critical water
needs such as orchard growers. DWR staff responsible for the day-to-day
operations of the State Water Project work closely with operators of
the Central Valley Project and staff of the National Weather Service to
optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of joint water project
operations in tandem with forecasted weather conditions.
Regional Planning, Research and Technological Advances
For the longer-term, DWR continues to be involved in funding
research and advising on the development and advancement of new
technologies such as desalination and water recycling, developing
better climate change modeling capabilities and the administration of
regional water use efficiency programs such as the Integrated Regional
Water Management Program.
DWR utilizes and continues to develop a variety of tools to
forecast water supply dynamics. One of our significant efforts involves
collaboration with NASA (National Aeronautical and Space
Administration) to incorporate satellite imagery data into our
assessments of snowpack extent and depth using different radar
technologies. We are also developing detailed models of individual
watersheds, within the larger Bay-Delta watershed, which can predict
amounts and timing of snowmelt runoff, as well as runoff temperature.
In an effort to better balance the needs for protection of
potentially catastrophic flooding and a dwindling water supply in
Central Valley reservoirs, new Forecast-Coordinated Operation
partnerships are being developed among the reservoir operators and
hydrologic forecasting agencies to improve decision support systems and
to take advantage of improved meteorological forecasting to better
optimize real-time reservoir management.
Colorado River
Another major source of water supply for Southern California is the
Colorado River. The Quantification Settlement Agreement--or QSA--is
particularly important to ensure California preserves stability in its
Colorado River supplies. The State Superior Court's recent tentative
ruling invalidating key elements of the QSA agreements threatens
California's water supply reliability; however, it is important to
stress that the QSA parties, including the State of California, intend
to work together to deal with issues raised in the court's ruling and
jointly, will preserve this important agreement.
Policy Priorities and Funding
We have a serious and complex water crisis looming in California,
but this is also a time of great opportunity. It is a time for
creativity, a time for new ideas, and most importantly, a time for
action to ensure that future generations have a clean, reliable water
supply that we've enjoyed for decades in this state.
The legislative package that was passed in November with bipartisan
support, and signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, recognizes the
importance of solving California's complex water problems. It signals a
commitment to the co-equal goals of water supply reliability and
ecosystem restoration, a workable Delta governance structure and a
clear path for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. And it includes, for
the first time, statewide conservation requirements for urban and
agricultural water users as well as groundwater monitoring.
We now have a policy framework for moving forward and a proposed
$11 billion bond that will be on the November ballot. The bond is
essential, providing funding for virtually every water management
project that we can conceive of. This includes funding for water supply
reliability, drought relief, surface and groundwater storage, Delta
restoration, water recycling, conservation, watershed restoration, and
groundwater protection and cleanup. Every region in the state will
benefit from these funds. A portion of funding is guaranteed to each of
the hydrologic regions, and all regions are eligible to compete for
additional funding to help finance water management projects and
programs with local, regional and statewide benefits.
The South Coast region, which includes parts of Los Angeles,
Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties would
receive $856 million for water supply reliability projects and be able
to tap into a share of $6.3 billion in other regional and statewide
funding from the bond.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
The Delta is not just the hub of California's water supply system,
but a dramatic and critical manifestation of complex resource
conflicts. It is, in many respects, the canary in the coal mine and the
mine in this case is, ``How will society deal with complex resource
conflicts at a statewide and national level?'' How do we find that
balance between our economy and our environment as we move forward?
The answer to that question lies to a large degree in a process we
and numerous other government and non-government entities are currently
engaged in known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan or BDCP. BDCP
represents a completely different approach to dealing with water
problems. In the past, we would propose a project, and commit to
mitigation of that project. In the case of BDCP, we've actually
proposed developing recovery plans, a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP)
under federal law and a Natural Community Conservation Plan (NCCP)
under state law, and we are looking at conveyance as a component of
that strategy. It is a different approach but it is essential to moving
forward and dealing effectively with California's future water needs.
It is imperative that we continue on that path and it is imperative
that we meet critical deadlines before the end of this year.
That leads to the importance of the state-federal partnership.
Active and committed federal involvement to solving California's water
issues is essential. Having the high-level commitment from Secretary of
the Interior Salazar and Secretary of Commerce Locke is essential to us
carving out this new frontier on how we are going to resolve problems.
Everything that we are trying to do and every approach that we are
trying to make in terms of achieving co-equal goals and a balance in
the Delta is dependent on federal decisions and the federal agencies
being part of the solution. We cannot do it on our own.
Fixing the Delta means real-time commitment and real-time decision
making over the next 11 months. We have to make major accomplishments
on flows, on conveyance, on extent of habitat, and a failure of us to
make progress in 2010 prior to a transition to a new Governor taking
office means, in the best case, delays. In the worst case, it means
starting over. We cannot afford that either--for the economy or the
environment.
In December, the federal agencies issued an Interim Federal Action
Plan for the Delta. In that document, federal officials strongly commit
to work with California on a coordinated plan by February. That plan
will identify our most important initiatives and near term action items
deserving progress during 2010. Many forces--including old challenges
and new leadership--converged to make this new state-federal
partnership both necessary and possible. It represents a new era of
unprecedented, close collaboration--a federal-state partnership that is
absolutely essential to fixing the Delta and will represent a new
frontier of problem-solving complex resource conflicts.
The work plan provides an overview of key activities needed to make
progress in the Delta and on wider water challenges in California.
Among the major issues are development of a public draft of the Bay
Delta Conservation Plan, action on water transfers for drought
response, and coordination of state and federal Delta monitoring and
research facilities. On water project operations, the plan calls for
providing scientific information and working with the National Academy
of Sciences on its current review of smelt and salmon biological
opinions. Expedited action is contemplated on infrastructure projects
including an Intertie linking the Delta-Mendota Canal and the
California Aqueduct, providing more flexibility for state and federal
water system operations and deliveries. Habitat restoration is also a
major priority including a project to achieve flood control and
ecosystem restoration benefits in the North Delta.
Making it work probably means pushing harder than we have in the
past, including tough calls and going outside our comfort zone. But
there is no doubt that we need a collaborative approach to take
advantage of the window of opportunity we have to change the way that
we manage natural resources in California.
Conclusion
We stand at a critical juncture in dealing with California's water
issues. Our new reality is that we must manage a resource that is
characterized by uncertainty and vulnerability due to climate change
and changing ecosystem needs. The past is no longer an accurate
indicator of the future.
What we need is a roadmap of strategies for sustainable water use
in California. We hope that the Congress and the federal government
will continue to recognize the severity of this issue to our state and
our nation, and work with us to make the changes and investments
necessary to improve our water future.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this Subcommittee.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. I will now start with the questions and
answers. I have many questions, and it would take the whole day
for me to pose them, because there are so many issues, as we
all know.
Part of it is, Director Snow, have you thought of using the
California Channel to educate the public on conservation, on
the issue on--all those--the California Channel could be a
perfect vehicle, if it is used. Then you have all the cities
that have public access and government access channels that are
free channels.
Mr. Snow. Yes. You are talking about the public education.
there have been different efforts to try to get that message
out, both in the schools as well as advertising campaigns.
Metropolitan Water District has been a leader here in Southern
California, trying to get that message out.
Mrs. Napolitano. No, I am talking about utilization of
California Television Channel out of Sacramento that usually
tapes--or actually runs the hearings in Sacramento, and it
gives that information and all of that, but it is a perfect
channel. It goes to many TV viewers. You need to think out of
the box here, and that is what I am alluding to, is that have
we done everything we possibly can to educate our general
public. I am afraid the answer for me is no.
Also, you mentioned the drought water bank in your
testimony is a potential short term goal. What challenges did
you face in facilitating the water transfers, and are east to
west transfers possible under the current statute?
Mr. Snow. Two parts to that. One, probably the single
biggest issue we had with the drought water bank last year was
the ability to move water across the Delta. Traditionally, in
California the greatest source of water to move in drought
situations is in the Sacramento Valley, typically with some of
the rice growers up there. That means the water has to move
across the Delta, meaning you have to have pumping capacity.
So at different periods of time, we did not have the
capacity because of restrictions, regulatory restrictions, to
move the water across the Delta during certain periods of time,
which increased the cost of water. There is the opportunity to
move water from the east side of the valley, the San Joaquin
Valley, to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Some of
that actually has to flow through the pumping plant, because
there is limited conveyance capacity across the Valley.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, there are many other areas that I
would like to question, but I want to give my colleagues a
chance. But, Commissioner Connor, thank you for being with us
today. I told you, you would be on the hot seat today.
There's a lot of questions that cross our mind, and I want
to convey the thanks to Secretary Salazar, because you have
been able to put--what?--seven agencies to work on the issue on
Northern California. He visited it, the first time that the
Secretary of the Interior has visited Northern California and
talked, listened, maybe not acted to the extent that people
want him to immediately, but you have only been here how many
months?
Mr. Connor. Personally, I have been on--it seems longer
than it actually has, but I think it is about seven months.
Mrs. Napolitano. Seven months, and we are trying to write
eight years of policy that has been ignored in Washington. So I
am sorry, but I am very, very concerned about the direction.
Some people want to point fingers, and that just really irks
me, because I know that you have been trying. I know we have
dialogued with you. I know you have been responsive to a lot of
Members, and we hope to continue to move on that.
In August we provided Secretary Salazar suggestions on how
to create 1 million acre-feet of water through water reuse,
reclamation, conservation. Not only has the prior
administration not wanted to consider Title XVI, which it only
wanted in the toolbox to addressing water shortages in Southern
California and, hopefully, in Northern California, also, but
what has the Department done to address this, and will the
Department address supporting our request for 200 million to
address the 600 million backlog that the Bureau has on Title
XVI?
Mr. Connor. Well, thank you for your comments, Madam
Chairwoman. First of all, I would be the first to acknowledge
that, although I think we have done a lot--I have personally
been out to the Valley and met the farmers on three occasions;
twice, I have been out there with the Secretary of the
Interior, Secretary Salazar--I think we would be the first to
acknowledge that we need to do more, absolutely.
The situation calls for action at the highest levels. We
have tried to coordinate the Federal Government's activities
through the Interim Federal Plan, and implementation of that
plan and building on that plan are the highest priorities for
this Administration.
With respect to the notion of creating the 1 million acre-
feet of additional supply through Title XVI and other
conservation efforts, I think we have also done a lot in that
area. I think we have made effective use of the Recovery Act
funds that the Bureau of Reclamation received.
Approximately $950 million was provided Bureau of
Reclamation, of which we have allocated approximately $405
million of that funding to California. Of that, $134 million
has gone to Title XVI recycling projects in California, and
that is a good start in addressing the backlog, but even after
that $134 million investment, we still have a $646 million
backlog.
Mrs. Napolitano. But you have reduced my budget.
Mr. Connor. Yes. Well, I think on the positive----
Mrs. Napolitano. And I didn't take kindly to that.
Mr. Connor. Well, we will be--I think you can expect that
there will be more support for Title XVI from this
Administration, in addition to moving forward, getting those
funds out of the gate and getting those projects--that money
onto the economy to do its intended effect of providing jobs,
as well as providing water. I think you will see a follow-up
support for the Title XVI program.
We are also looking at other aspects of the water
conservation initiative, those being the challenge grant
funding that we have. We allocated $40 million of Recovery Act
money for water conservation efficiency activities, and $24
million of that funding went to the State of California to
facilitate conservation projects, some of that--I think, a
majority of that in the San Joaquin Valley. That was on top of
another $6 million in CALFED water efficiency grants.
So we are building up to the level that you suggested in
your letter last fall. We are not quite there, but we will
continue to follow up those efforts with the resources we have
this year, in 2010, as well as 2011 and beyond.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, thank you, and I hope that you can
help us convince the Administration that this current thrust
into jobs, of development, recycled water and some of the other
water projects can be exceedingly beneficial in providing those
job development and putting people back to work.
Mr. Connor. Absolutely.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Mr. McClintock.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
First, Mr. Connor, in your testimony you point out that at
the end of the last California drought, which lasted for five
years, California's population was just over 31 million. Today
there are roughly 7 million more Californians, all of whom need
water in the agricultural production and other economic
activities supported by water.
My question is: With that increase in need, why in the
world are we still dumping 200 billion gallons of fresh water
into the Pacific Ocean for the enjoyment and amusement of the
Delta Smelt, a population which, as Mr. Calvert pointed out,
continues to decline even with these massive water diversions?
Mr. Connor. Well, we have limitations based on two
biological opinions, one involving the Delta Smelt and one
involving a number of salmon species, and there have been
restrictions in place at some level for sometime. Those
restrictions were enhanced this last year with the new
Biological----
Mr. McClintock.----Restrictions, which the Secretary of the
Interior himself admitted to this Committee last year that they
could suspend because of the severe economic damage being done
to the Central Valley. However, they chose not to do so because
that would be like admitting failure. But I put to you the
question again. Given the dire need of this state for
additional water, why in the world are we continuing the
diversion of that enormous volume of water into the Pacific
Ocean?
Mr. Connor. I am not aware that that statement was made,
and I don't understand, given the obligation to follow the
Endangered Species Act----
Mr. McClintock. The statement was made. In fact, I played a
video tape of it this morning in Fresno. It did not go over
well.
Let me continue. You also say, notwithstanding drought, the
Colorado River apportionment to California this year will be
the full 4.4 million acre-feet, and there is a chance for some
surplus under the annual operating plan for the Colorado River.
It seems to me, if this is the third year of the severe drought
and they are still able to deliver the full 4.4 million acre-
feet on the Colorado, not that much of a drought.
Mr. Connor. The Colorado River has had the benefit of 15
years of cooperation and negotiation amongst the seven Basin
states the Federal Government and a number of water management
agencies that have restructured the management of that system,
that have led to a lot of cooperation in dealing with the
Endangered Species Act issues that exist in the Upper Basin as
well as the Lower Basin, and upon those cooperative efforts and
the agreement to coordinate management operation of the
reservoirs in that system, we have been able to maintain
deliveries consistent with the Colorado River Compact.
Mr. McClintock. Because we are not dumping 200 billion
gallons of water from the Colorado River into the Pacific
Ocean. We are only doing that on the Sacramento, which directly
impacts the Central Valley and the agricultural heart of this
state.
Mr. Connor. We are not releasing water at that level, but
there is certainly water being provided in the Upper Basin and
the Lower Basin for environmental purposes to help mitigate the
impacts of the Endangered Species.
Mr. McClintock. Oh, so the difference between the drought,
which on the Colorado River allows full delivery of the water
plus maybe some surplus on top of that, and the Sacramento is
the water diversions of the Sacramento.
Let me go to Mr. Snow. What is the percentage of annual
precipitation that we have seen in the past year compared to a
normal year on the Sierra?
Mr. Snow. Well, from memory I believe last year we ended up
with about 67-68 percent of normal.
Mr. McClintock. Of normal precipitation?
Mr. Snow. For normal runoff.
Mr. McClintock. Normal runoff?
Mr. Snow. Right.
Mr. McClintock. What about precipitation, because the
figures I saw were 90 to 96 percent of normal, and you have
just testified that we've got 115 percent of normal for this
point in the season.
Mr. Snow. Normal precipitation to this point: Precipitation
and runoff. When you have drought, you have a drier watershed,
your precipitation percentage does not result in the same level
of runoff because of a dry watershed.
So for the last three years we have had a slightly higher
precipitation from a percentage of normal than runoff, because
the watershed takes up so much of the water. So in a year like
this, if we ended up with normal precipitation, it would be
slightly below normal runoff.
Mr. McClintock. My point is in far more severe droughts
than the one that we have experienced over these past three
years, we have made far greater water deliveries to the San
Joaquin Valley, the difference being we weren't dumping all of
that water into the Pacific Ocean, the way we are today.
Mr. Snow. There's two things that are responsible for where
we are right now. One, there is a fundamental shift in the
weather patterns, and so we have drought that is providing
water in a different pattern, but we have--and I think this is,
obviously, your point--much more strict regulatory standards
that we have to meet in terms of when we can pump water.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Mr. Costa.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. On that
point, on the restrictions, Mr. Snow, give me your take on it
as the person who ran the state water project. Last year, it
was my understanding, even with the constraints of the
Biological Opinion, and it gets into a complicated mathematical
formula, that the 10 percent allocation that was left available
while other regions for 100 percent, could have been as much as
30 percent allocation and still been with the Biological
framework. Is that your view?
Mr. Snow. I am not sure I followed that.
Mr. Costa. The allocation to the San Luis Unit, by the x2
factor in terms of how much water could be made available and
still be within the framework of the Biological Opinion on
smelt, that additional water could have been made available
last year. Do you support that view?
Mr. Snow. Not within the restrictions, no.
Mr. Costa. You don't? Because some estimates are as much as
if they had been using the criteria, that additional water
could have been provided. Let us move on then.
As it relates to the issue of the other stress factors
involving the Delta, 120,000 gallons of ammonia by tertiary
treatments in Sacramento and Stockton, 2000 pumps that have
riparian lights to water that are unscreened and sometimes pump
as much water as is exported, the quadrupling of the population
at Pittsburgh, the Antioch, Lodi, all those areas that have
runoff of the streets and fertilize their lawn and garden, all
of those impacts, including predatory species that are non-
native, why are they not taken into account in terms of how we
manage the two water projects?
Mr. Snow. Well, one of the--I would call it--limitations of
the Endangered Species Act is that it has to focus on the
permit that is in front of them, and so one of the problems
that we have is, despite the fact we might say that our
diversions are not as significant--are not the sole cause of
the problem, it doesn't help that we point out that it may be
the discharges that is a bigger problem than the pumps. We are
still regulated on that.
Mr. Costa. So you are saying that the other factors cause
stress?
Mr. Snow. Absolutely, and that is----
Mr. Costa. The refineries, the discharges?
Mr. Snow. That is the reason we have attempted to move from
a fairly narrow Section 7 type of permit to a habitat
conservation plan that allows you to look at those other
stresses.
Mr. Costa. Well, sooner rather than later, Mr. Snow. It is
unfair that we put the entire burden of the fishery and the
water quality on certain regions of California, when we don't
impact the water supply, for example, in the City and County of
San Francisco that normally would provide water that would go
through the Delta.
Mr. Connor, are you familiar with ``Listen to the River?''
Mr. Connor. Of the CVPIA?
Mr. Costa. Yes, the report that was done in 2008 by the
Department of the Interior.
Mr. Connor. Yes, sir.
Mr. Costa. And to your knowledge, has the Department and
the Bureau implemented any of these recommendations?
Mr. Connor. Well, we are certainly looking at a number of
the recommendations right now, particularly the notion that we
have to have a more integrated approach to managing some of the
environmental issues, the fisheries issues, etcetera.
Mr. Costa. Well, it is unfortunate that we have to have the
second round with the National Academy of Science, because they
clearly indicated here the problems that exist within the
efforts to implement CVPIA 16 years after it was implemented.
This is 2008. It said problems of determining how salmon and
steelhead may benefit from the management actions and search
for solutions aren't peculiar to the Central Valley. The
Pacific Northwest and elsewhere have also learned that the
complex life cycle of these fish and of the range are poorly
understood. The potential environmental concern includes that
these fish make it almost nearly impossible to assign the
casualty to specified protection or mitigation action.
Then it goes on to talk about the other information, the
lack of trustworthy population estimates. It goes on to the
inability to separate the effects of both natural and
anthropodic confounding influences. It talks about the minimum
CVPIA monitoring and evaluation, precisely the questions that
you are trying to derive. It talks about few qualitatively
rigorous evaluations in your program. It talks about a more
formal assessment hypothesis is required.
It goes on and talks about the problems with monitoring and
evaluation. To our knowledge, no integrated database or
management system exists to how to manage environment in
biological and monitoring opinions.
Mr. Connor. I agree with you.
Mrs. Napolitano. I would like to point out, that was under
the prior administration.
Mr. Costa. Oh, no, no, no. They have had a chance. There is
no response to this.
Mr. Connor. The response is that we have----
Mrs. Napolitano. Can we please move on? I would like to
move on. Your time is up.
Voice. We need to have it.
Mrs. Napolitano. You can have a copy of it from them. OK?
Please, we need to move on. I think all of us need to be able
to be part of the solution, not the problem. One of the things
that the state assemblywoman--we didn't ask any questions of
you, and I don't want you to go away feeling neglected. Does
the state have a Plan B, if the water bond does not pass?
Ms. Caballero. Well, with all due respect, Madam Chair, I
think part of the challenge is that that water bond discussion
was really a negotiation that took a great amount of time. If
you are asking me, if it doesn't pass, will we be back at it,
looking at another alternative, absolutely. There is no
question, we need to invest in our infrastructure, and we will
do whatever we need to do.
The real key about that bond is that it provides the
opportunity to do the conservation we have been talking about,
to do the reclamation projects that we have been talking about,
to recycle water, to be able to really build the infrastructure
to be able to take water from one side of the Valley to the
other side of the Valley, to do the inter-connectivity.
Mrs. Napolitano. I understand.
Ms. Caballero. Without that, we are going to be stuck with
a system that continues to service----
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. I just wanted to introduce
that. I need to let Mr. Calvert have his comments, but I want
to be sure that I thank the state for finally getting involved,
because I have heard from a lot of my water agencies that they
are totally dependent on other solutions instead of form the
state, and I think the state finally stepped up to the plate.
Mr. Calvert?
Mr. Calvert. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. by the
way, we can't blame the last three years of drought on the last
eight years' problems, in spite of the politics here.
Voice. That is right.
Mrs. Napolitano. One more outbreak, and you are out.
Mr. Calvert. And the purpose of the political comment--you
owe one minute to Mr. Costa to get an answer to his question.
Mr. Costa. Thank you very much, my colleague. Mr. Connor,
could you respond, because this is very troubling in terms of
what has or has not happened as a result of this.
Mr. Connor. I agree, it is troubling. I think there is a
lot of work in implementing the provisions of the CVPIA as they
were originally intended, and had they been implemented in that
way with coordinated monitoring, understanding the fisheries'
needs better, diversifying refuge supplies, that may, in fact,
have alleviated some of the situation that exists today.
So a lot of the things that you have mentioned are part of
the interim Federal work plan, and we understand that we need
more aggressive implementation actions.
Mr. Costa. Well, let me just make one final comment here,
because it is critical to this whole report. It says, to
increase the probability of success, the agencies need to
redesign and implement an integrated program to improve the
status of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, and I
don't know that you are doing that.
Mr. Connor. I think that is the whole point of the Federal
work plan, the coordination that we are doing amongst several
agencies and the aggressive science action that we have and the
resources we are trying to apply.
Mr. Costa. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Does that include the state participation?
I will give you extra time. Does that include state
participation, Ms. Caballero? Mr. Snow?
Mr. Snow. Of course. We have been working very closely on
this, and expect to have a joint Federal Work Program, but
fixing the Delta cannot be done, either by the Feds or the
state alone. We both have to be working on it, and the same
with building storage.
Mrs. Napolitano. Would you be kind enough to allow the
general public to understand what programs you are working on
to help them, because apparently, a lot of people don't know
that you are working to be able to find the solutions, and they
are getting very upset. They feel the Federal Government nor
the state is acting toward helping them out during this crisis,
and I don't know what all you are going to do. But you need to
tell them. All these agencies that are working to be able to
reach consensus to move ahead, and not just talk about it, but
formulate that action, and then put it into play. I am sorry.
Mr. Calvert.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Mr. Snow,
obviously, you are very familiar with what is going on in the
Central Valley and the impact that it has with the farming
community. If this goes on another year because of the stress
on the permanent crops in that area, will a significant amount
of that production go out permanently?
Mr. Snow. Well, I think, in talking with a lot of the
members of the agricultural community, that is exactly what is
happening.
Mr. Calvert. So saying that, I met with Mr. Hayes, I think,
a year ago, and we were talking about the Two Gates and the
necessity of immediately putting the permitting on Two Gates
where we could build it and, hopefully, had it built by now;
because, as I understand it, Dennis Majors was ready to build
that project on site and rapidly get it going. But as I
understand it, the Administration has indefinitely delayed the
Two Gates project. As I understand it, there is a letter from
the San Luis Delta-Mendota Water Authority that accuses the
Administration, and Mr. Connor maybe can answer this, of a
scientific double standard, and apparently indefinitely
delaying this project, which was some way to help mitigate this
smelt issue and to get some additional pumping going on.
Are you aware of this letter? Are you aware of that issue,
and why the Two Gates Project is not being able to be
permitted?
Mr. Connor. Yes, sir, I am well aware of that letter and
well aware of all the actions that have been taken with respect
to Two Gates. Two Gates has been a priority from a permitting
standard, absolutely. We have spent hours and hours trying to
move forward----
Mr. Calvert. Well, reclaiming my time from the gentleman,
if it is a priority, why hasn't it been done? Right now, we are
running out of time. We are talking about this water bond. Even
if it does pass, and there is a question whether it will pass,
quite frankly, because of the cost and the political climate
that we are in, none of these projects will be built for years.
So we need to move on with some interim projects today in order
to save the Central Valley.
We just heard testimony from Mr. Snow saying that in
another year, much of the production in the Central Valley will
be permanently out. They are not going to replant those trees.
Mrs. Napolitano. Would the gentleman yield for a moment?
Mr. Calvert. Happy to.
Mrs. Napolitano. There will be additional time. The
question then leads to: We know that there are farmers losing
their land, their crops, going bankrupt, fallowing the
farmland. Mr. Connor, have we worked with USDA, with Commerce,
with all the agencies, SBA, to be able to help these
individuals stay in the industry until the times get better,
until--as he is pointing out--those projects come on line to be
able to do the water delivery. Are we doing that? Thanks.
Mr. Calvert. Well, the problem there, Madam Chairwoman, is
that the trees will be dead.
Mr. Connor. Yes. The answer to your question, the Federal
Work Plan identifies a range of actions, and I realize it is
not popular to talk about the relief that we can provide
financially, given the lack of water, but we do think it is
appropriate, and we have worked closely with the Department of
Agriculture who declared 57 or 58 counties a disaster last
year. That made emergency loans available. That made other
types of assistance available.
I know that is not a substitute for water. I know people
want water, and they want to produce products, but that is one
interim step, as well as figuring out the right projects that
we can do in the short term that will help yield the water.
The fundamental problem with Two Gates, and I will be
succinct, is not the bill reclamation, not the Fish and
Wildlife Service, but the CALFED independent Science Panel
found fundamental scientific flaws with the basis for the Two
Gates Project which needed further investigation. That was one
issue.
The second issue, costs escalated from somewhere in the $20
million range to $80 million, when all was said and done. That
included some O&M costs. So the resources weren't immediately
available for the project.
Third, there were over 1400 comments in the environmental
assessment projects expressing strong concerns about the Two
Gates Project from the citizens of California, not from the
Federal agencies, that need to be evaluated and looked at as
part of our environmental complaint activity.
Fourth, we did a design and did a construction view of Two
Gates, and it raised nine significant issues about the
technical foundation for the project. We have not shelved Two
Gates. We are actively working on Two Gates, but those
questions need to be answered to figure out if it is worth the
investment of that kind of money and whether it really yields
additional water.
In the interim, we are going to do projects like the
Intertie, which we know is a good project, which we know has
the capacity to generate additional water. We are going to move
forward with conservation projects. We are going to diversify
water supplies to refugees. Those, we know, will have some
added benefit for the water supply for the Central Valley
Project.
Mr. Calvert. Madam Chairwoman, I have one question.
Mrs. Napolitano. Last question.
Mr. Calvert. During your opening testimony, you mentioned
you are delivering 6,000 CFS a day into the Central Valley. If
it wasn't for the biological opinion, the existing biological
opinions, I should state, on the smelt and the salmon, what
would be the delivery per day?
Mr. Connor. That is an excellent question, and I don't have
the exact answer.
Mr. Calvert. Could you supply that answer for the Committee
at some point?
Mr. Connor. Yes. I will be candid. It is about 6,000 CFS,
but I don't know the exact number, and we will provide that
information as soon as possible.
Mr. Calvert. Excuse me. Mr. Snow, do you know the answer to
that question?
Mr. Snow. I probably should say no instead of guessing. So
we will follow up, but it is probably on the order of 10,000
CFS, given the storms that we have had.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. I would like to reiterate to
Commissioner Connor that this Committee sent a letter to you in
regard to the question that Congressman Costa sent, and we
still don't have an answer. I would really appreciate an answer
to all this Committee. Thanks.
Mr. Calvert. Madam Chair, may I follow up?
Mrs. Napolitano. We are moving on. We have already spent
over an hour and 20 minutes.
Mr. Calvert. Well, you took quite a bit of liberties here.
I would like----
Mrs. Napolitano. I am the Chair.
Mr. Calvert. I would like to extend----
Mrs. Napolitano. We are moving on to the next panel. We
will continue to work on the different issues together and look
forward to a lot more cooperation.
Mrs. Napolitano. I would like to bring Mr. Jeffrey
Kightlinger, General Manager of Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Again, thank you, Met, for
hosting us in this fine facility; Mr. Brian Brady, General
Manager, Imperial Irrigation District, Imperial California; Ms.
Maureen Stapleton, General Manager, San Diego County Water
Authority in San Diego; and Mr. Dan Parks, Assistant General
Manager of the Coachella Valley Water District in Coachella.
Mr. Kightlinger, if you would be so kind, you have five
minutes. Thank you, sir.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY KIGHTLINGER, GENERAL MANAGER, METROPOLITAN
WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Mr. Kightlinger. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Members
of Congress. I really want to thank you for coming to Southern
California and getting an urban Southern California perspective
on the issues and the drought we are facing and, certainly,
welcome you to Metropolitan and appreciate your use of our
facilities here, and glad we could play host.
I particularly want to thank the Chairwoman for all the
tremendous work she has done and the support she has given for
urban water over the years, and we appreciate this opportunity
to speak here.
This has been a very challenging time. Metropolitan does
straddle the area of California in the sense that we get our
water supply--our imported water supply for Southern California
comes from both the Colorado River, as my friends here and our
partners, as well as the State Water Project in Northern
California. This has been a very challenging time in that we
have been hit on both supplies.
From 2000 to 2008, the Colorado River has gone through an
unprecedented drought, and in 2003 when Secretary Gail Norton,
Interior Secretary Gail Norton, cut back California from 5
million acre-feet of deliveries to 4.4, that hit fell on
Metropolitan. Our Colorado River aqueduct which holds 1.2
million acre-feet and had been full for several decades was
immediately cut in half to 600,000 acre-feet, and we had to
make up those supplies elsewhere.
Then, certainly, as you are well aware, in much of the
testimony in the last committee and the last panel, our State
Water Project supplies have been severely impacted. So we have
been dealing with loss of supply both on the Colorado River
side and the State Water Project side.
Mrs. Napolitano. Excuse me just a second. Commissioner
Connor, I would like for you to hear the testimony, please.
Thank you. I am sorry. Go ahead.
Mr. Kightlinger. Thank you, Madam Chair. In addition to the
drought in California for the last three years and the drought
on the Colorado River, we have had to deal with the legal
rulings on the QSA as well as the restrictions, the fishery
restrictions that Commissioner Connor talked about. These are
the most restrictive fishery restrictions ever seen in the
Endangered Species Act that have cost Metropolitan over half a
million acre-feet of supplies that we would have received over
the last two years. That is the equivalent to the hole that we
currently have in our Diamond Valley Lake reservoir that we
would have filled if we had been able to access our State Water
Project supplies.
So how have we survived these last couple of years here in
Southern California? Two main areas: One is the Colorado River.
Through good work and cooperation, after the passage of the
QSA, after the enactment of that, as well as the Federal
guidelines in 2007, we have managed to rebuild our Colorado
River supply from 600,000 acre-feet in 2002 to over a million
acre-feet last year, the first time we have passed the million
acre-foot mark since 2002. So 2009 we delivered 1.1 million
acre-feet of Colorado River water through cooperation with
Nevada and Arizona as well as Imperial Irrigation District,
Palo Verde Irrigation District and Coachella Valley Water
District.
That has been a tremendous success, and it really is a sign
of cooperation among the Basin states and the partners on the
river.
The second main area we had to work on last year was
conservation. Metropolitan, very reluctantly but had to do so--
we put out mandatory conservation for 19 million people in
Southern California, and we implemented 10 percent mandatory
cutback across the board, and the region responded with over 15
percent as a region. So it was a real success. But where do we
go from here? How do we solve these issues going forward?
There are three main areas that we would like to focus on,
working with our delegation, working with Congress, and working
with this Administration. First is continued cooperation on the
Colorado River. We continue to need that support of the three
Basin states, the Lower Basin states, Arizona, Nevada,
California, working together to ensure continued supplies
throughout the Colorado River Basin, and we certainly
appreciate your support of the Hoover Power bill, and we are
going to need more legislation and more help on the river to
continue the progress we have made.
Second, on the State Water Project, it is absolutely
essential we have a Delta fix implemented as expeditiously as
possible to get ecosystem restoration and new conveyance across
the Delta. These are absolutely critical, and we need to move
this as quickly as we possibly can.
Third and finally, we always appreciate the support for our
recycling and our reclamation, our conservation programs. These
are going to be absolutely critical as we diversify our water
supply for Southern California, and enable California to
continue to grow and prosper.
With that, I will take any questions when the time is
appropriate. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kightlinger follows:]
Statement of Jeffrey Kightlinger, General Manager,
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Chairwoman Napolitano:
On behalf of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, thank you for convening this hearing to explore and address
the water supply challenges facing this region and to share
Metropolitan's action plan for addressing a worsening problem that
threatens communities, businesses and farms throughout this state.
Southern California has experienced its first year of region-wide
mandatory conservation since 1991 because of Metropolitan's decision
last year to reduce deliveries to its 26 member agencies in six
counties.
Metropolitan imports supplies from the Colorado River and from
Northern California via the State Water Project. Three years of below-
average rainfall throughout the state, combined with new restrictions
on State Water Project supplies because of the deterioration and
collapse of the ecosystem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has
resulted in the need to reduce supplies for 19 million Southern
Californians and for residents throughout the state.
Because of aggressive efforts and outreach by Metropolitan and our
member public agencies there is widespread awareness about California's
water problems and our residents and businesses have risen to the
challenge and significantly reduced their water use. For example, water
use has been reduced in Southern California by over 15% throughout the
region; some areas are even quite higher. But despite the welcome
recent rains and the good effort on local conservation, the underlying
crisis remains and will be readily apparent in the months and years
ahead.
Southern California like much of the state faces ongoing shortage
or near-shortage conditions because of the problems in the Delta.
Metropolitan's initial allocation of supplies from the State Water
Project for the coming year is 5 percent of a full delivery. That is
the lowest initial allocation in the history of the Project. We hope
and anticipate this allocation to increase in the weeks ahead, but the
question is: by how much? Metropolitan's board of directors is
scheduled to discuss and make a decision at its meeting in April to
determine the amount of water it can deliver to its member agencies
this year. The recent rains did not wash away our water problems--or,
the state's problems, and the possibility of continued shortage
conditions is quite real.
Many of us who have been following water issues for decades have
been accustomed to a quick bounce-back in deliveries from the State
Water Project when the drought cycle ends and the rains return. But
this pattern will no longer hold true. New water supply restrictions
because of deteriorating environmental conditions in the Delta will
have their greatest impact in wet and average years. Metropolitan will
lose the ability to capture as much as 600,000 acre-feet of water in
above-average and wet years because of these restrictions. This is
water that normally would replenish the groundwater basins in Los
Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County that desperately need
replenishment. Some of these aquifers are at or near their lowest
groundwater elevations in recorded history. That is unacceptable. As a
region and a state, we must find a way to capture adequate supplies in
wet years in order to withstand the inevitable dry cycles. The key to
this solution lies in addressing the crisis in the Delta.
In the short term, all water supply restrictions must be based on
sound science, while every effort is made to find the means to ease
these environmental restrictions without harming fish populations.
Three years of reduced water deliveries from the State Water Project
have not reversed the collapse of the ecosystem, a compelling sign that
ecosystem restoration and a strategy to address other stressors is
essential.
For the longer term, the key to the Delta challenge relies in
combining ecosystem improvements with water conveyance improvements.
This strategy is now emerging through the state-federal effort known as
the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. It is absolutely essential that the
Interior Department stay on track and produce a draft environmental
impact statement for the BDCP this year.
For Metropolitan, it will be vital to maintain our ongoing efforts
to maximize the available supplies from the Colorado River, which faces
its own challenges as it recovers from record drought. The conservation
ethic of our residents will have to continue now and into the future
and we will have to look for new and innovative ways to treat, manage
and increase the use of recycled water to ensure the most efficient use
of our limited supplies. Title XVI projects will be pivotal in bridging
the gap between the problems we have today and the implementation of a
long-term Delta solution. Equally important is the acceptance that
improving the quality and reliability of our water, from improving
treatment to addressing the crisis in the Delta, comes at a cost that
will result in higher rates. Even so, our supplies remain well under a
penny a gallon for some of the highest quality water for any major
metropolitan region on earth. We have major challenges ahead of us. But
we do have ways to solve them. Thank you Chairwoman Napolitano for your
continued leadership on water issues on behalf of this region.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. Mr. Brian Brady, General Manager, Imperial
Irrigation District.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN J. BRADY, GENERAL MANAGER, IMPERIAL
IRRIGATION DISTRICT, IMPERIAL, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Brady. Thank you, Madam Chair and members. There is a
common misconception in the Imperial Valley that the Imperial
Irrigation District is transferring conserved water to urban
Southern California, because it isn't needed in the Valley and
there is money to be made. In fact, IID is a party to the QSA,
and water transfer is authorized for precisely the opposite
reason, to protect the Imperial Valley's water rights that
would otherwise be subject to legal challenge under the
reasonable and beneficial consumptive use standard that applies
to all Colorado River contractors.
In other words, IID is voluntarily transferring conserved
water as a means of preserving its historical rights and
eliminating the threat of a forced taking of water from the
Imperial Valley. Now without going into all the history,
throughout the last six years IID's position has been the same.
Water transfer agreements authorized by the QSA are far from
perfect. I think we would all agree with that, but they are
needed to afford the District and its water users both a
revenue stream to pay for conservation and sufficient time to
stave off any future legal challenge.
I think, as we all know, the QSA is a product of decades of
conflict resolution, compromise, consensus, and if we were
allowed to unravel it, the result would be chaos. Some would
say, why don't we start all over again. Our answer to that is
that it is what would be walking away from as IID.
Number one would be an annual cap of 3.1 million acre feed
from the Colorado River and certain procedures where we can go
over that cap for particular reasons; a revenue stream to fund
needed system and on-farm water conservation improvements vital
to protecting the Valley's water rights and forestalling future
challenges on beneficial use; a nearly finalized habitat
conservation and natural community conservation plan to
mitigate not only the transfer's impact on the Salton Sea but
also to the District's strain on agricultural field habitats,
and also early start habit and air impacts, mitigation efforts
that are already underway in the Salton Sea.
It is this last point having to do with the Salton Sea that
warrants careful consideration in the Valley. That is because
the basis of Judge Candee's decision to invalidate the QSA, the
joint powers authority with the science financial
responsibility for the transfer's impact among participating
water agencies in the State of California could stand as an
impediment to any water sharing agreement going forward now or
in the future.
The existing agreement again, even though it has been ruled
invalid, offers the most viable framework and the least risk to
the district in reaching accord on the Salton Sea mitigation
question. That doesn't mean we will necessarily succeed. It is
only that we have the greatest chance of success with that.
The promise for a better deal, as some would call for, must
be measured against the prospect of no deal, and for this
reason, above all others, abandoning the QSA and starting all
over again just would be bad public policy, and more
importantly to us, in a very parochial manner, bad for the
Valley. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brady follows:]
Statement of Brian J. Brady, General Manager,
Imperial Irrigation District
There is a common misperception in the Imperial Valley that the
Imperial Irrigation District is transferring conserved water to urban
Southern California because it isn't needed here and there is money to
be made in sending it elsewhere.
In fact, IID is a signatory to the Quantification Settlement
Agreement and the water transfers it authorized for precisely the
opposite reason: to protect the Imperial Valley's water rights that
would otherwise be subject to legal challenge under the reasonable and
beneficial consumptive use standard that applies to all Colorado River
contractors. In other words, IID is voluntarily transferring conserved
water as a means of preserving its historical rights and eliminating
the threat of a forced taking of water from the Imperial Valley.
The reason this myth of ``selling water'' has taken hold locally, I
believe, is because the internal debate over the valley's water rights
has been raging for so long that fatigue has set in and only a few
people are still around who can recall the chain of events leading up
to the 2003 signing of the agreement, which, in turn, set into motion
the nation's largest agricultural-to-urban water transfer.
The makeup of the IID Board of Directors, and of the Imperial
Valley, has changed in the last six years, but the drought conditions
that culminated in the decision to transfer up to 300,000 acre-feet of
the area's water per year to the district's urban partners have, if
anything, become more intractable since the QSA went into effect.
IID is transferring water to the San Diego County Water Authority
and the Coachella Valley Water District because of a ruling in 1982 by
the State Water Resources Control Board that the district was failing
to put its water to reasonable and beneficial use. IID has always
maintained that its water use is as efficient as any district's in the
West, but a determination was made that the costs of future legal
fights were outweighed by the safety and certainty of a water transfer
agreement that would pay for greater efficiency and shore up the
district's exposure to reasonable and beneficial use challenges.
In 1989, IID entered in to a water transfer agreement with the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to perform system
improvements that would conserve 105,000 acre-feet annually, a water-
sharing pact that remains in place today. Then, in 1995, the district
began negotiations with the San Diego County Water Authority to
conserve and transfer up to 200,000 acre-feet a year through a
combination of system and on-farm water conservation measures that
would create an economic stimulus in the Imperial Valley.
Those talks produced a signed agreement in 1998, but its
implementation was put on hold by a larger effort on the part of the
federal government to quantify water use in the lower basin of the
Colorado River and to bring California into conformity with its annual
entitlement of 4.4 million acre-feet from the river. The purpose of
this overarching Quantification Settlement Agreement was to resolve
longstanding disputes between water agencies and arrive at a compromise
among California, Arizona and Nevada that would, according to then-
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, ``usher in an era of limits'' on
the Colorado River.
But achieving ``peace on the river'' was easier to do in a
proclamation than it turned out to be in practice. The next four years
would be taken up with crafting agreements that would not only pass
muster with the seven Western states that rely on the Colorado River
but would also find support on the IID board. The linchpin of this
agreement was always the water transfer between IID and San Diego, but
the priority system among Colorado River contractors as well as the
state's interest in addressing impacts caused by the transfer on the
Salton Sea introduced two new aspects to the discussion.
One was that the Coachella Valley Water District, which had
subordinated its water right to that of the district's in 1934,
threatened to block the transfer of water from going forward unless it
could obtain additional water as part of any final agreement. The other
was the Salton Sea, a troubled body of water that would be adversely
impacted from any reduction in inflows caused by the water transfer. In
both instances, an accommodation was made. The first was to allow CVWD
into the transfer agreement for an additional 100,000 acre-feet a year;
the second was to adopt fallowing as the sole means of generating water
for the transfer during the first 15 years of the deal to mitigate its
effects on the Salton Sea.
Neither of these changes was well-received by IID or, for that
matter, within the Imperial Valley, but it remained constructively
engaged in the process because the alternative, the summary taking of a
quantity of its water by the federal government for no compensation,
was considered too great a risk for the district and its water users.
And that is exactly what happened in January 2003, following a New
Year's Eve vote to approve the QSA by the IID board that failed 3-2.
Within a matter of days, the district saw its annual water order cut by
327,000 acre-feet and only got it back by winning an injunction in U.S.
District Court. But this victory was only temporary, as the Bureau of
Reclamation was allowed to prepare its case for a part 417
investigation into the reasonable and beneficial use of water in the
Imperial Valley and there was no doubt that if IID did not find a way
to re-engage in the QSA process it would be back in court, with no
guarantee of a favorable outcome and an unspecified quantity of water
hanging in the balance.
This proved to be sufficient motivation for the board to try again,
which it did on October 3, 2003, passing the landmark agreement by a 3-
2 vote that was as controversial then as it is today. IID went to court
to validate the agreement, a legal process that would join all of the
litigation that was bound to ensue, and the QSA coordinated cases were
taken up before Judge Roland Candee in Sacramento Superior Court. In
the meantime, water to meet the district's obligations to the urban
water agencies and to mitigate the transfer's impacts on the Salton Sea
would be produced primarily through fallowing.
Throughout this six-year period, IID's position has been the same:
the water transfer agreements authorized by the QSA are far from
perfect but they are needed to afford the district and its water users
both a revenue stream to pay for conservation and sufficient time to
stave off any future legal challenge to its reasonable and beneficial
consumptive use. The QSA is the product of decades of conflict
resolution, compromise and consensus and if it is allowed to unravel,
the result will be chaos. This isn't a scare tactic but a stark fact:
remove the basic protections provided to IID under the QSA from hostile
legal action by either the state or the federal government, and the
vacuum created in its wake will become a vortex of legal uncertainty
and political vulnerability.
The public has a right to know--and to comprehend--why the IID, in
light of Judge Candee's recent decision to invalidate the QSA over its
perceived deficiency in parceling out responsibility for the mitigation
of the transfer's effects on the Salton Sea, would seek a stay of this
ruling and to appeal it so that the transfer of water can continue
indefinitely. Why, our critics ask, hasn't the district just walked
away from the QSA and announced to the world that it now wants a better
and more lucrative water transfer agreement than the one found to be
invalid by a state court?
Perhaps the best way to understand it is to consider what IID would
be walking away from:
An annual cap of 3.1 million acre-feet from the Colorado
River and an inadvertent overrun and payback policy that allows the
district, under certain circumstances, to exceed that cap.
A revenue stream to fund needed system and on-farm water
conservation improvements vital to protecting the Imperial Valley's
water rights and forestalling the possibility of future reasonable and
beneficial consumptive use challenges.
Nearly finalized habitat conservation and natural
community conservation plans to mitigate not only the transfer's
impacts on the Salton Sea but also to the district's drain and
agricultural field forage habitats.
Early-start habitat and air impacts mitigation efforts
that are already under way at the Salton Sea and would cease to exist
without the QSA in place.
It is this last point having to do with the Salton Sea that
warrants careful consideration in the Imperial Valley. That's because
the basis of Judge Candee's decision to invalidate the QSA, the joint
powers authority that assigns financial responsibility for the
transfer's impacts among the participating water agencies and the state
of California, could stand as an impediment to any water-sharing
agreement going forward, now or in the future.
The existing agreement, even though it has been ruled invalid,
offers the most viable framework and least risk to the district in
reaching accord on the Salton Sea mitigation question. That doesn't
mean we will necessarily succeed, only that we have the greatest chance
of success in pursuing, and attempting to fix, the plan that is already
on the table.
The promise of a better deal must be measured against the prospect
of no deal. For this reason, above all others, abandoning the QSA and
starting over again wouldn't just be bad public policy.
It would be bad for the Imperial Valley.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. We will move on to Ms. Maureen Stapleton,
General Manager, San Diego County Water Authority in San Diego.
STATEMENT OF MAUREEN A. STAPLETON, GENERAL MANAGER, SAN DIEGO
COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY
Ms. Stapleton. Good afternoon, Chairwoman and Members of
Congress. The Water Authority provides imported water to San
Diego County and our $170 billion economy and 3.1 million
people. The Water Authority, like Metropolitan Water District,
gets our water from both the Bay-Delta and the Colorado River.
The Colorado River water is purchased both via Metropolitan
Water District and through our water transfers with Imperial
Irrigation District and Coachella through the canal linings. On
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta, we purchase our supplies
through Metropolitan Water District as well as some additional
dry year supplies that we have gotten during this drought
period.
We feel like we have hit the perfect storm in many regards.
You heard today about the drought, both on the Bay-Delta and on
the Colorado River. If that was the only challenge we had to
deal with, we would be able to handle it. Water districts plan
for multi-year droughts. We have invested billions of dollars
improving our water supply reliability and additional billions
of dollars in water infrastructure improvements to address
droughts on the river and in the Bay-Delta, but our drought
challenges are really compounded by court decisions and
regulatory actions.
So that is why we talk about the perfect storm. It isn't
just one issue that we are struggling with. It is multiple
issues. On the Colorado River front, the recent decision by the
Sacramento Superior Court Judge that invalidated dozens of
agreements that comprised the Quantification Settlement
Agreement has really added to the challenges for the Water
Authority, for Imperial, Coachella and Metropolitan Water
District.
Our agencies are working cooperatively together with the
State of California and the Federal Government to resolve this
latest challenge, and we expect that we will do so. We need the
Federal Government to assist and support in these efforts to
ensure the continuity of the QSA.
Adding to the perfect storm also is the climate change
issue and the long-term impacts on precipitation and snow packs
for our water agencies, and ultimately water reliability. It is
clear that water planning in the 21st Century will look much
different than water planning that we have historically done in
previous decades.
For the San Diego County Water Authority, really, what is
important to us is implementing our region's fully diversified
portfolio. Over the course of two decades, we have invested
billions of dollars in highly reliable and long-term water
supplies and billions of dollars in our water infrastructure
improvements, including reservoirs and dams, pipelines, water
treatment plants.
I brought a slide today, and I don't know if it can go up.
Nothing tells San Diego's story better than the graphic up on
the screen. In the upper lefthand corner is a pie chart
depicting the water supply portfolio in '91 where we were 95
percent dependent on a single supplier, and only five percent
of our supplies were local yield.
You can see, by 2010 we have begun that diversification
program through the QSA, through improved improvements in
conservation, recycling, brackish groundwater recovery, and by
2020 we will be adding ocean desalination. You can see that
it's really an investment in our water supply and in our
infrastructure that will ultimately bring water reliability to
our region.
I think Lester Snow said earlier, there is no silver bullet
that will solve water supply reliability for California. It is
going to be--someone said to me once it was really the silver
buckshot. You need it all. You need all of the components to
really make this happen.
I would like to, in a final minute, really talk about the
Federal Government and a critical partner that we need out of
you in improving California's water supply reliability.
Specifically, on the Bay-Delta, you need to support the
completion of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan and consider
actions to help us implement that plan. In addition, you need
to make sure that the co-equal goals of environment and water
supply reliability are there and that one does not overshadow
the other.
Congress has also played an important role of improving our
self-reliance through Title XVI, water recycling projects or
groundwater recovery. That self-sufficiency is truly important.
Then on climate change, we believe Congress should focus its
Federal efforts on improving climate modeling, including
regional downsizing, and we seek your assistance and your
funding in achieving that as well. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Ms. Stapleton.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stapleton follows:]
Statement of Maureen A. Stapleton, General Manager,
San Diego County Water Authority
About the San Diego County Water Authority
The San Diego County Water Authority is a public agency (special
act district) that provides imported water supplies that amount to
approximately 80% of all water used in San Diego County to support the
region's $170 billion economy and 3.1 million people. The Water
Authority is comprised of 24 member retail water providers--water
districts and cities--and is governed by a 36-member board of
directors.
The Water Authority owns, operates and maintains one of
California's largest regional water distribution systems, with more
than 300 miles of large-diameter pipelines, pump stations, reservoirs,
and water treatment facilities.
The Water Authority imports water from two principal sources: 1)
the Colorado River, via supplies purchased from the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California (MWD) and through long-term water
conservation and transfer agreements with the Imperial Irrigation
District; and 2) the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta, through supplies
purchased from MWD and additional short-term, dry-year water transfers
from sellers located upstream of the Bay-Delta.
Colorado River Supply
What is the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) and how does its
implementation affect California's overall water supply?
The Colorado River Quantification Settlement Agreement, signed in
2003, along with 34 related agreements (collectively referred to as the
QSA), settled more than seven decades of disputes over the use of
Colorado River water within California. The QSA parties include the
Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley Water District,
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, San Diego County
Water Authority, the State of California, the Federal Government, five
Bands of Mission Indians, and other parties. The QSA quantifies
California's entitlement to Colorado River water, provides mechanisms
for transfer of conserved water, establishes obligations for funding
and implementation of environmental mitigation and restoration
programs, implements federal law providing for the lining of the All
American and Coachella Canals, and settles various lawsuits and legal
proceedings. The QSA permitted the implementation of the California 4.4
Plan, in compliance with United States Supreme Court order, as well as
an array of water conservation and transfer agreements that provide
significant water supply certainty and reliability throughout Southern
California. The QSA is critical to the State's water supply reliability
and helps reduce pressures on the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San
Joaquin Bay-Delta. A reliable water supply from the Colorado River is
vitally important for Southern California water agencies as they manage
water supply shortages from drought and regulatory restrictions on
pumping of water from the Bay-Delta.
In 2010, the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) and its
water transfers and other programs are entering their seventh year of
implementation. When the QSA is fully implemented, it will facilitate
more than 765,000 acre-feet of transfer water annually to millions of
Californians. Nearly half of all Californians receive at least a
portion of their water supply from water transfers and other supply
programs made possible by the QSA.
Before the QSA was signed in 2003, disputes among the ``Seven
States'' 1 over use of the Colorado River were commonplace.
Because of its large share of Colorado River supplies, California was
at the center of most of those disputes. By quantifying the entitlement
of the Imperial Irrigation District (the largest user of Colorado River
water), and the Coachella Valley Water District, and settling disputes
among competing California users, the State of California and the
United States, the QSA provided the basis for conserved water transfer
program and provided all Colorado River users with greater certainty
over their rights to, and reliability of Colorado River water.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ In the U.S., seven western states--Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New
Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California--share water supplies from the
Colorado River. Under a U.S.-Mexico treaty, the Republic of Mexico also
receives supply from the Colorado River.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The QSA implements the Colorado River Interim Surplus Guidelines
approved in January 2001, and includes the Colorado River Water
Delivery Agreement: Federal Quantification Settlement Agreement,
providing a clear framework for management of California's deliveries
of Colorado River water. It also paved the way for more recent and
equally historic multi-state accords involving the Colorado River,
including the agreements implementing the Record of Decision for the
Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the
Coordinated Operation of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, adopted in December
2007. The 2007 Interim Guidelines, amended and extended the 2001
Interim Surplus Guidelines, and provides a framework for additional
conservation, storage, and delivery of Colorado River water. The
agreements adopted pursuant to the 2007 Interim Guidelines provide
additional water for Nevada, Arizona, and California. Under these
agreements, California agencies are entitled to store conserved water
year in Lake Mead under the agreement's Intentionally Created Surplus
provisions.
What happens (i.e., what would be the water supply) if the QSA is not
implemented as negotiated?
The certainty in water supply reliability that the QSA provides has
been called into question by a recent ruling by the Sacramento Superior
Court. Soon after the QSA was finalized in 2003, the Imperial
Irrigation District filed a validation action 2 to obtain a
judicial determination of the validity of its actions regarding 13 of
the QSA agreements. The Coachella Valley Water District, Metropolitan
Water District, San Diego County Water Authority, State of California,
Vista Irrigation District, and City of Escondido joined the lawsuit in
support of IID's validation effort. Individual land owners, the County
of Imperial, and the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District
opposed validation of the agreements. In addition, several parties
filed separate lawsuits challenging various aspects of the QSA. The
lawsuits, several of which have been dismissed by the court, were
coordinated in a single proceeding in the Sacramento Superior Court.
Superior Court Judge Roland Candee was assigned the case as the trial
judge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ A validation action is a special kind of lawsuit under which a
government agency can proactively seek a court's determination--or
validation--that its actions or contracts are consistent with
California law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On December 10, 2009, Judge Candee issued a tentative ruling that
found that the agreement creating the Quantification Settlement
Agreement Joint Powers Authority (QSA JPA Agreement) violated a
provision of the California Constitution governing financial
obligations and appropriation of money by the State. On Jan. 14, 2010,
Judge Candee issued a Statement of Decision affirming his tentative
ruling and granting an initial 30-day stay from the date of the final
ruling while the parties contemplate an appeal. Once Judge Candee
issues a final judgment in the case, an appeal will be filed. Because
Judge Candee found that 12 of the agreements were interdependent, he
invalidated 11 other QSA agreements affecting long-term QSA transfers.
As to the balance of the QSA agreements not before Judge Candee and
already validated as a matter of law, Judge Candee ruled that they
remained valid. In all, agreements that govern the conservation and
transfer of more than 765,000 acre-feet annually may be affected by the
ruling.
The Colorado River Basin is also experiencing drought conditions. What
effects will continued drought conditions in the Colorado Basin
have on overall California water supplies?
California's share of the Colorado River under shortage conditions
is governed by the shortage guidelines that the Bureau of Reclamation
implemented in December 2007 (Colorado River Interim Guidelines for
Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell
and Lake Mead). These guidelines detail the conditions under which
water shortages are declared on the river, and the agencies that are
responsible for absorbing the shortages. A shortage condition exists
when the Secretary of Interior determines that insufficient water is
available to satisfy the normal 7.5 million acre-feet (maf) of demand
for the Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada)
3 in a given calendar year. During a normal year, the Lower
Basin states receive this water in the following proportion:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ The Upper Basin states are comprised of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah
and New Mexico.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arizona: 2.8 maf
California: 4.4 maf
Nevada: 0.30 maf
Under provisions of the shortage guidelines, Reclamation would
declare varying levels of shortage that depend upon projected
elevations of water in Lake Mead. The supplies to Arizona and Nevada
would be progressively reduced under an increasingly severe shortage,
but California would retain its 4.4 maf normal year apportionment. The
following table shows how shortages would be implemented depending upon
projected Lake Mead elevations. As of Jan. 11, 2010, the Lake Mead's
elevation was 1,097 feet.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4619.001
Groundwater Supply
What role does groundwater play in overall water supply management
and allocation? What is the status of groundwater supplies in Southern
California? How can groundwater basins be recharged efficiently to
maintain levels and minimize the impact of saltwater intrusion?
San Diego County has very limited groundwater resources, but we are
working to make the most of what we do have. While San Diego County
does not have the large basins that exist in parts of Orange, Los
Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, it does have
groundwater capabilities in the sandy alluvial basins along some of the
local rivers and streams.
Most of the groundwater in the Water Authority's service area is
brackish and many of the plans to use that water involve removing the
salt through the use of desalination technology. Because of the
advances in reverse osmosis membrane treatment and energy recovery
technology, brackish groundwater recovery has become cost effective.
Brackish groundwater and pumped groundwater currently meet 3% of our
region's need for water. The Water Authority's member retail water
agencies have plans to double that number to 6% by 2020 through
brackish groundwater recovery and conjunctive use projects that would
recharge a basin with local or imported water. Two of our member
agencies--the Fallbrook Public Utilities District and Marine Corps Base
Camp Pendleton--are working together on a conjunctive use project that
will recharge a basin using local surface water runoff that will serve
both Fallbrook and Camp Pendleton.
Other local agencies are exploring the idea of recharging a
groundwater basin with highly treated recycled water using the same
technology used to desalt brackish groundwater and ocean water.
While groundwater does not provide a very significant amount of
supply to the region overall, for some retail water agencies it can be
substantial and a key element of their overall water supply
reliability. Two of our local retail agencies--the City of Oceanside
and the Sweetwater Authority--operate brackish groundwater desalters
that when fully expanded will make up 18% and 27% of their water supply
by 2020.
Other agencies are exploring brackish groundwater recovery, but one
of the limitations on the size of these projects is balancing the
extraction of water from the basin with impacts to vegetation and
habitat that rely on the groundwater. Cost effective recharge
opportunities to maintain water groundwater level are limited because
of our geology and most of these projects operate on a safe yield
basis.
Although we don't have the local geology to develop large scale
recharge projects in San Diego County, we still believe that
groundwater is an important part of the region's water supply
portfolio.
As an alternative to local groundwater storage, having water in
storage south of the Delta is a key strategy to lessen the impacts of
reduced Delta exports and a strategy that the Water Authority has
embraced. Our agency has entered into two 35-year agreements for
groundwater banking south of the Delta in Kern and San Bernardino
Counties. Those agreements will provide our region with 70,000 AF of
storage capacity with guaranteed annual put and take capacity. This
provides San Diego County with additional drought protection in times
like these, as well as allowing us to have a place to store water in
wetter years when imported supplies may be available.
Water Supply Forecasting
What do you see a the cumulative effect of the decrease in snowpack in
the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains and what can be done
in the short term and long term to mediate the effects? What
tools are you using to forecast water supply demands?
Scientists have established that the early signs of climate change
are already being felt in California. We have seen increased average
temperatures, changes in temperature extremes, reduction in snowpack in
the Sierras and snowmelt occurring earlier.
Sierra Nevada
The California Climate Adaptation Strategy issued in late 2009
includes projections for 2050 of: a 2--5 degree F rise in temperature,
a 12--35% reduction in precipitation, and a 12-18 inch sea level rise.
This strategy further concludes that more precipitation will fall as
rain. With increased rainfall and earlier runoff from snowmelt, the
state will face increasing challenges of water storage for the dry
season and protection from floodwaters during the wet season. Sea level
rise may increase salt water intrusion into the Delta.
Colorado River
IPCC Working Group II concludes that there will be a 10%-30% runoff
reduction over some dry regions at mid-latitudes during the next 50
years. Studies of the impacts of climate change on Colorado River
streamflows have been going on for several decades, including
statistical studies by U.S. Scientists from the 1980s and early 1990s,
plus climate model studies from the last few years. These studies
reflect a range of projections from a 5% reduction to a 45% reduction.
Studies are currently under way to narrow the range of uncertainty of
the reduction in flow on the Colorado River resulting from climate
change.
Water supply planning is facing new uncertainties that challenge
the use of conventional planning methods. Supply planning has
traditionally used historical data based on a set of predictable
patterns, such as recorded weather and hydrologic time series, to
determine and shape future projections. This has served water utilities
well in the past; however planning methods will need to change with the
introduction of new uncertainties such as climate change and the
greater weather variability that comes with it. To better guide the
incorporation of uncertainty information into its water supply
planning, the Water Authority will utilize a decision assessment
framework as part of its 2010 Urban Water Management Plan update.
As a start to this process, the Water Authority is currently
performing a water demand and supply mix vulnerability assessment. Once
the vulnerabilities have been identified, the Water Authority will
utilize a decision support planning method--``scenario planning''--
which develops a small but wide-ranging set of future scenarios to test
and make planning decisions more robust. Common strategies, or ``No &
Low Regrets'' strategies, will be identified that can address a wide
range of uncertainties. These No & Low Regrets solutions are adaptive
and flexible, and can ramp up or ramp down, depending on how the future
scenarios progress.
The Water Authority plans to revisit the scenario planning process
every five years, as required under California law, to update its Urban
Water Management Plan. The UWMP update will be the long-range planning
assessment of the water supply mix reliability. As part of the shorter-
term planning process, the Water Authority will evaluate the water
supply mix reliability on an annual basis in its Annual Water Supply
Report. Through this annual assessment process, the No & Low Regrets
strategies can be revisited and their implementation adjusted, if
needed, should changes to the scenario outcomes occur.
The end result is a more robust water supply mix with the highest
level of reliability to respond to future uncertainties.
Near-Term and Long-Term Planning
The San Diego County Water Authority and nine other large urban
water agencies formed the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA)
dedicated to providing leadership and collaboration on climate change
issues affecting drinking water utilities by improving research,
developing adaptation strategies and creating mitigation approaches to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A key priority of WUCA has been
federally-supported climate research, this stems from our need to
better understand the potential impacts of climate change on the water
systems we manage. Recently WUCA released a white paper on the state of
the science on climate modeling and downscaling and how these tools can
be improved to meet our needs. We hope that this white paper will be a
catalyst for a continued dialogue between water utilities, the climate
modelers, the research community and federal agencies.
A key finding of the paper is that for the next few years,
significant uncertainties will remain at the scale and in the timeframe
that utilities make decisions. In the meantime, water utilities will
have substantial decisions to make with the potential for significant
impacts. Although water utility planning is usually based on static
climate projections and historical data, new approaches are needed to
incorporate the wide range of climate projections into water utility
planning.
As a result of this need WUCA will release a second white paper at
the end of the month to provide guidance to water utilities, which may
be conducting vulnerability assessments and want to move forward with
adaptation strategies. The report documents five decision support
planning methods that utilities can use to assist in characterizing and
comprehending multiple uncertainties while minimizing the risks
associated with these decisions.
Although the Water Authority and the members of the Water Utility
Climate Alliance have made significant efforts to comprehend the
impacts of climate change on water utilities, we encourage the federal
government to:
Focus on improving climate modeling, including regional
downscaling, to better meet the needs of water utility managers
Provide support for climate adaptation projects,
including infrastructure enhancements for large urban water utilities,
that may be needed to reduce the regional impacts of climate change.
Conservation, Water Reuse, and Water Reclamation
What is the role of conservation, water recycling, and water
efficiency in meeting future demands? What lessons can we learn
from the city of Los Angeles cutting their water use by 17% in
five months?
After the drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s, San Diego
County learned the vitally important lesson of the consequences of
overreliance on a single source of imported water. We emerged from that
experience with a strategy to achieve greater reliability through
development of a diversified water supply portfolio. Since 1991, the
Water Authority and its 24 member agencies have been singularly focused
on achieving diversification of both our imported and local water
supplies. The following pie charts compare San Diego County's water
supply portfolio in 1991, Fiscal Year 2010 and the projected supply mix
in 2020.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4619.002
Conservation, water recycling and reuse and the development of
ocean water desalination are critical elements to our diversification
strategy and successfully achieving supply reliability.
We have dedicated significant funds in the last 18 years to
implement conservation and are an original signatory to the Memorandum
of Understanding for Urban Water Conservation. Conservation programs
and water efficiencies implemented since 1991 have reduced our service
area's demand for water by 8% ``enough water to meet the total annual
water needs of 100,000 households of four. When coupled with the water
use restrictions and aggressive outreach put in place to address the
current supply situation, San Diego County used the same amount of
water in 2009 that we last used in 1996 although we have added 400,000
people to our region.
Our goals for conservation in the future remain ambitious and we
believe we are well on our way to accomplishing the states goal of a
20% reduction by 2020. We have had extensive dialogue with stakeholders
through three regional Conservation Summits and the public and business
community involvement that resulted. We are pioneering the use of water
budgets to manage water use in the landscape and in creating a supply
chain of water efficient landscape and a trained profession that
knowledgeable in low water use plants and irrigation practices. San
Diego County is home to a unique Water Conservation garden that
provides the public an opportunity to see real world low water use
landscape and how to do it. Managing demand through water use
efficiency is an important part of our diversified portfolio, but we
believe that supply reliability cannot be achieved by conservation
alone. We cannot conserve water we don't have.
Water Recycling and Seawater Desalination are key elements in our
diversified supply portfolio. Recycled water is expected to meet at
least 6% of San Diego County's need for water by 2020. There are 17
active water recycling projects in the county for a variety of
landscaping and industrial purposes. The Water Authority along with the
Metropolitan Water District has provided financial incentives to almost
all these recycling projects in order to make the projects more cost
effective and price competitive with buying imported water. Because San
Diego County does not have large industrial users of water or large
groundwater basins to recharge reuse of recycled water is primarily
limited to seasonal irrigation. This idles recycling plants during the
wetter winter months. To better utilize these resources local agencies
are exploring indirect potable reuse of highly treated recycled water
through blending with surface water in reservoirs. If successful,
reservoir augmentation could significantly increase the amount of
recycling in San Diego County.
Seawater desalination is considered by our Board to have one of the
greatest potentials as a new supply for San Diego County. Because of
our proximity to the ocean, the geological limitations I have discussed
in my earlier testimony today, the Pacific Ocean represents a
significant drought proof resource for our region that uses proven
technology and can be developed cost effectively and in an
environmentally responsible manner. Current plans to construct a 50
million gallon per day seawater desalination plant in Carlsbad through
a public-private partnership involving 9 of our local retail agencies
will supply enough water to serve over 100,000 households in San Diego
County. The Water Authority itself is engaged in studies to develop
additional seawater desalination projects and is planning for that
resource to make up 10% of our supply portfolio by 2030. We are working
with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on the siting of a plant on the
Base that would provide the opportunity for future expansion up to 150
million gallons per day and provide water to businesses and residents
throughout the County. We are also exploring opportunities for
desalination with Mexico as part of the effort to augment Colorado
River supplies.
As with any of the supplies in our diversified portfolio we do not
believe there is a single solution and it is no different with seawater
desalination. It is an important part of our future supply but it is by
no means the only part or the most important part but it is a supply we
believe should be developed and we are pursuing it along with
conservation and water recycling.
Northern California Water Supply
How are the water agencies in Southern California handling the reduced
water imports from Northern California? What actions are they
taking to make up for the reduced supply to meet their user
demands? What management actions are being taken to maintain
service to citizens?
As a result of continuing dry conditions and regulatory
restrictions that are limiting pumping to southern California, water
agencies across the region have responded by implementing drought
management actions that range from drawing on dry-year storage reserves
to supplementing reduced supplies with water transfers from willing
sellers in northern California to implementing voluntary and mandatory
allocation and water use restrictions to reduce municipal and
agricultural water demand.
As an example of this response, the San Diego County Water
Authority activated its Drought Management Plan in 2007 when the
current dry conditions and pumping restrictions began to threaten water
supplies. The Water Authority's Drought Management Plan, or DMP,
includes a series of progressive measures to manage through shortage
conditions, depending on severity. As conditions worsened in 2008 and
2009, the Water Authority moved from a call for voluntary reductions in
water use to our current allocation of water supplies, coupled with
mandatory water use restrictions at the consumer level, now in place
across most of our service area. The Water Authority also moved to
supplement our supply with the purchase of dry-year transfer water from
willing sellers in northern California. These supply and demand
management actions sparked a tremendous consumer response to the
region's water supply shortage. Since July, consumer demand is well
below allocation targets and as much as 13 percent below 2008 levels
and 17 percent below 2007 levels.
Role of Congress
How can Congress assist in addressing demands for increased water
supplies that may help some users balance the needs of the at
risk species, the economy, and ecosystems in general?
The federal government is a critical partner in improving
California's water supply reliability and can play vital roles in a
number of water supply issues, including resolving problems plaguing
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta, in its role as water master on
the Colorado River, and through support of local water supply
development, including promising new technologies.
Bay-Delta
Support the completion of the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan
and consider actions that help implement the plan.
Ensure that federal regulatory actions and congressional
oversight recognizes the truly co-equal goals of the environment and
the economy.
Regional Self-Sufficiency
Reduce dependency upon imported water supplies and
improved regional self-sufficiency through development of new local
water supplies, including reclamation, seawater and groundwater
desalination, conservation and local storage.
Increase funding for Title XVI Water Reclamation Programs
and Conservation Programs.
Climate Change
Focus federal efforts on improving climate modeling,
including regional downscaling, to better meet the needs of water
utility managers.
Provide financial support for climate adaptation
projects, including infrastructure enhancements for large urban water
utilities, which may be needed to reduce the regional impacts of
climate change.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. We will move on to Mr. Dan Parks,
Assistant General Manager, Coachella Valley Water District in
Coachella.
STATEMENT OF DAN PARKS, ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER, COACHELLA
VALLEY WATER DISTRICT, COACHELLA, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Parks. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. First, I want to
thank the Committee for their interest in California's supply
challenges and opportunities.
Coachella County Water District is located in the desert
between Palm Springs and the Salton Sea. We serve roughly a
1,000 square mile territory. In the desert, let us not overlook
the obvious. Every day is a drought. Thus, we rely on importing
water from our supplies from the Colorado River and the State
Water Project. We use those sources to recharge our groundwater
basin and irrigate crops. All of our domestic water is pumped
from our groundwater basin.
Our economy consists of agriculture, the resort golf
industry, and residential homebuilding. They all require a
dependable supply of water. We have been successful with our
history of managing water supplies. We manage that through
conservation measures, core substitution projects such as using
recycled water, and other nonpotable water supplies instead of
pumping groundwater, and through our programs of recharging our
groundwater basin.
This last year, due to the drought and due to the failure
of the Delta ecosystem, we only received 40 percent of our
nearly 200,000 acre-feet of State Project entitlement. The
estimate for this year, as you have heard earlier, is five
percent. Without these supplies, we will overdraft our
groundwater basin and run the long-term risks of impaired water
quality, permanent loss of storage, and ground subsidence.
Also, our local economy is at risk.
Now, California's Legislature has passed a good foundation
to restore the Delta and improve water supplies. However, to
solve California's water crisis we must have improved
conveyance across the Delta and water storage projects. These
will be both extremely costly and take a decade or more to
build. Unless California's water crisis is solved, California's
economy will continue to suffer as, hopefully, the rest of this
nation's economy improves. Of course, the economy is not
hampered by water problems today, but they will be a limitation
for California's future.
I ask your support, as the others on the panel today have,
to support our state and Federal water contractors as we move
ahead with a Delta fix, and of course, we always look forward
to opportunities where the Federal Government can participate
as a partner. I thank you, and be glad to answer questions at
the appropriate time.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Parks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Parks follows:]
Statement of Dan Parks, Assistant General Manager,
Coachella Valley Water District
My name is Dan Parks. I am assistant general manager of the
Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD), Coachella, California. I am a
registered civil engineer in the state of California and have an
engineering degree from California State Polytechnic Institute in
Pomona, California.
The CVWD is a public agency serving 1,000 square miles in
Riverside, Imperial and San Diego counties.
CVWD's service area is somewhat unique. It lies within Southern
California's desert with an average rainfall of a little over 3 inches.
Many years have no measurable rain, yet in other years more than the
annual average falls in one storm. Locally, every day is a drought in
the desert.
The State of California is experiencing a two-pronged drought. In
regard to climate, we are feeling the effects of what many are
predicting will be the most severe drought in recorded history. On the
other hand, we are also affected by a regulatory drought that is
severely limiting the amount of water available from the State Water
Project.
The Coachella Valley relies on imported water supplies from the
Colorado River and State Water Project to recharge its groundwater
basin. When water is available, it is stored in the ground water basin.
When supplies are short, water is pumped from the groundwater basin to
meet the needs of the area. Thus, the groundwater basin acts as a large
storage reservoir. Groundwater in the Coachella Valley is cooperatively
managed by the two agencies with State Water contracts, Desert Water
Agency (DWA) and CVWD.
Since the 1980's, CVWD, DWA and The Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California (MWD) have participated in a conjunctive use
program. In wet years, MWD stores its surplus water in Coachella
Valley's groundwater basin. In dry years, MWD takes delivery of CVWD's
and DWA's State Water supplies, and in exchange, CVWD and DWA pump MWD
water stored in the groundwater basin. This program benefits all
agencies by utilizing wet year supplies to meet dry year water demands.
Over the years, we've increased our entitlement of imported water
with the goal of recharging the same amount or more water than what is
taken out of the aquifer each year. Legal entanglements surrounding the
Sacramento Bay Delta have resulted in contractors only receiving 40
percent of their allocation last year. Without sufficient groundwater
replenishment, the Coachella Valley faces potential negative effects of
overdraft, including subsidence, diminished water quality and
permanently reduced storage space.
We are fortunate to have multiple sources of water, including
Colorado River. But the Colorado River Basin is also suffering from
several years of drought. So far, we have been able to receive what
water we need from that source, but Lake Powell, Lake Mead and other
reservoirs on the river are very low.
Last year, two significant water management projects were
completed, a facility to recharge 40,000 acre-feet of groundwater per
year and the other to supply 50,000 acre-feet of non-potable water to
golf courses in-lieu of pumping groundwater. The combined cost of these
projects is $115,000,000.
In some areas of the state, various forms of rationing or use
restrictions are in place. Groundwater storage has allowed CVWD to
implement a softer program of conservation measures than other areas.
Because the average Coachella Valley home uses 80 percent of its water
outside, CVWD's conservation and outreach programs are targeted toward
reducing outdoor water use. Our success is attributed to a combination
of imposing a water-budget based rate structure, desert appropriate
landscape regulations, and incentive programs to increase irrigation
efficiency and eliminate water waste. The programs have resulted in
reducing water use by more than 10 percent on a permanent basis. Long-
term reductions are expected to exceed 20 percent as customers make
further changes in their landscape and irrigation systems.
The ability to capture, transport and store water is of key
importance to managing California's water supply. In the short run, a
solution is needed to reduce the pumping restrictions in California's
Sacramento--San Joaquin Delta. In the long run, additional water
storage is needed. If climate change results in less snowpack as some
predict, additional transport capacity and storage will be needed to
capture rain fall rather than let it run to the ocean.
In regard to Colorado River supplies, CVWD is a party to the
Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA). Signed in 2003, the QSA is a
series of agreements between federal, state and local agencies which
resolves disputes between California agencies created by the priority
system of allocating water and resolves concerns of other western
states and the United States Bureau of Reclamation over California
using more than its amount of Colorado River water. A recent California
court determined one sentence in one agreement violated a California
Constitution provision and invalidated the QSA.
Since 2003 much work has been done among western states to address
managing the Colorado River during both surplus years and drought
years. I believe we are in better position to minimize reductions in
the Colorado River supply through those management programs. Relations
between California agencies and the other western states are not the
same as they were in 2003. I believe it is more likely that the parties
to the QSA will rise to the challenge created by the courts decision
and find a solution whereby the QSA is implemented as negotiated.
One dilemma we face in addressing demands for increased water
supplies is the inherent conflict between endangered species and the
use of water to supply the public and its economy. It would be helpful
if environmental laws balanced human needs with those of at risk
species and the ecosystem.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on these matters.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. We will begin the question and answer
period.
Mr. Kightlinger, can you tell me what the current average
cost of a delivered acre-foot of water currently is?
Mr. Kightlinger. On our power side, our average cost of
delivery is basically driven by our power, and on the Colorado
River it is in the $50 to $60, $70 an acre-foot.
Mrs. Napolitano. How much?
Mr. Kightlinger. It is between $50 and about $60 an acre-
foot on the Colorado River side, and higher on the State Water
Project, $70 to $90 an acre-foot for power on the State Water
Project.
Mrs. Napolitano. And that is what you charge your
customers?
Mr. Kightlinger. No, that is just the cost of moving it.
Our typical cost of an acre-foot of water right now, treated,
is about $750 an acre-foot.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. How do you plan to implement
the reductions of the water supply from both the Colorado and
the Northern California to your 26-member water agencies?
Mr. Kightlinger. We worked with our member agencies and put
together a supply allocation plan where we looked at
everybody's base use and tried to reduce that by 10 percent and
accommodate certain areas that had losses of local supply due
to impacted groundwater wells or pollution, and so we put
together this plan, and we implemented it, and we are very
pleased, as I noted earlier, that we called for a 10 percent
reduction in use in calendar year 2009, and we have achieved
over 15 percent to date.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Ms. Stapleton, congratulations
on your advances in all your reductions. It is very impressive.
How do you plan to implement the reductions in the water supply
from MWD and potentially the Colorado River on your customers?
Ms. Stapleton. One of the things is communication with our
region, not only through our retail water agencies but with the
population at large. We have worked very closely with our
businesses as well as our agricultural communities to do a
couple of things. Number one is to keep them informed right up
front of what is happening and what the potential implications
can be.
Number two is that we notified them of the allocation
shortage and also opportunities in where they can receive
financial assistance for conservation programs or installation
of conservation measures, as well as what we have been able to
achieve is focusing on outdoor landscaping has been extremely
helpful. So we have actually obtained a higher than needed
conservation over this last six months or so. We have been very
pleased with our community response. They have really stepped
up to the plate when we asked them.
Mrs. Napolitano. But you have been engaged in many efforts?
Ms. Stapleton. Yes.
Mrs. Napolitano. Mr. Parks, how do you plan to implement
the reductions in the water supplies from the Colorado and the
Northern California for your farmers, and if you have any
assistance programs to them?
Mr. Parks. Our ag. supplies--we have been very fortunate to
participate in the Bureau of Reclamation's 2020 program and
have put out some demonstration incentive projects whereby our
agricultural growers could use such technologies as high tech
irrigation scheduling, moisture management, and soil management
procedures to be much more efficient in their application of
water. It has been a tremendous success, and we have shown
proven savings with that.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Mr. Brady, how would you
implement the water delivery restrictions if the restrictions
occur on the Colorado River, and what process would you do so
to implement that?
Mr. Brady. Well, Madam Chair, the essence of the QSA is
that we transfer eventually up to 300,000 acre-feet to the
urban areas by implementing on-farm and system conservation
measures. The system measures are going to cost somewhere
around $300 million. The on-farm, we will be paying farmers to
implement drip and sprinkler systems and the like. Beyond that,
if there are restrictions on the Colorado that take us below
our allocation, we will most likely go to allocation per acre
on farmed land, and the farmers--we intend to work with the
farmers so that we can maintain, if possible, the same yields
with, of course, less water.
Mrs. Napolitano. I would suggest to all of you, stay for
the scientific panel who is coming on afterwards, to listen to
some of what they are saying about how we can help each other.
What is your plan if the QSA decision does not change, any
of you?
Mr. Brady. Well, I would just say that we are not planning
for the QSA, but we will continue to transfer water until we
are told that it is illegal to do so.
Ms. Stapleton. Madam Chair, I think from our standpoint, we
believe, and it is where we are focusing our effort, is to
actually address the provision which the Judge found to be
unconstitutional, to go into that, look at it, specifically
understand fully what the Judge's concerns were, work with the
state and the Federal Government in identifying that, and
correcting that problem. That is what we are working on, and we
look forward to the Federal Government being a partner to
ensure the continuity of the QSA.
Mr. Parks. If I might add to that, how appropriate the
title of today's hearing, challenges and opportunities. I
believe this creates a challenge to which the parties to the
QSA will rise to the opportunity to find a solution. It is very
good and refreshing to hear both the Bureau and the state's
comments today, that they, too, support the QSA as negotiated.
Mrs. Napolitano. Let us just look for the action behind it.
Mr. McClintock.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Mr.
Kightlinger, you indicated that wet or average water years will
bring even more water supply restrictions to the Delta. At our
mock hearing this morning in Fresno, we were told that up to
10,000 acre-feet of additional water is now being diverted to
the ocean per day as a result of the recent rainfall. What
impact is this going to have on your water supply and
groundwater replenishment?
Mr. Kightlinger. It is a very significant impact.
Metropolitan gets 50 percent of the State Water Project as our
entitlement. For the last three years, we have not been able to
deliver any water to our groundwater basins for replenishment,
and those basins are at record low levels in the San Gabriel
and the San Fernando Valley and Orange County. So they are
hurting for replenishment water, and we have not been able to
receive any replenishment water since those fishery
restrictions have gone into play.
Mr. McClintock. I want to focus on a bit of your testimony
here where you said, ``Many of us who have been following water
issues for decades have been accustomed to quick bounce-back in
deliveries from the State Water Project when the drought cycle
ends and the rains return. This pattern will no longer hold
true. New water supply restrictions--new water supply
restrictions because of deteriorating environmental conditions
in the Delta will have their greatest impact in wet and average
years. Metropolitan will lose the ability to capture as much as
600,000 acre-feet of water in above-average and wet years
because of these restrictions.''
Now we just heard a great deal of fanfare over Title XVI
projects. I believe that they were producing roughly 350,000
acre-feet. These restrictions alone are going to cost
Metropolitan alone 600,000 acre-feet. How do you square those
two? On the one hand, we are spending phenomenal amounts of
money, again up to $18,000 per acre-foot in capital costs on
these Title XVI projects to produce roughly 350,000 acre-feet
of water, while near-bureaucratic restrictions are costing you,
just at Metropolitan alone, 600,000 acre-feet.
Mr. Kightlinger. Yes. We believe we need a very diverse
portfolio of water supply.
Mr. McClintock. Do you think that is a sustainable policy,
restrictions that are costing you 600,000 acre-feet of water?
Mr. Kightlinger. Absolutely not. It is not sustainable. So
that is why we must find a way to repair that Delta ecosystem
and to build some new conveyances so that we can get back to
more reliable State Water Project levels.
Mr. McClintock. Well, we have been diverting these massive
amounts of water, and the population of the Delta smelt
continues to decline. Maybe that is just nature's way of
telling us that is not the problem. You argue for a new
conveyance across the Delta. I assume that is as peripheral
canal to more efficiently move water from the north to the
south but, at the same time, the administration in Sacramento,
the State Water Resources Control Board appointed by the
Governor, voted to take away the Federal development rights for
the Auburn Dam.
If we are not going to produce additional water in the
northern region, what good is it going to do to improve our
conveyance facilities? We have to have water to convey, and we
have an Administration that is actually blocking the
development of these projects; and by the way, the AB-32
restrictions have a huge impact on future cement productions.
You know, every ton of cement requires the production of a ton
of carbon dioxide, and in case the rocket scientists in
Sacramento haven't noticed, cement is a rather handy thing to
have around if you are going to build a conveyance facility or
a dam. Your comments?
Mr. Kightlinger. Oh, our comment is just that we believe we
have to do both. We are going to eventually need more storage
in the state. We have been roughly a storage poor state, and
that includes both groundwater and surface storage, and we have
to have more conveyance, because right now we can't even move
the water we have in storage.
Mr. McClintock. Well, don't you think we ought to have more
storage to go along with that more conveyance?
Mr. Kightlinger. Absolutely.
Mr. McClintock. Though you would disagree that the policies
out of Sacramento that are impeding construction of the Auburn
Dam and impeding our ability to produce cement economically are
going to have a serious additional impact on our water needs?
Mr. Kightlinger. I don't know about the Auburn Dam
specifically, but I do know they have five specific new storage
sites they are analyzing, and that is the process that we have
to go through and, hopefully, choose one or two of those sites.
Mr. McClintock. One final question. You mentioned the--and
in fact, several witnesses have mentioned the effectiveness of
water conservation in San Diego County. Ms. Stapleton said that
San Diego County used the same amount of water in 2009 that was
used in 1996, although they have added 200,000 people to the
region.
Well, the thing that jumps off the page at me in other
claims like this is that in 2009 we were in a severe recession.
In 1996 we had a booming economy. I wonder how much of the
water conservation success is actual success and how much of it
is directly related to the recession.
Ms. Stapleton. I think there is a portion of it that is
related to the recession, but we track gallons per capita per
day very closely, and we have been able to make real progress
in less water usage on a per capita basis. That is through the
installation of a number of indoor fixtures, whether it be
washing machines, dishwashers, shower heads and so forth, and
then turf irrigation and the outdoor landscaping area.
As I said, we see conservation as a piece of the solution,
but certainly not the only solution. You cannot get enough
water by just conserving. If you don't have the water
initially, you can't conserve it. It doesn't make sense. It is
a piece of the pie. It is not the entire solution.
Mrs. Napolitano. Mr. Calvert.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Mr. Kightlinger,
even if the water bond issue passes in this next election, how
long will it take to build those improvements?
Mr. Kightlinger. We are looking at probably 2018 at the
earliest, maybe 2020.
Mr. Calvert. Saying that if those improvements, based upon
your testimony, 2018, we must have an interim solution on the
Bay-Delta. Is that correct?
Mr. Kightlinger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Calvert. Now you have been involved in coming up with
ideas, along with people in the Central Valley, on how we can
come up with an interim solution to allow us to mitigate for
the Biological Opinion, and at the same time pump water, and
part of that was the Two Gates project that was mentioned in
earlier testimony. Isn't that correct?
Mr. Kightlinger. Yes, sir.
Mr. Calvert. What is your opinion why that temporary
solution is unable to get the necessary permits to build in an
immediate way?
Mr. Kightlinger. Well, we see the Administration is very
concerned with implementing it until they are convinced about
the science behind it and the theory that the smelt will track
with the turbidity, and the gates would help cut off the smelt
and be able----
Mr. Calvert. What is your opinion about that? People have
been looking at this for some time. Experts that have a
contrary point of view of the administration believe that this,
at the same time, would resolve the issue of the smelt and, at
the same time, allow for additional water flow. Do you share
that belief?
Mr. Kightlinger. No. We were one of the authors. We were
one of the chief proponents of the Two Gate proposal. We have
faith in the science.
Mr. Calvert. So if this agreement is going to continue to
be put off, and the Biological Opinion is going to continue to
be followed, even if we end up with 120 percent snow melt at
the end of the season and you are unable to pump water, and
this goes on from year to year, what is going to happen in one
or two years from now?
Mr. Kightlinger. We are going to be in a world of hurt,
and----
Mr. Calvert. Applying that to the Quantification
Settlement, we had a recent judicial opinion that we are aware
of, what happens, God forbid, if the QSA comes unwound, along
with the restrictions you have in the Bay-Delta? What happens?
I guess that is the question that all of you could answer.
Mr. Kightlinger. We will have a significant problem here at
Metropolitan, if we are cut back on both our Colorado River
supplies and the State Water Project supplies simultaneously.
Mr. Calvert. And by the way, I was involved in negotiation
of the Quantification Settlement Agreement. I know, and work
with many of you on that. It wasn't an easy agreement to come
by, and still somewhat controversial, I understand, in the
Imperial Irrigation District and other areas, but I will ask
the gentleman who is the General Manager: Has production in the
Imperial Irrigation area, agricultural production, been
affected by the Quantification Agreement?
Mr. Brady. I would say--and given that I have only been
there 20 months, my institutional history is not that long, but
I would say that it has not. Right now we are in an interim
fallowing program, and we have worked within the constraints of
the QSA.
Mr. Calvert. So the conservation improvements that were
designed to improve water conservation in the Imperial
Irrigation District are working?
Mr. Brady. Well, they are working. There are several parts
to it. The initial ones are. We are planning for additional
ones, yes.
Mr. Calvert. If the Quantification Agreement came undone,
would anybody there think that we could ever put this agreement
back together again with dynamics for the Upper Basin states
and the Lower Basin states, and what is going on locally in
politics? Yes?
Ms. Stapleton. I think the real issue is it is like pulling
a thread on a sweater. There are so many components, not only
in the Quantification Settlement Agreement but in the
agreements with the other six Basin states that, in fact, it
took over eight years to negotiate the QSA, and subsequent
years to come up with the criteria on the Colorado River with
the other Basin states, and so forth. To have that all swept
away--I don't think you are talking about being able to achieve
it again, certainly in the next decade.
Mr. Calvert. Thank you. I am going to be leaving shortly,
but I just wanted to make this point. If we don't resolve an
interim solution soon in the Bay-Delta and sweep away this
immediate threat on the QSA, we have no certainty on water
supply in California, no certainty at all. As you know, under
state law that can have a horrendous effect on issuance of both
commercial and residential building permits if ever this
economy ever turns around. So I just wanted to make that point,
and I thank the Chairwoman, and I apologize. I have to head
back out.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you for your attendance. You have
made some very good points. May I add that he was the Chairman
when I was Ranking Member for a while. So he has a great deal
of background, and was my mentor at one time. Thank you.
Just to Mr. Kightlinger, are you in agreement with Title
XVI programs and to your overall Metropolitan water portfolio,
and while you are at it, I would like to know if there are any
improvements that could be made in the infrastructure to yield
more water, understanding that we are not--many water agencies
I have talked to are not collecting enough money to be able to
set aside for infrastructure repairs. The aging system in
Southern California is horrendous, as in many other parts of
the state.
You see, the water mains now are bursting almost on a daily
basis, which was not an occurrence that we faced years ago. All
of that, how is that going to affect us being able to ensure
the water quality, water delivery for our customers?
Then to Ms. Stapleton, what is the current use of the
gallons per day from your folks? I will wrap it all into one,
because that is so important, the answers, for us.
Mr. Kightlinger. I will start, Madam Chair, and thank you
for your question. We have to continue to invest in our
infrastructure in Southern California and continue to invest
and reinvest. The Title XVI boost that Commissioner Connor
spoke to was very helpful, that $160 million. They helped many
of the recycling and reclamation projects in Southern
California.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, that came from the leadership on our
side. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kightlinger. We understand. Thank you, and we
appreciate the support. Metropolitan has invested to match that
and go beyond, another $370 million into recycling and
reclamation projects. The message we have delivered is the cost
of water has to go up as the area continues to grow, as we have
to find more and more water supply, we are raising rates, and
we have to do that to continue to invest and not have our water
supply crumble and break around us.
Ms. Stapleton. Regarding the usage of water by our
residents, we started out in those same years that I referred
to probably nearly 200 gallons per person per day. We have
dropped it now into the 160s, and it is continuing to drop. We
really look at it carefully, and it is working in cooperation
with our businesses and our residents. We believe that we are
well on our way to achieving that 20 percent conservation by
2020.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you so very much. I will go into one
more question.
Mr. McClintock. Has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis on
these various forms of water delivery? Mr. Kightlinger, you
pointed out that residential rates, in particular, or water
rates in general are going up dramatically as we look for more
and more exotic ways of producing water, and yet we ignore
surface water storage as the obvious unfulfilled promise of
California's resources. So the question I have is: Have you
looked at the costs and benefits of these various types of
water production, from desalinization, to recycling, to local
surface water, to increasing storage on the Sacramento?
Everybody thinks that the Colorado is the mother of all
water in the western United States. As you know, the Colorado
River is a junior sister to the Sacramento. The difference is
that we store 70 million acre-feet on the Colorado, and yet we
store only 10 million acre-feet on the Sacramento. Your
thoughts?
Mr. Kightlinger. Those are all very good points. We do do
cost effective analyses of all projects, and we look at that.
We also have to look at which are the most reliable, and which
supply water year in and year out, and how we can mix and match
the best supplies. Certainly, we are storage-short in the State
of California compared to the Colorado River.
Mr. McClintock. Well, what is cheaper, surface water
storage or recycling?
Mr. Kightlinger. Surface water storage is very expensive.
It is on a comparable basis with recycled water, but it also is
very valuable. When you need it, it is always there for you and
in large amounts.
Mr. McClintock. Have you guys done a study on that? I would
like to see some reliable figures where we can get a cost/
benefit analysis of each of the forms of water development.
Mr. Kightlinger. We have done that, and we will provide
your staff with that. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, panel, and I invite you to stay
with us for the next panel, and appreciate your travel and your
time and your effort.
I would like to call up Dr. Peter H. Gleick, President,
Pacific Institute in Oakland; Professor Jay Famiglietti, Ph.D.,
with the Department of Earth System Science, University of
California at Irvine; Mr. Miguel Luna, Executive Director of
the Urban Semillas, ``seeds'' to those of you that don't
understand Spanish, Los Angeles; Ms. Lucy Dunn, President and
Chief Executive Officer of the Orange County Business Council
in Irvine; Mr. Joe L. Del Bosque, Owner of Empresas Del Bosque
Inc. in Los Banos; Mr. Larry Collins, Vice President, Pacific
Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association in San Francisco.
Audience, if you could take your conversations outside,
thank you very much. We want to continue and be out of here on
a timely basis. Dr. Gleick, I would like to start off with you.
STATEMENT OF DR. PETER H. GLEICK, PRESIDENT,
PACIFIC INSTITUTE, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
Dr. Gleick. Yes. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman, members
of the Subcommittee. Thank you very much for having me here
today. This has been quite an interesting hearing.
I have submitted my written testimony. I am just going to
summarize a few key points. Let me reiterate something that has
already been said. I agree there is no silver bullet to
California's water problems. We have many problems. There are
many solutions. I think everyone involved in the state's water
debates would acknowledge the need for diverse answers or a
portfolio, as we sometimes say, of solutions, but the need to
do many things does not mean we need to do everything or we can
afford to do everything. We have to do the most effective
things first, the most cost effective things first. This has
already been mentioned.
What I would like to do a little bit today is focus on
opportunities, the good news, if you will. In particular, I am
going to talk about two things very briefly. One is the
potential for additional conservation and efficiency
improvements statewide. The other is opportunities to rethink
water supply statewide.
In particular, there is vast untapped potential for
reducing our demand for water without affecting the benefits
that that water provides. Improving the efficiency of use of
water is the fastest, the cheapest, the most environmentally
sound option for meeting California's current and future needs.
We have to change the way we think about supply. There are
enormous opportunities for new supply in California, but I
would argue that we ought to not be thinking about expensive,
inefficient surface storage. As much as we ought to be thinking
about smart surface storage and groundwater, we ought to be
thinking about recycled and reclaimed water. We ought to be
thinking about, where appropriate, desalination.
It is important to realize that we don't want water. We
want the services and the benefits that water provides. We want
a healthy agricultural economy. We want clean clothes, and we
want to be able to clean our dishes. We want to make semi-
conductors and the other things that are industrial processes
produce, all of which require water, but all of which require
less water than we are spending to do those things today. That
is the definition of improving efficiency. We can do the things
that we want with less water than we are spending to do them
today.
Californians have made enormous progress in this in the
last 25 years. Our water use is relatively flat. Our population
has grown. Our economy has grown. Our per capital water use has
gone down. We have been able to meet a lot of our demands, in
part by improving efficiency, and yet our current use of water
is still wasteful. There is still enormous potential to improve
efficiency.
In a few weeks the Pacific Institute--it is my institute in
Oakland; it is a nonprofit research institute--is going to
release a new assessment, in part stimulated by a letter that
the Chairwoman sent to the Department of the Interior last
August requesting that we rethink a million acre-feet quickly.
Where can we find a million acre-feet in the State of
California relatively quickly?
Our new assessment is going to look at the potential for
conservation and efficiency to produce a million acre-feet
quickly. We decided we would look at 60 percent agriculture, 40
percent urban. We would look at only things that were cost
effective, only things that used existing technology.
The savings in the urban sector, 400,000 acre-feet, we
estimate, would cost about $2 billion and produce about 400,000
acre-feet of water, would save a lot of energy in the meantime.
I would note Temperance Flat, the current dam that has been
proposed on the San Joaquin, is estimated to cost well over
$3.3 billion, would probably produce far under 200,000 acre-
feet of water, an example of the potential for conservation and
efficiency to meet some of our demands.
We find there are 600,000 acre-feet that could be saved
pretty quickly in agriculture by applying additional smart
irrigation technology, the things that farmers are already
doing; regulated deficit irrigation on certain kind of acreage;
and converting part of the Central Valley acreage that is not
on drip and sprinklers to drip and sprinklers.
Let me conclude. There are new ways of thinking about
supply. We should be doing more reclaimed water and reuse of
water. We should be doing smart desalination. We should be
doing much more conjunctive use, much more storage of
groundwater, the best place to store water in California. All
of these things are part of what we need to do to meet
California's growing demands, and perhaps provide some of this
interim solution that we so desperately need, because of the
long time frame required for some of the other things that we
have already addressed today.
I am going to stop there. I would be happy to answer any
questions during the question and answer period. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Gleick follows:]
Statement of Dr. Peter H. Gleick 1,
President of the Pacific Institute
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\1\ President, Pacific Institute, Oakland, California. Member, U.S.
National Academy of Sciences. www.pacinst.org.
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The Critical Role of Water Efficiency and Conservation
in Solving California's Water Problems
Honorable Representatives, distinguished guests: Thank you for
inviting me to discuss the key role that water efficiency and
conservation has and will play in solving California's water problems.
Notwithstanding the recent winter rains the state has received,
California continues to face serious unresolved water challenges.
Current proposals for meeting those challenges are inadequate and
largely misdirected. But effective solutions are available.
Summary
Water is vital to the health of our economy and natural ecosystems.
California's cities and agricultural communities rely on reliable
supplies of clean and adequate fresh water. As California's population
and economy grow, there is mounting concern about our ability to meet
future water demand amidst pressure on our complex water systems. In
the 20th century, our approach to meeting this demand has been to
develop new supply. While this approach has brought tremendous benefits
to this state, we have reached the limits of traditional supply options
and continuing to rely on building new infrastructure will fail to
solve our crisis. A broader and more integrated approach is needed.
There is no ``silver bullet'' solution to California's water
problems, and everyone involved in state water debates will acknowledge
the need for diverse answers or a ``portfolio'' of solutions. But the
need to do many things does not mean we must do, or can afford to do,
everything. We must do the most effective things first.
In particular, there is vast untapped potential for reducing our
demand for water without affecting the benefits that water provides.
Improving the efficiency of our water use is the cheapest, easiest,
fastest, and least destructive way to meet California's current and
future water supply needs. Indeed, without past efforts to improve
water-use efficiency, our current crisis would be much worse. And we
must expand our thinking about supply, away from costly and ineffective
new dams and toward the other excellent options for expanding supply.
My testimony today will address three issues:
1. The flaws of our traditional methods of water planning;
2. The massive untapped potential for improving water-use
efficiency. Specifically, I will address the potential to quickly
reduce demands in California by one million acre-feet at a cost far
below that of any new supply option that has been proposed.
3. The potential for expanding water supplies through non-
traditional approaches of water recycling and reuse, smart
desalination, rainwater harvesting, and better conjunctive use of
California's surface and groundwater.
1. Traditional Water Planning Assumptions are Incorrect
Traditional water planning is based on two premises. First, it
assumes that as populations and the economy grow, water use must also
grow. Second, it assumes that in order to meet growing demand, new dams
must be built, new groundwater aquifers tapped, and new supplies
brought from farther and farther away. This is what most of you
believe; it is what most of the public believes; it is what most water
managers believe.
Both of these assumptions are false.
Figure 1 shows California's gross state product, population, and
water use between 1975 and 2001. Total water use in California was less
in 2001 than it was in 1975, yet population increased by 60% and gross
state product increased 2.5 times.
The same trend is true for the United States as a whole. The latest
information from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that total water use
in 2005 for the United States is now lower than it was in 1975. Figure
2 shows total U.S. water withdrawals from 1900 to 2005 along with Gross
National Product. Per-capita water use has dropped even more
dramatically over the past three decades. This suggests that we can and
in fact we have broken the link between water use, population, and
economic growth. This has been achieved in large part by improvements
in conservation and efficiency. Figure 3 shows the ``economic
productivity'' of water use in the United States over the past century.
Improvements in efficiency of water use now permit us to produce nearly
three times as many dollars of goods and services per gallon of water
as just a few decades ago.
Absent a discussion about population policy, our goal in California
must be to continue these trends toward higher economic productivity of
water and decreasing per-capita water use.
2. Conservation and Efficiency Are the Most Important Options
It is important to realize that we do not want water; we want water
services. We want to grow food and fiber, clean our clothes and dishes,
get rid of our wastes, produce semiconductors and other goods and
services. This realization lies at the heart of conservation and
efficiency. If we can continue to provide these goods and services with
less water, we have increased the efficiency of our water use.
Californians have improved efficiency of our water use over the
past 25 years as shown in Figure 1. But our current water use is still
wasteful. The Pacific Institute has completed a series of independent
reports on urban and agricultural water efficiency that provide a
comprehensive statewide analysis. 2 Our findings have been
adopted by the California Department of Water Resources in the
California Water Plan. These studies finds that existing, cost-
effective technologies and policies can readily reduce current state
demand for water by six to eight million acre-feet, or around 20
percent. The Governor's recent call for a 20 percent reduction in water
use by 2020 is thus based on sound science and economics, even if the
policies to achieve such savings are not yet in place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See: Gleick et al. 2003, ``Waste Not, Want Not: The Potential
for Urban Water Conservation in California'' and Cooley et al.
``Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future.'' Pacific
Institute, Oakland, California.
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Widespread conservation and efficiency improvements are possible in
every sector and these water savings can be found for much less than
the cost of building new supply or expanding our current supply. These
savings are real and represent a tremendous amount of untapped
potential. Even today, after California's conservation efforts, over
60% of all toilet flushes are well above national standards, suggesting
that many old inefficient fixtures remain. More than 65% of all crops
in California are still grown with inefficient flood or sprinkler
irrigation systems. Studies have shown that installing efficient
irrigation technologies, such as drip system, can reduce water use and
increase agricultural yield. Given that the agricultural sector uses
80% of California's water supply, or about 34 million acre-feet per
year, even small efficiency improvements can produce tremendous water
savings. Additional water savings are possible if farmers continue the
trend of moving away from water-intensive crops like cotton, pasture,
rice, and alfalfa in favor of more valuable low-water crops like
vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
In a few weeks, the Pacific Institute will release a new assessment
of how to save one million acre-feet of water, split 60/40 among
agricultural and urban users, quickly and cost effectively. Let me
offer an advanced look at some of our findings:
400,000 acre-feet of water can be quickly conserved by
urban users by replacing only some of the many remaining inefficient
toilets, showerheads, restaurant spray-rinse nozzles, washing machines.
These savings would require an investment of under $2 billion and over
the life of these fixtures, the energy, water, and wastewater savings
will far exceed the initial investment.
Another 600,000 acre-feet of water can be saved by
applying smart irrigation scheduling to 20% of the state's vegetable
and orchard acreage, practicing regulated deficit irrigation on 20% of
current almonds and pistachios acreage in the Sacramento Valley, and
converting 20% of Central Valley vegetables, and 10% of orchards and
vineyards, to drip and sprinklers. These changes would save water at a
cost of around $100 per acre-foot.
These savings are just the tip of the iceberg: far more water could
be saved at far less cost than any proposed new supply option. For
example, the proposed Temperance Flat dam is grossly uneconomic and
would, at a cost far exceeding $3 billion (or over $900 per acre-foot),
only provide between 100,000 and 200,000 acre-feet of water, and even
these figures are disputed.
Our research has shown that California's total water use in 2030
could be 20% below current levels while still satisfying a growing
population, maintaining a healthy agricultural sector, and supporting a
vibrant economy. Some of the water saved could be rededicated to
agricultural production elsewhere in the state; support new urban and
industrial activities and jobs; and restore California's stressed
rivers, groundwater aquifers, and wetlands--including the Sacramento-
San Joaquin Delta.
I note that water conservation and efficiency has the additional
benefit of producing significant energy savings. Capturing, treating,
transporting, and using water require a tremendous amount of energy.
This is particularly true in Southern California, where water supplies
and population centers are separated by hundreds of miles, requiring a
tremendous amount of infrastructure to move water from where it is
available to where it is needed. As a result, California's water-
related energy consumption accounts for roughly 19% of all electricity
used in California, approximately 32% of all non-powerplant natural gas
use, and 88 million gallons of diesel fuel. Thus improving statewide
water conservation and efficiency can achieve substantial energy
savings.
3. Additional Water Supply Options Are Available
Current proposals to expand water supply in California by building
a few new dams are seriously flawed. As mentioned above, the best ideas
for new dams in California are grossly uneconomic and do nothing to
solve the state's water problems. But there are other good water-supply
options we must pursue. These options include:
Water recycling and reuse: Water reclamation and reuse
can augment water supplies, as well as provide a means to treat
wastewater and reduce environmental discharges. Water agencies in
California currently produce about 500,000 acre-feet of recycled water,
the majority of which is used for agricultural and landscape
irrigation. Expanding current efforts could produce a substantial
amount of new water. For example, the Irvine Ranch Water District, in
Southern California, meets nearly 20% of its total demand with recycled
water. A new residential community in Ventura County, California is
using recycled water for all of its landscaping needs at an estimated
cost of $200 per acre-foot, far below the cost of new surface storage.
Significant other opportunities exist to increase recycling and reuse
throughout the state, effectively lessening the need to identify and
develop new water supplies.
Conjunctive use: Surface water and groundwater are
hydrologically linked. Conjunctive use takes advantage of this
connection by storing excess surface water, including stormwater, in
groundwater basins for later use in drought periods. This option can
improve supply reliability and flexibility, reduce land subsidence, and
minimize the impacts of urban runoff on local steams and the marine
environment. But it requires fundamental changes in the way we monitor
and manage groundwater. It is time for the state of California to enter
the 21st century and require comprehensive groundwater management.
Desalination: Appropriately designed and sustainably
managed desalination (both seawater and groundwater) can provide a
costly but reliable, high-quality water supply. But desalination must
be done in an environmentally sound manner, and without inappropriate
public subsidies. Current plans for desalination in southern California
do not yet meet these conditions.
Summary and Recommendations
Better water conservation and efficiency can meet California's
water needs for decades to come. Total state demands for water can drop
by as much as 20 percent while still satisfying a growing population,
maintaining a healthy agricultural sector, restoring the health of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and other threatened ecosystems, and
supporting a vibrant economy.
Can such an efficient water future be achieved? Yes, given
appropriate attention and effort, California's water-use practices can
be substantially modified over the next quarter century, just as they
have over the past 25 years. Implementing these efficiency measures
requires action on the part of legislators, water managers, water
districts and agencies, farmers, corporations, and all individuals.
Finally, a quick comment on the recent political attempts to
overturn or eliminate the requirement that the Federal government
protect endangered and threatened species. Species extinction is not a
sustainable water policy. And the collapsing ecosystem is not the cause
of our water problems, it is a symptom. If the problem is falsely and
ideologically defined as ``people versus fish,'' our water policy will
have failed. We must ensure that both people and fish can thrive with
the water we have.Gleick 3 charts go at end insert 3-5
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Mrs. Napolitano. I would like to now call upon Professor
Jay Famiglietti, Department of Earth Science.
STATEMENT OF JAMES S. FAMIGLIETTI, DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SYSTEM
SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE, IRVINE, CALIFORNIA
Dr. Famiglietti. The Central Valley offers a compelling
example of the importance of groundwater to the water supply
and of the need to manage its use for sustained availability
and productivity. As one of the most productive agricultural
regions in the world, the Central Valley relies heavily on
groundwater to meet its irrigation water demands.
The extended western U.S. drought and resulting changes in
surface water allocations are now triggering an increased
reliance on groundwater to meet those demands. Meanwhile, our
warming climate is resulting in a decreasing snowpack in the
Sierras and the Rockies, which will slow future rates of
groundwater recharge and limit the aquifer's ability to
replenish these additional water withdrawals.
Monitoring groundwater availability in the Central Valley
is, therefore, critical to help manage California's water
crisis and its impact on the state's economy and the nation's
food production. It is exceedingly difficult to observe the ups
and downs of groundwater storage for a large system like the
Central Valley aquifer using traditional ground based
observations from wells. Fortunately, a new satellite mission,
the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, now
enables routine groundwater monitoring from space. GRACE
measures minute changes in earth's gravity field.
Notice its time variable component. Because these changes
are largely driven by changes in the distribution of liquid and
solid water on our planet, we can use the gravity measurements
to estimate the corresponding changes in water stored on land.
GRACE has already been successfully applied to track
monthly groundwater changes in several large aquifer systems
around the world, providing a holistic picture of aquifer
behavior that would not otherwise be possible. For example,
last summer we published a study of rapid rates of groundwater
depletion in northwestern India, an agricultural region like
the Central Valley that is heavily dependent on groundwater for
its irrigation demands. Could I have my slides, please?
The next two slides summarize our recent work on the
combined Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins, including the
snowpack in the western Sierras and the groundwater in the
Central Valley. The upper left panel shows the GRACE estimate
of the change in total water storage for the region; that is,
all of the snow, surface water, soil moisture, and groundwater
for the October 2003 through March 2009 time period.
The drought conditions since 2005 are evident in the
figure. During the entire study period, water storage in the
Basins decreased by 31.3 cubic kilometers or roughly the volume
of Lake Mead. Since GRACE measured the change in all the snow,
surface water, soil moisture and groundwater together, we need
to estimate and remove these first three in order to isolate
what is happening with just the groundwater. These are shown on
the other panels of the slide.
Soil moisture, in the upper right, totaled 1.7 cubic
kilometers. Reservoir storage at the lower left declined by 7.6
cubic kilometers, while the snowpack losses at the lower right
totaled another 1.7 cubic kilometers. Removing these from the
total water storage change that we get from GRACE, the
groundwater storage changes from the Central Valley, as shown
in this slide. The table shows that during the study period
groundwater storage decreased by over 20 cubic kilometers, or
nearly two/thirds the volume of Lake Mead.
As you know, California's water future is highly uncertain.
Climate change may drive the Sierra snowpack close to zero by
the end of the century, while our population will continue to
grow. Unfortunately, the Colorado River Basin faces a similar
plight, as shown in this last slide.
I hope that my testimony convinces you that advanced
technologies such as the GRACE mission can make an important
contribution to the future of water management. If I have, then
unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. GRACE will perform
reliably for only another three to five years. Its follow-on,
known as GRACE II, is not slated for launch until 2020.
Assuming the usual delays, we can probably expect a gap of
at least a decade in GRACE water storage data. If your
Committee believes, as I do, that GRACE is invaluable in order
to adapt water management to changing climate and human
activities, then please do what you can in Congress to help
increase the priority of the GRACE II mission. Thanks once
again for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of James Famiglietti follows:]
Statement of Dr. James S. Famiglietti, Director, UC Center for
Hydrologic Modeling, Professor of Earth System Science, Professor of
Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine
Chairwoman Napolitano, Ranking Member McClintock, and other members
of the subcommittee: thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony
on the state of our water supply and water supply monitoring in
California, including groundwater resources.
My name is James Famiglietti. I am a hydrologist and Professor on
the faculty at the University of California, Irvine, with appointments
in the Department of Earth System Science and the Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering. I am the Founding Director of the new UC
Center for Hydrologic Modeling. My research group uses satellite remote
sensing to track water availability on land, and has been working for
many years towards improving hydrological prediction in regional and
global weather and climate models. I am also the former Director of the
UCI Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and the past Chief
Editor of the interdisciplinary Earth science journal Geophysical
Research Letters. I am currently in the last year of a three-year term
as Chair of the Board of Directors of CUAHSI, the Consortium of
Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. It is on
the strength of nearly 25 years of research, teaching and service to
the water science and engineering community that I offer the following
testimony.
INTRODUCTION
Groundwater--the water stored beneath the land surface in
aquifers--accounts for nearly 30 percent of global freshwater
resources. Today, some 2 billion people rely on groundwater as a
primary source of drinking water and for irrigated agriculture.
However, in many regions of the world, groundwater resources are under
stress due to a number of factors, including groundwater depletion
(when withdrawal rates exceed recharge rates), salinization and
contamination. When coupled with the pressures of changing climate and
population growth, the stresses on groundwater supplies will only
increase in the decades to come.
In many regions in the United States, including the Ogallala
Aquifer of the High Plains, the Colorado River Basin, California, and
its Central Valley, groundwater plays an essential role in supporting
agricultural activity, as well as in domestic and industrial use. In
some regions in the U.S., groundwater provides the sole freshwater
source, while in others, it is used to supplement surface water
supplies, which can vary with swings in weather and climate. For
example, until recently, the cities of Fresno and Visalia depended
entirely upon groundwater for their domestic supply; and in my own
hometown of Irvine, roughly 50 percent of the water supply is drawn
from local aquifers beneath Orange County.
Nearly 80 percent of the fresh water used in the United States is
for agriculture (though more recent statistics on water use for power
generation underscore the importance of that sector). In regions such
as the Central Valley and the Ogallala, groundwater provides the
majority of the irrigation water requirements. The Central Valley
offers a compelling example of the importance of groundwater, as well
as the need to manage its use for sustained availability and
productivity. The Central Valley is one of the most productive
agricultural regions in the world, producing more than 250 different
crops worth $17 billion per year (2002 dollars), or 8 percent of the
food produced in the U.S. by value; it accounts for 1/6 of irrigated
land in the U.S.; and it supplies 1/5 of the demand for groundwater in
the U.S. In short, it the second most pumped aquifer in the United
States.
The current water crisis in California places additional stress on
Central Valley groundwater resources. Continued drought has resulted in
decreasing surface water allocations to the southern valley, triggering
an increased reliance on groundwater, in a region where groundwater
dependence is already high. The crisis is being exacerbated by the
ongoing drought, since less rainfall results in less groundwater
recharge. Under these conditions, groundwater use rates exceed
replenishment rates, and the groundwater supply and the water table
drop. Likewise, climate change and its impact on the decreasing
snowpack in the Sierras and the Rockies poses its own set of challenges
to reliable water supply in California. Decreasing snow in the Sierras
may well lead to additional reductions in Central Valley groundwater
recharge, while the diminishing snowpack in the Colorado River basin
may well result in decreasing surface and groundwater availability
there. Hence monitoring groundwater availability in the Central Valley
is critical to help manage California's water crisis, its impact on the
state's economy and the Nation's food production
Surprisingly, in spite of its importance to freshwater supply,
groundwater resources are often poorly monitored, so that a consistent
picture of its availability is difficult and sometimes impossible to
construct. Typical groundwater monitoring relies on tracking water
levels in a network of wells. However, existing monitoring wells are
often sparse, measurement records are frequently discontinuous (Figure
1), and wells are often monitored by different agencies, at different
time intervals, and record lengths often vary. Well measurements from
different local, state and federal agencies are often archived at
different locations, stored in different formats, and may not be easily
or freely accessible. The recent U.S. Geological Survey report on
``Groundwater Availability of the Central Valley Aquifer, California,''
which was several years in the making, underscores the major effort
required to assemble a comprehensive picture of changing groundwater
availability. It is not clear that such an effort can be sustained as
part a routine monitoring program.
The main goal of this testimony is to share with committee members
recent advances in satellite technology that now enable routine
groundwater monitoring from space, including in the Central Valley. The
satellite mission of interest today, the Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment, or GRACE, has already been successfully applied to track
monthly groundwater storage changes in several large aquifer systems
around the world. It is our hope that the information that advanced
technologies such as GRACE can provide will ultimately be incorporated
into the information stream that supports environmental decision
making. I will also appeal to you for your help. Unfortunately,
hydrological model development and water observing networks have lagged
far behind the increasingly urgent need to address pressing issues of
national significance. We cannot make the necessary progress in areas
such as water, energy and food security without your leadership and
support.
BACKGROUND
The GRACE mission was launched in March 2002. It consists of two
satellites that orbit around Earth each month. The primary measurement
is not of Earth's surface, but rather, of the distance between the two
satellites, which is perturbed by changes in gravity from place to
place as the pair orbit around the globe. The mission collects millions
of these inter-satellite distance measurements, which are exceptionally
accurate (to the sub-micron level), and uses them to produce a map of
our planet's gravitational field. Taking the difference between these
maps yields the time-variable component of the gravity field. The major
topographic and geologic features of Earth do not change on a monthly
basis: their contribution to Earth's gravity field is static.
Consequently, owing to the fact that water is one of the heaviest
materials on Earth, the time-variable component of the gravity field is
largely a reflection of changes in water storage each month. Hence the
measurements of this time-variable component of the gravity field are
used to estimate the corresponding changes in water mass stored on land
and in the oceans. GRACE cannot measure the total (absolute) amount of
water stored in a river basin, an aquifer or any other region of
interest. It can only tell us the change between successive
measurements of the gravity field.
GRACE data have been successfully used to measure changes in the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the Alaskan glaciers, and the
Patagonian glaciers in Chile. Our research group at UC Irvine has
focused on hydrologic applications of GRACE. We have demonstrated how
GRACE data can be used to track water storage changes (Figure 2), to
estimate evapotranspiration and to estimate streamflow from the world's
major river basins. We also incorporate GRACE data in computer models
of hydrology to improve prediction of surface and groundwater storage
changes. GRACE data are now an input data stream into the operational
U.S. Drought Monitor (Figure 3). After nearly 8 years of GRACE data, we
are now able to identify trends in water storage that result from both
natural and anthropogenic forces (Figure 4).
One of the key hydrologic contributions of GRACE is that it has
enabled satellite observation of groundwater storage changes. Our group
has pioneered these techniques, beginning over a decade ago with our
pre-launch feasibility study of the potential of GRACE to monitor
groundwater storage changes in the Ogallala Aquifer. Since then we have
used GRACE data to explore groundwater storage changes in the
Mississippi River basin, and in aquifers in Illinois, Oklahoma and
Australia. Figure 5 shows a figure from our recent study of rapid rates
of groundwater depletion in northwestern India, an agricultural region
like the Central Valley that is heavily dependent on groundwater for
its irrigation demands.
It is critical to recognize the contribution of the GRACE mission
to observing the changing hydrology of the continents. Figures 2, 4 and
5 display information on the behavior of water storage on land that is
essentially brand-new: before the GRACE mission, this information was
simply not available. For example, the ups and downs of river basin
water storage shown in Figure 2 were simply not known: likewise the
pattern of water storage trends in Figure 4. In particular, remote
sensing of groundwater was regarded as a ``Holy Grail'' in the
hydrologic community. In addition to the several reasons described in
my introductory testimony, since groundwater is located below the
Earth's surface, it is not ``visible'' by traditional, optical
satellite missions. GRACE has effectively allowed us to ``see'' beneath
the surface, by ``weighing'' groundwater storage changes from space.
There are several caveats that must be understood before we discuss
the Central Valley example. First, GRACE operates at relatively low
resolution in space and time. It can measure monthly changes in water
storage, for regions with a minimum area 150,000 km2, with an accuracy
of 1.5 cm of equivalent water height. Its performance improves with
increasing area and time period. Second, GRACE measures changes in all
of the water stored in a region--that is, it is unable to differentiate
among snow, ice, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater. In order
to isolate changes in one of these individual storage reservoirs, for
example, groundwater, mass changes in the other above-mentioned
storages must be estimated and removed. Typically these data come from
ground-based observations, advanced hydrological models, or from other
satellites.
Third, the GRACE mission has a limited lifespan. Barring any
unforeseen battery or electronics failures, mission scientists at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimate that GRACE will perform
reliably for only another 3-5 years.
Finally, it is important to note that our goal is not to expose
water ``overuse.'' In fact, Figure 4 shows that in many land regions,
for example, in high-latitude Eurasia, water storage is increasing.
Moreover, unpublished research from our group suggests that the
continents as a whole show zero storage change, or even a small
increase in water storage, during the life of the GRACE mission.
Rather, we are committed to developing advanced methodologies to help
monitor water storage changes, characterize water availability, and to
predict and understand the forces that contribute to regional water
stress. As mentioned earlier, it is our hope to share this information
with regional water managers, and with state and federal policy and
decision makers.
WATER STORAGE CHANGES IN THE SACRAMENTO AND SAN JOAQUIN RIVER BASINS:
GROUNDWATER DEPLETION IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY
Our most recent regional study is of the combined Sacramento and
San Joaquin River basins in California. This 154,000 km2 region
includes California's major mountain water source, the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevada mountain range, as well is its primary agricultural
region, the Central Valley (52,000 km2). We selected this region for
study due to its socioeconomic importance for California and for the
Nation. This research shown here was presented in December 2009 at the
Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference held in
San Francisco. It is currently in preparation for submission to a peer-
reviewed journal.
Figure 6 (upper left) shows the change in total water storage (all
of the snow, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater) for the
combined Sacramento-San Joaquin drainage area. The drought conditions
since 2005 are evident in the figure. During the 66-month time period
studied (October 2003-March 2009), water storage in the basins
decreased by 31.3 km3, or roughly the volume of Lake Mead.
As I mentioned earlier, in order to estimate only the groundwater
storage changes in the region, mass changes in the other major water
stores (snow, surface water, soil moisture) must be estimated and
removed. Soil moisture is largely unmeasured in the United States.
Consequently, we estimated and removed the soil moisture signal using
the average of three different soil moisture simulations for the
corresponding time period, taken from advanced hydrological models, and
run at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (upper right). The loss of
soil moisture during the study period accounted for 1.7 km3 of the 31.3
km3 total. Reservoir storage data (lower left) were compiled from the
state CDEC website, and accounted for 7.6 km3 of water loss. The
snowpack estimates, or its snow water equivalent (lower right), were
obtained from the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center
(NOHRSC), and are a combination of both observations and advanced
simulation models. The NOHRSC data represent the best estimate of the
Sierra snowpack currently available. These data show a decrease of 1.7
km3 during the study period. The results the total water storage, snow,
surface water, soil moisture, and groundwater (discussed next) are
summarized in Table 1. Note that the trends reported are for the
specified time period, which was selected to maximize the overlap among
the various datasets used in the study.
Since the total water storage change in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin basins is the sum of the snow, surface water, soil moisture and
groundwater changes, subtracting the first three of these components
from the total (observed by GRACE) yields the groundwater storage
change (Figure 7). Table 1 shows that during the study period,
groundwater storage changes accounted for 20.3 km3 of the total water
loss. We assume in this work that nearly all of the groundwater loss
occurs in the Central Valley, since the other major geological features
in the combined basins, that is, the mountain ranges surrounding the
Valley, have limited capacity to store groundwater.
The picture that emerges from this analysis is consistent with the
U.S.G.S. study, and extends that study from its end date in 2003 to the
present. Our estimated loss trends are similar to those of the
U.S.G.S., and the steep decline estimated in our study is similar to
the those estimated by the U.S.G.S. in previous drought periods.
Furthermore, the results are consistent with our understanding of
Central Valley farmers' behavior. Facing significant cuts in surface
water allocations, farmers are forced to tap heavily into groundwater
reserves to attempt to meet their irrigation water demands. Our
research also indicates (not shown here) that nearly 75 percent of the
20.3 km3 of groundwater loss is occurring in the San Joaquin River
basin, including the Tulare Lake basin, which is also consistent with
ground-based observations (Figure 8) and other studies.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
As you know, California's water future is highly uncertain. Climate
change may drive the Sierra snowpack close to zero by the end of the
century, while our population will continue to grow. Unfortunately, the
Colorado River basin faces a similar plight (Figure 9). It is not hard
to imagine that water may emerge as one of the key political issues in
the decades to come. Perhaps that time is now. Will water be the ``oil
of the future?'' Maybe.
Given the importance of water, both now and in the future, the U.S.
must significantly accelerate its predictive capabilities in order to
address the pressing issues we will soon face. Will we have enough
water to supply our growing population? Will there be enough water to
sustain agricultural activity? Is there enough water and land to
support biofuel production? How will declining snowpack affect
hydropower in the American West? How will changes in extreme events
such as flooding and drought affect California? How can water
management best adapt to these changes in climate, snowpack, population
and hydrologic extremes? Agencies like NOAA, the National Weather
Service, and NASA, are responding, but slowly given current economic
constraints. I contend that a significant investment in hydrologic
prediction, observation and research must be made, now, in order to
build the intellectual infrastructure to ensure the security of our
nation in the decades to come.
My own contribution to this effort is through leadership at the
state and national levels. I am the founding director of a new modeling
center at UC Irvine called the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling. Our
goal is to develop a very high-resolution hydrological model for the
state that includes all major components of the natural (snow, ice,
surface waters, soil water, groundwater) and managed (reservoirs,
aqueducts, groundwater withdrawals) water cycle that can be used to
test solutions and provide answers to the questions above. Another goal
is to provide a forum for water managers, practitioners, environmental
decision makers, and center researchers, to transfer knowledge, provide
training, and develop meaningful collaborations that can advance water
management in our state.
I am leading a similar effort at the national level. This activity,
called the Community Hydrologic Modeling Platform (CHyMP), is unfunded,
but is highly regarded by the National Science Foundation and other
agencies such as NASA and NOAA. Both the UC Center and the CHyMP effort
will require sustained funding at the state and national levels. Again,
I am already devoted to the cause, but I need your help to identify the
resources to ramp up and sustain these critical activities. Students
must be trained at all degree levels. New modeling paradigms must be
developed that can easily accommodate ground-based observations,
emerging sensor technologies, and satellite observations like those
from GRACE. There is much work to be done.
I hope that I have convinced you that advanced technologies such as
the GRACE mission can make an important contribution to the future of
water management. I will be happy to work with your staff to spread the
word about the potential of GRACE so that it can be fully utilized in
water prediction and management. However, recall that GRACE will last,
at best, another 3-5 years. The follow-on mission, known as GRACE 2, is
not slated for launch until 2020. Assuming the usual delays, we can
expect a gap of at least a decade in GRACE water storage data. If your
committee believes, as I do, that GRACE is invaluable in order to adapt
water management to changing climate, then please do what you can in
Congress to help increase the priority of the GRACE 2 mission.
I thank you once again for the opportunity to testify.
[NOTE: Figures have been retained in the Committee's official
files.]
______
Mrs. Napolitano. Is the Commissioner still here? I don't
know what to say, other than there are things we need to maybe
explore with NASA, with NAS, with all those agencies, to see
how we can begin to look at some of what they are findings can
impact and assist our agencies. Thank you.
I would like to move on to Mr. Miguel Luna, Executive
Director of Urban Semillas. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF MIGUEL A. LUNA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, URBAN
SEMILLAS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Luna. As a community organizer, my perspective will be
one that comes from community at the grassroots level. I wanted
to start my testimony with this quote. ``Solutions have been a
permanent dialogue between human beings and water.'' I feel
part of the problem of the state of today's water stems in part
from a historical lack of dialogue with this resource. Our
interaction with this vital resource has been one-way, us
demanding from it, without hearing the warnings, the warnings
when we pollute it, when we overdraft it, when we waste it.
Of course, I am aware that our water situation requires
solutions that are engineered and that also utilize nature's
services, but if we move forward without a true appreciation of
water and the role it plays in nature, our rivers, our food,
our energy, our communities, then we will continue to run into
the same problems we face today, just at a later time and most
likely with a greater magnitude of negative impact and at a
greater cost, both economically and ecologically.
I wouldn't be doing my job of building capacity within the
communities I work with if I didn't partner with other
organizations to identify support and implement sustainable
local solutions which many of us feel are the most cost
effective, least environmentally destructive and, why not, even
provide community benefits that boost local economies through
the creation of jobs and the retraining of workers to fit new
emerging technologies and eco-friendly best practices.
They are all outlined in my testimony that was crafted by
the Water Coalition I belong to with other several colleagues.
I wanted to highlight some of them. One is sustainable growth
in areas that can sustain it, requiring the inclusion of the
most water efficient design, fixtures and landscaping to draw
down new water demand.
Retrofitting aging infrastructure to minimize systemwide
inefficiencies in leaking infrastructure; taking a proactive
role in repairing and replacing old infrastructure before large
breaks occur; expanding the purple pipe system that delivers
recycled water so we can offset potable water demand; support
the collaboration between the Department of Water and Power and
Bureau of Sanitation; and the development of a recycled water
master plan that outlines strategies to increase the city's
recycled water use to 50,000 acre-feet by the year 2019;
promoting water culture through conscientious water management
and conservation.
The Pacific Institutes estimates about one-third of current
urban usage, more than 2.3 million acre-feet of water, could be
saved statewide through better implementation of existing
technology for homes and businesses, and more aggressive
education at all levels with matching expansion of water
conservation programs for customers.
Revitalization and restoration of our streams, creeks and
rivers, which are deeply connected to water supply: When we
restore creeks and rivers, they can serve as a viable natural
way for our aquifers to be replenished to serve as key water
sources. They also revitalize communities and, in the process,
can provide for short and long-term jobs, maybe even for a
better sustainable future for our children.
One example of this is a local project, the Elm Avenue
Retrofit Demonstration Project in Sun Valley. This project
models a sustainable future for neighborhoods throughout Los
Angeles, but also the ideal collaboration between agencies and
groups at all levels. This is a project where the Bureau of
Reclamation, the City of Los Angeles, and two local LA groups.
Bailey-San Gabriel River Watershed Council and Tree People
are working together to make it happen. A whole block in an
area where there are no storm drains flooded all the time, now
will capture rainwater on site and infiltrate it. Not only
that, but most of the homeowners are already replacing their
lawns with native landscaping and re-articulating their private
yards to include biological swales as well as adding rain
barrels to their properties. While still not completed, it is
already providing for a better quality of life and serving as a
great education and community engagement tool.
I wanted to close with safe water for all. While we are
very fortunate this year in the City of LA to be able to open
our tap and have access to safe drinking water, it is not the
case for other places in the state. One example is our
neighboring City of Maywood where a population of 50,000, 98
percent Latino, is served by three water mutual companies, and
still customers open their taps of water containing manganese,
lead, PCs and other contaminants.
We must have policy in the state that ensures that every
human has a right to clean, affordable and accessible water.
Thank you so much.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, Mr. Luna.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Luna follows:]
Statement of Miguel A. Luna, Executive Director,
Urban Semillas, Los Angeles, California
We Have Enough Water, but Not Enough to Waste:
Solutions to Securing LA's Water Future
Introduction
There has been much discussion recently of Los Angeles being in the
midst of a drought. Although this type of dramatic language is good for
capturing the attention of the public, it is ultimately misleading.
Depicting the current water situation as a drought implies that Los
Angeles is facing a temporary water shortage, an abnormal situation
that will pass in time. This is not the case. Years of low rainfall
tend to sound alarm bells amongst the public, but for Southern
California, dry years are actually more common then wet ones. Most of
the city is in a semi-arid Mediterranean climate with generally low
annual rainfall that can fluctuate from year to year. Moreover, the
effects of climate change have caused the fluctuation in annual
rainfall to increase: both the wettest and driest years of record for
the Los Angeles region have occurred in just the past eight years.
Los Angeles draws its water supply from a variety of sources.
However, many of these are now oversubscribed, and several face serious
water quality problems. LA's sources of imported water can no longer
supply the city at the level they once did, due to legally mandated
environmental mitigation programs and increased demand from other
communities that share these resources. LA's local water sources also
face problems such as pollution, overuse, and the danger of seawater
infiltration into underground freshwater basins.
In spite of all this, there is still hope for LA's water future,
but city officials and residents must look for sustainable solutions,
rather than crisis-driven band-aid fixes that will only exacerbate the
problems in the long term. Central to such a sustainable approach is
first acknowledging that for LA to continue to thrive, it will need to
reduce its dependence on imported water.
Necessary strategies to increase LA's local water supplies include:
Manage the entire greater Los Angeles watershed using a
holistic regional approach.
Aggressively pursue all water conservation, efficiency,
and recycling options on individual, business, and industrial levels by
pursuing water education, water efficiency solutions, greywater and
rainwater capture systems, drought resistant landscaping, incentives
for conservation, and low impact development.
Require that all new development be water neutral by
requiring the use of the best conservation, efficiency, and recycling
practices.
Repair aging water infrastructure, require water system
audits, and expand water-recycling infrastructure.
Mandate groundwater clean-up efforts and tighter
pollution controls to deter further degradation.
By taking these actions to preserve and protect LA's local water
supplies, the city can also fight environmentally unsound and expensive
water distribution trends such as water privatization and the over
reliance on bottled and vended water.
These changes will also create new employment and development
opportunities for local communities. The implementation of water-saving
technologies, retrofitted infrastructure, and new LID development
practices is a chance to create new jobs in this time of economic
crisis. It's also an important opportunity to redevelop low-income
communities in a responsible way, making sure they aren't left behind
in these efforts and providing them with better infrastructure and
public space.
Implementing these solutions is a priority that can't wait. If both
the city government and residents act now, Los Angeles has an
opportunity to maximize its local water resources to secure a safe
water supply for a sustainable future.
Water Supply
The water supply for the Los Angeles region comes from a variety of
local and imported sources, and as the population has grown over time,
LA's reliance on imported water has increased. The city currently
imports about 65 percent of its water. State and federal courts have
reduced LA's allocations from these non-local sources in recent years.
Exploring and investing in ways to maximize local resources will be the
best way to offset these supply reductions.
Imported Water Sources
The Los Angeles Aqueduct carries water from the Owens Valley and
Mono Lake. It is controlled by the LA Department of Water and Power
(LADWP) and provides water solely to the City of Los Angeles.
Currently, the aqueduct supplies the city with 11 to 32 percent of its
annual water supply.
The Colorado River Aqueduct carries water from the Colorado River
to many different parts of Southern California and supplies 37 to 46
percent of the water used in this region. It is controlled by the
Metropolitan Water District (MWD), a public water wholesaler made up of
26 member agencies that together provide drinking water to some 19
million people in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San
Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties, a combined area of over
5,000 square miles.
Los Angeles shares the Colorado River with six other states
upstream (Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada) and
with Mexico downstream. California has been allocated 4.4 million acre-
feet per year from this aqueduct, but due to surpluses in years past,
MWD had been using more than its allocation by about 800,000 acre-feet.
Because of increased demand from other states upstream, the Secretary
of the Interior is forcing California to reduce its take of Colorado
River water back to its 4.4 million acre-feet allocation.
The third source of imported water for Southern California is the
California State Water Project. The California Aqueduct, at 444 miles
long, is the largest aqueduct in the world. All the pumping of water
out of the Delta and over the Tehachapi mountains makes the State Water
Project the largest single consumer of energy in California. The State
Department of Water Resources administers the project and through it
supplies water from the Feather River and the Sacramento and San
Joaquin River Delta in Northern California to the Bay Area, the Central
Valley, and much of Southern California. In spite of its scale and
energy consumption, the State Water Project has never provided as much
water as it was supposed to. The state is contracted to deliver 4.2
million acre-feet per year but only delivers an average of 1.86 million
acre-feet a year, less than half. The State Water Project could see its
ability to deliver water further hindered by such impacts of climate
change as the greater frequency of dry years, a sea level rise
requiring additional fresh water releases from reservoirs into the
Delta to maintain water quality, and a corresponding curtailing of
pumping water south of the Delta.
Already the diversion of so much water from the Sacramento and San
Joaquin River Delta has caused an environmental disaster in the region.
Due to overdrawing water for agricultural and urban uses, increased
water salinity, and pollution, the balance of a vital ecosystem is
being seriously damaged. The most obvious and inexpensive solution to
stop the degradation and begin to restore the Delta is to decrease the
Central Valley and Southern California's reliance on the Delta as a
water source by maximizing reliance on local water sources.
Local Water Sources
The Los Angeles region currently gets about 35 percent of its water
supply from local water sources. However, many of these sources are
under-utilized for various reasons.
Surface Water
About 20 percent of LA's water supply comes from local surface
water: near-by rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs. The water for
all of these sources originates from rainwater and snowmelt from
surrounding mountains. Almost all rainwater is diverted to storm drains
that send the water out to sea. Most rivers and streams in the LA area
have been engineered to flush out water to the ocean, since these have
been channeled and paved to prevent flooding. However, some rainwater
is stored in man-made lakes (or reservoirs) to later be diverted to
spreading basins. These are ponds where rainwater is allowed to spread
and slowly percolate back into the groundwater table, increasing the
city's groundwater supply. There are also some parts of the Los Angeles
River and other streams that have not been paved, where water can seep
back into the ground.
Ground Water Basins
The Los Angeles region receives about 15 percent of its water from
groundwater basins. There are six major groundwater basins in the LA
area, of which the San Fernando Basin is the largest, alone providing
about 80 percent of the local groundwater supplies. These basins are
replenished through spreading, the percolation of surface water back
into the ground, and also through injection. Injection, where wells
pump water down into the aquifer, is normally used in places where the
basins have been oversubscribed or there is a danger of salt-water
intrusion or sinkage. These groundwater basins hold large quantities of
water and could be a much bigger water source for the LA area. However,
not all of the groundwater in the basins can be used. Numerous basins
have been contaminated with industrial waste from World War II era
rocket fuel, such as chromium 6 and perchlorate, which has taken them
out of use for drinking water. Additionally, many of the basins are
polluted by agricultural run-off and leaking septic systems, which
result in water quality issues.
Water Recycling
Water recycling, the process through which wastewater undergoes
multiple levels of treatment so that it can be safely reused, is
another important opportunity for increasing local water supplies.
Currently, treated wastewater is used in Los Angeles for a variety of
purposes, such as landscaping, industrial use, artificial bodies of
water, and injection into underground water basins to prevent salt
water infiltration. Recycled water is carried by its own separate
plumbing infrastructure, purple pipes, and is not used for drinking
purposes in LA County. Recycled water may be used on individual,
institutional, and industrial scales.
There are three main levels of treatment for municipal wastewater.
Primary treatment involves the removal of sewage solids through
sedimentation. Secondary treatment uses biological processes to further
remove organic compounds, with microorganisms using the oxygen in
aeration tanks to consume the compounds as their food. Tertiary
treatment combines chemical disinfection using chlorine, sedimentation,
and filtration. Recycled water that has gone through all three stages
of treatment may be used in for irrigating golf courses and parks. The
California Department of Health Services closely monitors and enforces
health requirements for the use of recycled wastewater.
Los Angeles began water recycling in 1979 for irrigation and
industrial uses. While LA currently uses about 4,600 acre-feet of
recycled water--saving enough potable water for about 9,200 homes--this
only represents around 3 percent of LA's total water use. Recently golf
courses like Woodley Golf Course and schools like Loyola Marymount
University have begun using recycled water for their irrigation.
Conservation
A most promising source of local water is the water that Los
Angeles saves through local conservation measures, both through
individual residential and business efforts with government incentives.
Although the LA region has managed to reduce its water consumption a
great deal, there are still untapped opportunities to conserve a lot
more. Using local water resources more efficiently is the best and
least expensive way for Los Angeles to increase its water supply and
achieve regional water independence. The city has already made great
strides in conserving water. Despite population growth of 35 percent
since 1970, Los Angeles has experienced a mere 7 percent jump in water
consumption. During that same period individual per capita water usage
dropped by 15 percent. More recently, after 5 months of mandatory water
rationing, the LADWP announced in December 2009 that they had reduced
water consumption by 18.4 percent.
Watershed Management
Watershed management may also help safeguard clean water supplies
and identify recycling and conservation opportunities. A watershed is
the area of land where all the water in it or on top of it, from
rainfall, snowmelt, and melting ice, drains downhill into a single
destination such as a lake or ocean. Water does not stay still. It
flows both above and below ground, and even when held in lakes and
seas, it evaporates into the atmosphere and falls again as rain.
Thinking in terms of watersheds enables one to understand how seemingly
distinct water sources such as individual rivers, lakes, and aquifers
are in fact linked together by virtue of flowing toward the same
destination. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
there are 2,110 watersheds in the continental United States--2,267
including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico.
Watershed management approaches thus seek to view both land and
water resources as they are connected to one another in the watershed
and to manage them accordingly. Such a management approach is essential
to both identifying sources of existing groundwater pollution and
preventing further pollution. It is also necessary to navigate the
intricacies of conflicting water supply and water rights demands.
Watershed management requires the collaboration of anyone taking water
from or putting water back into the watershed, thus looking at the
overall water quality and quantity implications throughout a watershed
of land use, development, industry, agriculture, and other activities.
The main watersheds in the Los Angeles area are the Los Angeles
River Watershed, covering an area of over 834 square miles, the San
Gabriel River Watershed, covering about 640 square miles, and the Santa
Clara River Watershed, covering an area of 1,600 square miles.
Facing Los Angeles' Water Supply Problems
Problem: Groundwater Pollution
In Los Angeles there are numerous ground wells, however, we can
only one fourth of the existing wells. Drawing uncontaminated water
from polluted basins increases the risk of the polluted plumes
migrating to other basins and thereby spreading the contamination. Such
is the case with the Main San Gabriel Valley Basin, which is
contaminated with chromium 6 and perchlorate. The Department of Defense
has fought for years to avoid funding significant clean up by stating
that they would not act until the EPA set national standards for
permissible levels of perchlorate contamination in drinking water,
while simultaneously fighting for broad exemptions from federal
environmental laws. The California State Legislature created the San
Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, but its efforts have been
hamstrung by lack of federal funding.
Solution: Groundwater Clean Up
Polluted groundwater in the Los Angeles region represents a huge
source of water that cannot be fully utilized. LADWP's attempts to
further groundwater clean up by filtering recycled water into polluted
basins should be studied and pursued rather than taken off the table.
Pressure must be put on the responsible parties, including the
Department of Defense, to fulfill their legal duty to clean up
superfund sites in our groundwater basins. Previous legislative efforts
by California federal representatives such as then Rep. Hilda Solis
stalled in Washington during the Bush Administration. A broad coalition
of local, state, and federal officials should aggressively pursue clean
up funds through Congress and the Obama Administration. The EPA should
prioritize making its final regulatory determination for perchlorate
and ensure that public safety is the paramount criterion in the
determination. To prevent future groundwater contamination, stricter
legislative standards must be devised and enforced for capturing
polluted runoff and preventing dangerous chemicals from entering the
watershed.
Problem: Unsustainable Development
Population increases will place additional strains on Los Angeles'
water supply. However, it is necessary to first distinguish between
development built to meet the demands of a growing population and
development meant to create demands where they do not exist. Several
mass development projects such as Tejon Ranch depend entirely on
imported water supplies that critics claim can be found only on paper.
Solution: Water Neutral Development
While development may be inevitable, it is urgent that it be done
responsibly and in areas that can sustain the growth. In Water Neutral
Development the local water supplier would require new developments to
include the most water efficient design, fixtures, and landscaping to
draw down new water demand. Any new demand brought online by the
project would be mitigated in the adjacent residential areas. For
example, the developer could pay into a water conservation or
mitigation fund as a means to offset new demand. The fund would provide
a new revenue stream for conservation programs that are regionally
based and not contingent on bond funds or the state budget. Not only
does this form of development help an area grow and be sustainable, it
also provides a new funding stream for conservation programs such as
MWD's Water$mart program that is pending cancellation.
Require new residential and commercial developments that
are subject to CEQA to incorporate cost-effective water efficiency
measures.
Require that any water use in the new development be
fully mitigated through water efficiency measures in existing
communities or by developing local water supplies.
Require that 40% of the benefits from mitigation projects
be directed to disadvantaged communities that otherwise would not be
able to afford efficiency and adaptation measures.
Require that a portion of the work is done with community
based organizations who have gone out of business during the drought!
Begin the manufacturing of water saving equipment in Los
Angles to provide jobs and economic development
Problem: Aging Infrastructure
Aging water mains waste tremendous amounts of water through leaks
and spills, but can also cause great damage when they break.
Solution 1: Repairing and Replacing Old Infrastructure
System-wide inefficiencies such as leaky infrastructure are an
easily preventable source of waste in the Los Angeles region. By
retrofitting old plumbing systems in homes and businesses LA can
achieve substantial water savings. Local water agencies should take a
proactive role in repairing and replacing the city's old infrastructure
rather than waiting for large breaks to occur. The city must increase
the rate of replacement of infrastructure repair and rehabilitation.
Solution 2: System Audits
System audits should apply to residential and commercial users.
Similar to the energy assessment that DWP provides to its customers,
water audits should also be provided. For example, in Australia the
water company can monitor the water use of any single customer, or
across a particular area. They installed special meters that are
connected remotely to a computer system. This allows monitoring of
specific locations or areas and makes it easier to target outreach
where it is most needed. This should be done at no charge to LADWP
lifeline rate customers.
Solution 3: Expand Recycled Water Infrastructure
Existing infrastructure should be expanded so that the use of
recycled water can become more widely utilized. Its use in new
developments for purposes like landscaping or toilets should also be
mandated.
Problem: Wasting Good Water
In spite of the progress that has been made, there are still many
unexplored opportunities for water conservation in Los Angeles. The
Pacific Institute estimates that more than 2.3 million acre-feet of
water (or one third of current urban usage) could be saved statewide
through better implementation of existing conservation technologies for
homes and businesses that range from more efficient toilets, showers,
washing machines, and dishwashers, to fixing leaks and changing
impermeable turfs to native landscaping. Eighty-five percent of those
savings could be achieved at costs lower than those required to tap new
water sources. Excessive levels of personal water use, for domestic and
landscaping purposes, also represent a large source of unnecessary
consumption. An aging water infrastructure exacerbates the problem,
while an unwillingness to fully exploit resources like rainwater and
greywater further frustrates conservation efforts.
Solution 1: Education
Prioritize educational outreach. LADWP should partner
with the Los Angeles Unified School District to educate students about
conservation and engage them in water audits through existing programs
such as the Infrastructure Academy to improve water conservation in
schools.
Provide workshops and assistance for customers to use
existing dual meter programs for landscape watering and provide rebates
to make it more affordable.
Increase outreach for purchasers for recycled water.
Increase and advertise California Friendly Landscape
workshop for LADWP customers in multiple languages.
Distribute conservation program materials in high traffic
areas like markets and malls to ensure renters get the information.
City officials should model behavior by stringently
following the city's water conservation ordinance
Solution 2: Water Efficiency Solutions
New technologies represent a huge source of potential water
savings. Many of the technologies aimed at individual consumers are
readily available and easy to install. Low flow high efficiency toilets
and showerheads address some of the larger sources of domestic water
use. Water-efficient washing machines and dishwashers tackle another
area of significant water consumption. Point of use water heaters
without tanks save on water consumption and energy usage by reducing
wait times for hot water. Consumers can also cut back on the biggest
source of domestic water consumption--outdoor usage--through the
installation of smart irrigation technology. Smart irrigation systems
eliminate over watering by automatically adjusting the timing and
volume of water use to reflect actual needs. Conservation technologies
aimed at the business and public sectors can also yield impressive
results. In addition to the opportunities described above, water can
also be conserved with waterless urinals and the retrofitting of car
washes.
Meter apartment complexes and use dual plumbing in
retrofits and new buildings for the use greywater for toilets and other
non-potable uses.
Retrofit existing public buildings for water efficiency
and implement low impact development strategies in new and redeveloped
buildings.
Include water efficiency standards in building
ordinances.
Continue to explore ways to maximize water recycling.
Dual landscape meters
ET irrigations controllers--implement the existing Prop.
84 grant with CBO's
Solution 3: Greywater and Rainwater capture systems
Greywater and rainwater capture systems are two ways to make use of
water resources that would otherwise go to waste. With greywater
systems, wastewater from sources like washing machines, hand sinks, and
showers is captured on site and reused in toilets and landscape
irrigation systems. Greywater is defined as wastewater that, although
not potable, does not contain sewage, significant food residue, or
dangerous concentrations of chemicals. As 50 to 80 percent of
residential wastewater is greywater, these systems represent huge
potential water savings. Rainwater capture systems do exactly what
their name suggests, capture and store rainwater for use in irrigation.
These systems cut down on water consumption but also provide an
additional ancillary benefit: by using captured rainwater for
landscaping purposes, the rainwater then filters through the ground and
helps replenish local groundwater basins.
The city should expand its current rainwater barrel pilot
program and provide education and incentives for greater implementation
of rainwater capture systems citywide, particularly in environmental
justice communities and provide information about the program in
multiple languages.
The city should provide greywater guidelines and
workshops in multiple languages making use of new state guidelines.
Solution 4: Drought Resistant Landscaping
Outdoor water usage represents the greatest amount of residential
urban water consumption, as much as 60 percent of urban water
consumption in LA goes to landscaping and other outdoor use. Although
Southern California is a semi-arid climate, many home and business
owners choose to landscape their properties with traditional lawns or
imported tropical plants, evidencing deeply set cultural preferences.
Both of these landscaping choices require more water to survive than
the Los Angeles area can naturally provide. One square foot of turf
uses approximately 50 gallons of water per year. Moreover roughly 50
percent of water used for irrigating lawns and gardens is wasted due to
over watering and evaporation. Over watering also washes significant
amounts of pesticides and fertilizers into storm drains, tributaries,
creeks, groundwater supplies, and ultimately into the ocean.
By contrast, many California native plants (or plants from other
Mediterranean regions) are well adapted to the dry Southern California
climate and are able to thrive on comparatively little or no water.
According to the results of a study by the City of Santa Monica's
Office of Sustainability and the Environment, maintaining a traditional
lawn requires almost ten times the amount of water needed to support a
sustainable landscaped lawn (57,000 gallons of water per year for a
typical single family home versus 6,000 gallons per year).
Sustainable landscaping, which uses native grasses, shrubs,
flowers, cacti, and other plants instead of typical lawn grasses like
St. Augustine Grass or Buffalo Grass, also creates a wealth of other
environmental benefits. According to the same Santa Monica study, yard
waste is significantly reduced with sustainable landscaping (250 pounds
per year versus 670 pounds), as are maintenance hours (15 hours per
year versus 80 per year). Planting California native plants also
creates habitat for native fauna like birds and butterflies whose
numbers are rapidly dwindling due to habitat destruction. State law
requires that all cities and counties adopt by January 1, 2010 the
Department of Water Resources Model Water Efficient Landscape
Ordinance. The ordinance does not apply to new or rehabilitated
landscape projects that cover an area less than 1000 square feet or
that exceed 1000 square feet but do not require a building permit.
Switch to sustainable, native landscaping.
Install remote meters for easy monitoring of water
consumption. Make use of existing landscape or outdoor meter program by
providing incentives and notifying customers.
Although MWD has a California friendly landscape and
gardening classes program through the Be Water Wise conservation
campaign, MWD, LADWP, and other water agencies need to be more
aggressive in providing individuals and businesses with education and
incentives to replace their lawns.
Sustainable landscaping should be compulsory for all city
properties and the city should consider mandating native landscaping
for all new developments.
The city should be the leader in native landscaping in
their parks and public spaces.
Solution 5: Incentives for Conservation
Provide more incentives to LADWP customers to conserve by
extending and increasing the rebates for efficient washers, smart
controllers, rotating nozzles, low-flow toilets, and turf removal not
less than 250 square feet. Make it easier for DWP customers to access
rebates.
Improve enforcement of water use restrictions.
Tiered pricing should be increased without impacting the
lifeline rate to four or five tier pricing levels to provide incentive
for customers to use less water, especially by reducing lawn
maintenance: the more water used the more it costs.
Ensure that MWD expands the water conservation credit
program.
Solution 6: Low Impact Development (LID)
Low Impact Development is a term used to refer to development
practices that seek to capture a larger percentage of rainwater runoff.
By capturing the water onsite it can be released back into the
groundwater table where it replenishes underground basins. This process
allows air pollution and other particulate matter to be filtered out of
the water as it percolates down through the soil.
In LID practices, rainwater is diverted from roofs and paved areas
to landscaping, planter boxes, and bio-retention areas, instead of
storm drains and rainwater capture systems like underground cisterns
where soils do not allow permeability. Cement and asphalt surfaces are
replaced with porous pavement that allows water to filter through to
the ground. Bio-retention areas, zones that retain rainwater, and run
off allow soil and plant-based filtration to clean water before it
percolates into ground water. These bio-retention areas can also double
as public green space, as is the case with Pan Pacific Park and Park La
Brea which serve as retention areas, during times of heavy rain.
In addition to yielding environmental benefits, LID practices are
actually more cost effective over time. Because LID is more sustainable
and makes use of better materials, fewer repairs are required.
Widespread implementation of LID practices will also reduce the need to
replace storm water drainage infrastructure.
Related to LID is the City of Los Angeles' Green Streets
Initiative. The Green Streets design strategies, which have already
been implemented in a number of test projects, call for:
Increased use of permeable surfaces on sidewalks and
streets, allowing for a higher degree of water infiltration and
Landscape systems such as vegetated swales, flow-through
planters, and storm water curb extensions that capture and filter storm
water.
Green Street developments also serve the additional function of
beautifying neighborhoods with new landscaping. This can be of
particular value in creating new green space for LA's many park-poor
communities.
On January 15, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works unanimously
approved the draft LID ordinance requiring that 100 percent of the
rainfall from a three-quarter inch storm at newly built houses,
developments, and certain redevelopments either be captured and reused
or infiltrated on site, or that developers pay a stormwater mitigation
fee to help fund offsite LID projects like Green Streets.
Push for an expansion of the city's current Green Streets
pilot programs that have already proven effective. Particular effort
should be made to provide funding and incentives for this type of
redevelopment in low income areas, so that they are not left behind.
Install mini-water treatment plants and onsite water
treatment plants
Solution 7: Other Watershed Solutions
Other efforts can help to improve the quality and availability of
drinking water within our local watershed. Restoring natural bottoms to
some parts of Los Angeles' many channeled waterways will help a greater
degree of storm-water runoff to filter down into groundwater basins
rather than emptying into the ocean. Increased conjunctive use of
surface water to store winter and spring surpluses will also increase
local water supplies for future use. To bolster this effort greater
emphasis should be put on exploring new potential sites for spreading
basins.
Problem: Over consumption of Bottled and Vended Water
Encouraging people to use tap water, rather than bottled water,
will also help the water situation in our region. It is a commonly held
misconception that the tap water in Los Angeles is not fit for
drinking. In fact, LA's water not only meets or exceeds all federal and
state safety standards, but in 2008 MWD also tied for the gold medal in
the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting Award for best testing
municipal water. Despite these facts many Los Angeles residents still
choose to rely on bottled or vended water for their drinking water
needs.
Bottled and vended water are a waste of both money and resources.
In California, the price of bottled water represents a 10,000 percent
markup from the cost of tap water. Bottled and vended water is also
environmentally damaging, not only because of the amount of trash
generated, but also because of the resources required to transport this
water over long distances. Purchasing bottled water also helps to
accelerate the process of water privatization that is occurring in many
parts of the world. As industry takes control of more fresh water
sources communities that once relied on these resources are finding
their access curtailed.
Finally, there are also safety concerns with vended water. In 2000,
the Los Angeles County Environmental Toxicology Bureau found that 33
percent of the 279 water vending machines they tested failed to meet
the EPA standard for trihalomethanes, a by-product of water
chlorination. Vended water machines throughout the city are largely
unregulated. Water machine operators are only required to test machines
for trihalomethanes once a week and fecal coliform bacteria once every
6 months. However, many operators fail to comply with even those meager
regulations. This is a real problem for Los Angeles residents,
especially in low income communities, where they pay a disproportionate
amount of their income for water they think will be superior to tap
water, when often it is of far inferior quality.
Solutions:
To remedy our city's reliance on bottled and vended water it is
first necessary to change public perceptions regarding the safety of
tap water. In 1999, MWD embarked on a public campaign to inform Latinos
that MWD's water is clean and safe for drinking. The DWP can learn from
MWD's experience to expand its own outreach efforts in this area. The
mayor has already issued a memo to LA city departments regarding their
wasteful expenditures for bottled water. It is important that he now
hold them accountable for their continued bottled water use by banning
bottled water in all city departments. The City of San Francisco banned
bottled water within all branches of city government, successfully
reducing city bottled water purchases from about $500,000 a year to
zero. Lastly the city and county public health departments should
collaborate with the state Department of Health Services to inspect
vending water machines and stores.
Conclusion
There are many factors that play into the current state of the
water in the Los Angeles region, but it is clear now that this is a
permanent problem that city government and residents will have to face
now and into the future. The solutions proposed here are low hanging
fruit that both officials and residents can use to maximize local water
resources with the lowest monetary and environmental costs.
Conservation, better watershed management, recycled water, and avoiding
vended water and water privatization are all easy solutions that can
have big effects. These solutions will both provide enough water for
the Los Angeles region and provide economic benefits such as green jobs
and community redevelopment. Availability of clean drinking water and
water for nature is a growing problem and if the city does not
implement these measures now, it will become harder and harder to reach
the population's water needs and achieve the regional water
independence necessary for the city's future.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. We move on to Ms. Lucy Dunn, President and
Chief Executive Officer of Orange County Business Council,
Irvine.
STATEMENT OF LUCY DUNN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
ORANGE COUNTY BUSINESS COUNCIL, IRVINE, CALIFORNIA
Ms. Dunn. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I appreciate the
opportunity of representing the business community today.
Southern California is the economic engine of the State of
California, and California itself is the economic engine of the
nation. In addition to agriculture, this state's innovations in
biotech, medical device, green technology--you name it--are all
dependent on a clean, reliable source of water.
Southern California uses every tool in the toolbox right
now. You have heard that over and over today. We are leaders in
conservation, groundwater replenishment, desalting offshore,
recycling, but we see the crisis is real and will not be
resolved in any single strategy or an end to the current
drought. Droughts in California are a fact of life here. They
will return and, as we have not made major new investments in
water infrastructure commensurate with the environmental,
population, climate and infrastructure aging realities we have
to deal with, we will face incalculable long-term impacts on
California's economic competitiveness and quality of life.
We simply cannot exist without a secure water supply system
with sufficient clean water for all in California, and it does
affect the nation. Given the threats to the State Water Project
and the Central Valley Project in the Delta, there is no excuse
for not making it the highest priority of the state and the
Federal Government to agree on a feasible remediation plan and
to implement it as soon as humanly possible. The state's
economy and a major part of the country's economy is hanging in
the balance. Do not repeat the mistakes of Katrina and New
Orleans.
The business community understands it costs money to build
and maintain a reliable and environmentally friendly water
system. Investments of billions of dollars will be required. We
are more than willing to pay our fair share as residents and as
water users. There are also many opportunities to attract
private capital, as we are doing in the transportation sector
in California and, frankly, in public/private partnerships
throughout the nation. These are well documented models of
cooperation and success.
We urge you in government to consider and authorize as
necessary private investment participation in water
infrastructure to augment and work side by side with public
investment. Do not let the lack of public investment capital be
the cause of failure to modernize this state's water system.
You have many coalitions of support among business groups
and water agencies in the state, in particular, the formation
of a joint partnership between the Silicon Valley Leadership
Group and the Orange County Business Council called The Real
Coalition. The largest economic associations in the state, over
18 of us business groups, have formed together with water as
one of our top priorities.
You also see that here locally in Southern California with
the Southern California Water Coalition, strong supporters of
clean, safe water, helping each other understand the issues and
get out the word to the public.
You know, it is the first time in human history that I can
recall where a government has turned off water for its people.
If in Los Angeles we can get through a regulatory process that
allows an environmental streamlining for a football stadium
here in Los Angeles, we should be able to do the same thing for
38 million people in the State of California and get this
project in the ground. I love football. I love water. Let's
just get it done. It is enough talk, enough studies. We have
studied this to death. It is time now for strong action on the
ground for a very cranky public out there. Thank you. Thank you
for the opportunity.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dunn follows:]
Statement of Lucy Dunn, President and CEO,
Orange County Business Council
California, home to one in eight Americans, accounts for around 12
percent of the nation's gross domestic product and has the economic
horsepower of the world's eighth-largest economy.
When the state stumbles, its sheer size 38 million people creates
fallout for businesses from coast to coast, which means California's
economic malaise could make it harder for the entire nation's economy
to recover.
The single biggest threat facing businesses in California, outside
of the existing economic crisis, is the lack of a reliable water
supply.
For Orange County specifically, this reality is sobering because
water resources managed by state and regional agencies account for 50
percent of our overall yearly water supply countywide. Just like
America's relationship with foreign oil, we are dependent on others for
a large portion of this most basic element of life--water.
Water is a critical element in every industry and particularly for
bio-tech, manufacturing, agriculture, homebuilding and new green-tech.
Any and all signals that suggest we are emerging from this economic
downturn could be dashed if we do not have a sufficient water supply.
Why would a Wisconsin Senator care about California's water?
California has been the leader in U.S. agricultural production for
over 60 years. Eight of the nation's top 10 producing counties are in
the state. California grows more than half of the country's fruits,
nuts and vegetables. It is the country's number one agricultural
exporter.
California is the leading dairy state and also America's top wine
producer, making 90% of all U.S. wine, and is the fourth leading wine
producer in the world.
California's food production and processing industry is critical to
both California and the United States' overall economy. Food production
companies face unprecedented global competition and must remain cost
competitive to stay in business.
Natural and regulatory drought conditions are resulting in zero
water supplies in many Central Valley areas and similar situations have
begun to emerge elsewhere in California, including many of the state's
major urban areas.
Travel to California's bread basket and you'll see miles of fallow
fields and stumped orchards and cross through small towns facing
enormous hardship with unemployment as high as 40%. Water means food,
jobs and a future.
California's innovation
California is a world technological and economic leader. It has
been the birthplace of many products and social trends that have
changed the world. From Levi Strauss jeans in the 1850's to the birth
of the modern computer, some of the world's most significant
technological innovations, and social trends had a start here. The
popsicle, the zamboni, the polygraph test, the modern theme park,
windsurfing and even golf carts were invented here in California.
California continues to lead innovations in water technology.
Seawater Desalination plants
Ground water replenish systems
Establishment of rebate and grant programs to incentivise
efficient usage
Endangered Species Act
Environmental reform should value our people more than a fish.
Not even Mother Nature can match the impact the Endangered Species
Act has had on California's water supply.
Enforcement, or threat of enforcement, of both the federal and
state Endangered Species Acts have become the foremost controlling
factors in the development of California's water resources. Compliance
with ESA creates significant impacts on water supplies throughout the
state.
Regulatory actions to protect species have reduced water deliveries
from the state's two largest water systems in recent years to more than
25 million people in the San Francisco bay Area, Central and Southern
California.
There is no question that protection of the largest estuary on the
West Coast is critical. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is in an
ecological crisis, but so are California's farmers and residents. There
must be a way to balance economic and environmental viability.
The current status seems to put a small fish about the needs of
humans. This policy also creates new environmental problems. By forcing
agricultural production to fallow, risk shortages of our food supply
here at home and force greater production of greenhouse gases as once
local food production must be shipped in from foreign locations. We all
believe in conservation of the species, but shouldn't people come
first?
R.E.A.L. Coalition points
The water supply system that supports most of California's
residents, businesses and underpins its ecological health is facing
unprecedented challenges. Coordinated near-and long-term actions to
address constraints and conflicts are needed if we are to realize the
co-equal values of adequate water supply for California, and ecosystem
health and revitalization. Given the breadth and statewide impact of
the crisis, the interest of the business community is coincident with
that of the general public.
About OCBC
The Orange County Business Council is the leading voice of business
in Orange County, California. OCBC represents and promotes the business
community, working with government and academia, to enhance Orange
County's economic development and prosperity in order to preserve a
high quality of life. OCBC serves member and investor businesses with
nearly 250,000 employees and 2,500,000 worldwide. In providing a
proactive forum for business and supporting organizations, OCBC helps
assure the financial growth of America's fifth largest county. For more
information, visit www.ocbc.org.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. We go on to Mr. Larry Collins--Audience,
please refrain from interrupting. I won't ask again. You are
taking the time of these people to testify. Mr. Larry Collins,
Vice President of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's
Associations in San Francisco. Welcome, sir.
STATEMENT OF LARRY COLLINS, VICE PRESIDENT, PACIFIC COAST
FEDERATION OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS, SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIFORNIA
Mr. Collins. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman, Mr.
McClintock. My name is Larry Collins. I am a commercial salmon
fisherman. I am Vice President of the Pacific Coast Federation
of Fishermen's Associations, which is the largest organization
of working fishing men and women on the West Coast, with
associations mostly in California but also in Oregon and
Washington. I am also President of the Crab Boat Owners
Association out of San Francisco, and we have been fishing wild
California King Salmon for well over 100 years.
I think that Ground Zero for us is on the coast, not in the
valley. Every working waterfront from Santa Barbara to the
Washington border has been out of work for the last two years,
because we have had a ``no salmon'' season. I have been fishing
with my wife for 25 years, chasing these fish, these beautiful
fish, up and down. It seemed like we always were able to have a
balance between water for the cities, water for the farmers,
and enough water for the fish to get up or the baby fish to get
out through the gate.
There are a couple of things that people say that really
bother a commercial salmon fisherman, that water through the
gate is wasted, that hydroelectricity power--they call it
cheap--and when they talk about cheap water. It all depends on
where you are sitting. San Francisco Bay-Delta--it is our
Everglades. It is like Chesapeake Bay. It is where the crabs
grow up, where the herring fishery that is stopped this year
for the first time in history, where the salmon go through. It
is critical to the commercial fisherman on the coast, up and
down the coast.
You know, you were talking before about training people
about water. I do the Fishermen in the Classroom Project with
the Gulf of Farallones Marine Sanctuary. I go into the
classrooms, and I talk to the kids about how these are public
trust resources. Every fish, every crab out in the ocean--they
own them. They are always impressed by that fact. I tell them
that the water that is in the rivers is a public trust
resource, too, and I tell them that these are very valuable
resources.
So every now and then, if things get out of balance because
people try and take more than they ought to, and that is what
we need a government for--to keep things in balance. I am not
against farmers growing things down in the Valley, but, in my
mind, the main course is salmon. We need to fix this
environment so the salmon can get up, and the baby salmon can
get out.
You know, I have been interested in water issues since the
passage of the CVPIA, which is 18 years ago, and I thought, oh,
boy, fish doubling. We are going to put this water down the
river so the fish can get up. It was supposed to be 600,000
feet from the state and 600,000 feet from the Fed. We are going
to get doubled up here, and we were going to all be healthy,
and everything was going to be beautiful.
Eighteen years later, it hasn't happened. None of that
water has flowed through the gate, and that, to me, is not
wasted water. That estuary needs that mixture of salt and fresh
water to be healthy. A healthy estuary is every bit as
productive as anywhere in the Valley. We have a community that
travels up and down the coast chasing these fish, and that
community is as important as any town in the Valley.
We would like to thank Congress for seeing our need a
couple of years ago and getting us some disaster relief money,
or I wouldn't be here today, and none of the fleet would still
be here. Salmon is 70 percent of my income. So it has been a
pretty tough hit, and we may not get a salmon season again this
year. So we may have to come and ask Congress for help again.
We can fix this thing, but we got to get the balance right.
We got to value the salmon as much as we value the farms and
the urban areas. We have to share that water. We got to make it
right. Thanks.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Collins follows:]
Statement of Larry Collins, Vice President, Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations, San Francisco, California
Good afternoon. I am Larry Collins, vice president of the Pacific
Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, largest organization of
working fishermen and women on the West coast with member associations
mostly in California but also in Oregon and Washington.
My wife Barbara and I fish for salmon and crab out of San Francisco
on our vessel, the ``Autumn Gale''.
I first got involved with water issues around the time of the CVPIA
passage and have been involved ever since. Salmon fishing was 70
percent of my income so, clearly, if the resource wasn't healthy I
didn't work.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to provide
the fisherman's perspective on California's water resources, the ways
in which these resources are being managed and abused, and the
assistance which Congress might provide to assure a more equitable and
sustainable distribution of the state's water resources among food
producers--both fishermen and irrigators--and the state's urban
communities.
We are out of work, now, as salmon fishermen.
Barbara and I have been successful fishermen for 25 years. During
these years we bought our home in San Francisco, raised our two kids,
and paid our bills--all from the income earned from of our fishing.
California's salmon fisheries have been shut down, by order of the
U.S. Secretary of Commerce, under the regulations of the Federal
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, since 2007.
That is, we've been out of work, now, for two years by direct
Federal mandate. Prospects for fishing for Central Valley chinook
(``king'') salmon--the mainstay of our fishery--are dim for 2010.
Following the closure of our fishery in 2008 the National Marine
Fisheries Service--the Service's scientists headquartered at their
Santa Cruz, California laboratory--prepared an assessment of the
reasons for the poor condition of Central Valley salmon stocks. The
lead investigator of that NMFS panel, Dr. Steven Lindley told the press
``Poor ocean conditions triggered the collapse. But what primed it is
the degradation of the estuary and river habitats and the heavy
reliance on hatcheries over the years 1 (Hatcheries are
created, of course, to mitigate for salmon habitat lost to water
developments.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Dr Lindley's statement may be found at http://
articles.sfgate.com/2009-03-19/bay-area/17215271--1--chinook-salmon-
pacific-fishery-management-council-national-marine-fisheries-service;
his report ``What caused the Sacramento River fall Chinook stock
collapse'' at http://swr.nmfs.noaa.gov/media/SalmonDeclineReport.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This chart documents the dramatic decline of the Central Valley
Chinook salmon.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4619.006
We're not talking about just another estuary here.
We are talking about the San Francisco Bay Estuary, the most
important estuary on the Pacific Coast of North or South America
The San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary ecosystem has been declared,
time and again, by the California Legislature--most recently in its
November, 2009 ``historic Bay-Delta water deal'' legislation--to be a
resource area of both state and national significance, held in trust
for the public by the State government.
Given the nexus among State and Federal water quality,
environmental policy and endangered species acts, we assume that such
public trust responsibility extends to Congress and the Federal
government, as well.
To say that the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary is a national
treasure does not adequately define its importance. It is a planetary
treasure and its health or sickness has grave consequences for all of
us. The responsibility for its safekeeping lies primarily in the hands
of State government.
So how has the safekeeping of the Estuary by its State and Federal
stewards been going lately?
There's been a lot of hand-ringing, of course, because there are
supposedly high protection standards in place for the Estuary, but
since the Governor declared a drought emergency two years ago many of
those Delta protections--including those necessary to address the
degradation pointed out by Dr Lindley--have been suspended.
And, of course, there have been those controversial Federal court
decisions, back and forth, about how much water can be taken from the
Delta before harm is done to its public trust resources.
How bad has the drought been?
It would be hard to tell from the media the past year or so just
how bad--or not--the ``drought crisis'' has been. What is clear is the
subject supported a year-long media circus.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation precipitation in
Northern California--where three-quarters of the state's water comes
from--was 94 percent of average in 2009.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4619.007
And how about unemployment?
The suffering of the farm community of Mendota, California has
played on the pages of every major newspaper in the country, on Fox
``News'' repeatedly, and most recently in a 60 Minutes broadcast.
How bad is unemployment in Mendota? Really bad--not only in 2008
and 2009, but in practically every year for which there are records.
Unemployment peaked in Mendota last year at 42 percent. It hit 38
percent seven years ago and got below 20 percent, thanks to the
construction boom, for the first time in 2005-2007.
The Berkeley-based Pacific Institute noted last year:
``...the drought has had very little overall impact on
agricultural employment, compared to the much larger impacts of
the recession. In fact, in the last three years, while State
Water Project allocations have decreased statewide,
California's agricultural job sector has grown. Further,
according to Professor Jeffrey Michael, director of the
Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific in
Stockton, rising unemployment in the Central Valley is largely
the result of the bad economy, not a lack of water.''
2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See Professor Michael's report at http://forecast.pacific.edu/
articles/PacificBFC--Fish%20or%20Foreclosure.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How bad is unemployment in California's salmon fisheries?
Unemployment in the California salmon fisheries, the result, in
major part, as Dr Lindley said, of the degradation of the Estuary and
river habitats, is 100 percent--by order of the U.S. Secretary of
Commerce.
A study conducted by our industry last summer, using 2006 National
Marine Fisheries Service survey data, indicates that the shut-down of
salmon fishing in California--both commercial and sports fishing--has
delivered a $1.4 billion annual loss, and the loss of 23,000 jobs to
our state. The study found that the recovery of California's salmon
fisheries to their good, pre-drought condition would provide California
a $5.6 billion annual economic gain and the creation of 94,000 new
jobs.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4619.008
In contempt of Congress--the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's
administration of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act's
Anadromous Fish Restoration Program
Development of the Federal Central Valley Project began in the
1930s, driven at the time by the need to lift the state out of the
Great Depression. There were, of course, no water quality or fishery
protection laws at the time.
As development of the CVP progressed over the years, its impact on
water quality and fishery resources became increasingly hard to ignore.
The complete drying up of the San Joaquin River for 75 miles below the
CVP's Friant Dam and the loss of 300,000 chinook salmon there was the
most visible of the CVP's aquatic insults. But there were many other,
less obvious impacts, including the over-diversion of water from the
Trinity River and the steady decline of Chinook salmon in the
Sacramento River.
In the early 1990s the stars aligned to make some significant
changes to the CVP's Depression-era congressional authorization:
1. Key House and Senate committees were in the hands of Members
informed and deeply concerned with Central Valley, Trinity River and
Bay-Delta Estuary conditions, Representative George Miller and Senator
Bill Bradley.
2. The 1983 National Audubon Society v. Los Angeles court decision
ordering the restoration of Mono Lake's public trust resources had
California's southland communities scrambling for replacement water
supplies, and
3. A real drought which persisted for six years from 1986 until
1993 had driven a wedge between urban and agricultural water users, who
were traditionally aligned in their quest for more and more water from
Northern California, over what struck many city-dwellers, rightly or
wrongly, as agriculture's water greed and misuse
The Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992--the CVPIA,
signed into law by George Herbert Walker Bush--came from that
convergence of politics and drought.
The CVPIA dedicated water to the restoration of the Trinity River.
Earlier allocations for Trinity River salmon flows, made in the 1950s
and '60s, had been manipulated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with
considerable help from Trinity diversion-interested Members of
Congress, to levels inadequate to maintain the river's salmon
resources.
The CVPIA dedicated 800,000 acre-feet of CVP ``yield'' 3
with which the Secretary of the Interior was to address explicit
environmental improvement actions in the Bay-Delta Estuary and its
watershed--not the Secretary's on-going Clean Water and Endangered
Species acts responsibilities, mind you, but specific fish and wildlife
restoration actions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ i.e., of the CVP's 13,000,000 acre-foot reservoir capacity and
7,000,000 acre-feet of annual ``safe'', or reliable yield
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CVPIA responded, in effect, to the California Water Resources
Control Board, which had determined through two years of intense
inquiry into the flow needs of Bay-Delta Estuary resources, from 1986
through 1988, that 1.6 million acre-feet of additional water through
the Delta was needed to maintain Central Valley salmon and other public
trust resources in good condition.
The CVPIA specifically embraced the policy enacted in 1988 by the
California Legislature to double Central Valley salmon over the
depressed numbers that they reached in the 1960s and 1970s
4--and put up the Federal government's ``fair share'' of the
1.6 million acre-feet of water needed--the CVPIA's 800,000 acre-feet
for assuring Central Valley salmon ``safe passage'' through the Delta
to the Bay and ocean beyond.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ See CA Fish & Game Code Section 6900, the ``Salmon, Steelhead
Trout, and Anadromous Fisheries Program Act''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a U.S. Office of Management and Budget-prescribed evaluation of
the CVPIA's Anadromous Fish Restoration Program--that salmon-doubling
effort mandated by Congress--an independent science review panel found
in 2008 that the Bureau of Reclamation has ``gamed'' the CVPIA salmon
water ever since the program began--that not one drop of the 800,000
acre-feet of CVP water allocated by Congress to the rebuilding of
Central Valley salmon has ever made it though the Delta to San
Francisco Bay. 5
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See http://www.cvpiaindependentreview.com/
FisheriesReport12_12_08.pdf, the bottom of page 41 and the top of page
42 of the report, where the reviewers say they are ``flabbergasted'' to
learn that Reclamation has gamed the water in direct contradiction of
its Congressional mandate
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The OMB independent science review finding that Reclamation is in
contempt of Congress deserves some sort of reaction, some response from
Congress. We know of none to date.
CVP water trading threatens implementation of Delta flow criteria
Which brings us down to a couple of closely related California
water supply challenges that deserve the attention of your Committee:
1. The California Legislature's mandate two months ago to the
State Water Resources Control Board to determine the ``flow criteria''
necessary to protect the public trust resources of the San Francisco
Bay-Delta Estuary.
2. Efforts underway to gut the environmental safeguards that
Congress placed in the CVPIA, which, unless stopped, will confound
horribly the State's efforts to implement those flow criteria when they
are determined this summer.
H.R. 3750, which resides in your Committee, would increase sales of
CVP water from traditional Project users to non-Project users by, among
other things, stripping away the environmental safeguards placed by
Congress in the CVPIA.
Let me explain.
Prior to the CVPIA, the use of CVP water was strictly confined to
the CVP's designated ``place of use'', within the boundaries of the
CVP's water district customers.
California's southland communities were scrambling in 1992, as we
mentioned, for water to replace what they would lose to the National
Audubon's 1983 Mono Lake State Supreme Court decision.
Congress said, OK, we'll allow the sale of some CVP water to non-
CVP water users, but we're talking about only water that has been used
on-farm at the time the CVPIA was enacted. That way, Congress was
heading off the sale of the water that it had reserved for Trinity
River restoration and Central Valley salmon doubling.
H.R. 3750 strips away the CVPIA's environmental restraints
6--the saving clauses for the Trinity River restoration and
salmon doubling--and plunges the CVP headlong into California's growing
``arbitrage'' water market--that handful of political insiders waxing
fat by buying heavily-subsidized public project water and ``flipping''
it, at greatly increased prices 7 to non-CVP buyers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ subparagraphs (A) and (I) of section 3405(a)(1) of the
Reclamation Projects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992--the
CVPIA--Public Law 102-575; 106 Stat. 4709
\7\ See ``Harvest of Cash; Kern County Agency Buys Public Water
Low, Sells High http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_10152127 and
``Massive Farm Owned by L.A. Man Uses Water Bank Conceived for State
Needs'' http://articles.latimes.com/2003/dec/19/local/me-kern19
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the extent that H.R. 3750 waives away the protections for the
water that Congress intended be used for doubling Central Valley salmon
stocks, it severely threatens the implementation of the State Water
Resources Control Board Delta ``flow criteria'', they which the
Legislature's 2009 ``historic Delta water deal'' intends be applied to
the protection of the Bay-Delta Estuary's public trust resources,
including Central Valley salmon.
Once sold, particularly into urban markets, this heavily-subsidized
public project water is very, very hard to retrieve.
We recommend, with all our might, that your Committee take a long,
hard look at the environmental chaos that would result should you
release H.R. 3750. We recommend you hold it in your Committee.
To be clear, we are not against legislation to help farmers. What
we are opposed to is legislation like H.R. 3750 which threatens to move
publicly-subsidized CVP water from the farms into the hands of water
traders.
I'll be glad to answer such questions that I can. PCFFA's executive
director, Zeke Grader, is also here today and will gladly answer any
questions that you may wish to put to him.
Let me quickly add my thanks to the Members of Congress for their
help in keeping our fleet alive these last two years. When we could not
go fishing you provided us badly needed disaster relief. We don't know
yet if there will be a season this year but if there isn't, we will
need your help again.
Thank you for this opportunity to address your Committee.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. Now for Mr. Joe Del Bosque, owner of
Empresas Del Bosque, Inc., in Los Banos. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOE L. DEL BOSQUE, OWNER,
EMPRESAS DEL BOSQUE INC., LOS BANOS, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Del Bosque. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I am glad to
be here to hear the points of view on the water. It is very
good to hear that, and you have won one forum.
My name is Joe Del Bosque. I grew up on a farm in the San
Joaquin Valley, became a farmer in 1985, and my wife and I grow
cantaloupes, organic cantaloupes, asparagus, almonds, and
cherries. At peak season my farm employs over 300 people
growing, picking, and packing fresh fruits, nuts, and
vegetables for the country. My farm would be considered average
an average size and representative of the very diverse San
Joaquin Valley.
The farm lies in the CVP, Central Valley Project. So we are
at Ground Zero in this drought. We have been operating with
chronic water shortages since 1992 when, as Mr. Collins
mentioned, the CVPIA was passed, but since 1992 until 2008 our
average water allocation was 60 percent, and the worst that we
had was 25 percent. We have learned a lot during that time,
learned a lot how to become efficient. We have learned a lot
about how to find sources of water, transfer water. We learned
how to be as efficient as possible growing our crops, but
nothing could prepare us for what we got in 2009, a 10 percent
allocation. It has been devastating to our part of the world.
As I said, our farm as tried to become as efficient as
possible. All of my crops are under drip irrigation. In fact, I
have more drip irrigation than I have crops, because we don't
have enough water to go around. So I had to lay 850 acres
fallow on my farm last year. I still have to pay rent, mortgage
payments, tax assessments on that land. So it has been a very
tough economic hit for us.
The worst part of this situation is what it has done to our
communities and our farm workers. Our farm workers are a very
important part of our farm, and they are the most vulnerable
segment of our communities out there. We have heard all sorts
of statistics on unemployment of farm workers out there, and
disputes about whether it is 35 or 40 percent or not.
The fact of it is that I know that we did not hire a lot of
people back this year. I know that a lot of the people that we
did hire were underemployed. You don't see that in the
statistics. These people during peak season typically work six
and seven days a week very happily, and most of the time in the
summertime they were only working five days a week. For farm
workers, that is very devastating. It is not like you or I.
They don't have additional sources of income. They rely on us,
and so that is why I am here, for them.
Many of them were seen at food distribution lines in
Mendota, Firebaugh, San Joaquin, Huron, receiving food that
oftentimes came from China. That was very demoralizing to see
that. Several times I volunteered to distribute food, and I
found the wives of my workers in line. These are people who
would rather be working.
Handouts are appreciated, but they don't pay for rent. They
don't pay for their children's clothing. These people need to
get back to work, and we need them. Our fruits and vegetables
need these people. They are just as important to us as our land
and our water. It is a three-legged stool. We need all three.
The economic impacts of my farm--I am not even going to
talk about that. It is not as important as what it has done to
our people. So where are we now? You know, we have seen these
storms that have come and dumped tons of rain and snow in the
mountains. As was stated earlier, there is about 100,000 acre-
feet of water flowing to the ocean right now. Our pumps are
running at 60 percent speed. The amount that we are losing
there could supply my farm's annual--the whole farm's annual
irrigation needs for two years.
I am not saying that water is lost, and we don't want all
the water. We know that the fish need water, but our area is
suffering, and that is why we have come here to speak up. The
ironic thing is that now there is an issue coming up called
turbidity, and as the storms swell the rivers even further and
there is more water in them, we are going to get less, because
apparently, if the smelt don't see the pumps, we have to turn
the pumps off.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, sir. Could you wrap it up?
Mr. Del Bosque. Yes, I will. Thank you. I would like to say
that our Federal Government has not been of help to us. We feel
in the Central Valley that we have been neglected, that they
have been giving us promises since last summer. We have seen
very little, if anything, from them, and so, Madam Chairwoman,
we would like to appeal to you, and anyone else who will
listen, that we need to get something done. We need to get some
sense into this. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Del Bosque follows:]
Statement of Joe L. Del Bosque, Owner, Empresas Del Bosque Inc,
Los Banos, California
Introduction
My name is Joe Del Bosque. I grew up on a farm, the son of farm
workers on the Westside of the San Joaquin Valley. Thanks to this great
country, I went to college, and was able to become a farmer in 1985.
Some of the land that I now own, I worked as a boy picking melons. I
now grow cantaloupes, organic cantaloupes, asparagus, almonds, and
cherries on about 2300 acres. At peak season, my farm employs over 300
people growing, picking, and packing nuts, fruits, and vegetables,
feeding people across America. My wife, Maria Gloria, who was also a
farmworker, helps me manage the operation. My farm would be considered
average in size and representative of the very diverse Westside.
Our water supply
Our farm lies in several water districts, but all are federal
districts that receive water through the CVP. Our water comes from the
Delta, pumped into canals that provide water for farms and cities.
About 25 million people receive some of their water through this
system, including San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
We have been farming with chronic water shortages since 1992 when
the CVPIA took effect. Before 2009, in our worst years we received a
25% water supply. The recent biological opinions for smelt and salmon
have cut our water supply deeper than solely hydrologic conditions.
That is the reason that we only received 10% in 2009.
For over fourteen years we have been adopting high tech irrigation
systems to become more efficient and conserve water. This has required
large investments and learning new methods. Last year, 170 acres of
land with high tech drip irrigation systems laid idle because there
wasn't enough water. At some point, we can no longer conserve our way
out.
Impacts to my farm
Since 2007, the amount of crops that my farm produces has been
reduce by almost half. I no longer grow tomatoes or wheat. My bread-
and-butter crop, cantaloupes has been reduced by 55%. Asparagus acreage
has been cut in half. Last year I terminated leases on 300 acres of
land, and another 850 acres were left idle. I still had to pay rent or
mortgage payments, taxes, and assessments on this land. We have had to
find other sources of water to make up the shortfall for the survival
of our trees, always at expensive rates. Since 2007 my water cost has
tripled causing me to exhaust cash reserves.
Right now is the time of the year when my banker is reviewing our
loan requests. I will have to provide him with sources and quantities
of water for our farm. All I have to show him now is what I have left
over from last year, which is very little. We typically start planting
in March. The Bureau of Reclamation didn't allocate water to us last
year until May 7. This makes ag bankers very nervous.
Impacts to the community
Some of the most vulnerable people in our farming communities, our
farm workers, have been hit hard by this drought. With less produce to
grow and harvest, many workers were not rehired. Those that had jobs
were often underemployed. During the summer harvest season when people
normally work six or seven days a week, most employees worked only
five. This is a terrible impact on our worker's and their families.
Some of our workers bought homes for the first time in late 2008, only
to struggle to make payments in 2009. In our local towns of Mendota and
Firebaugh the unemployment rates skyrocketed to 35% and 40%. Hundreds
of people who should have been growing and picking our food were
gathered in food distribution lines. Several times that I volunteered
to distribute food, I found the wives of our employees waiting in line.
These are people who would rather be working. Handouts are appreciated,
but they do not pay rent or children's clothing. God only knows how
they are surviving the winter. I'm sure many have gone back to their
home countries. Madam Chairwoman, we need these people. They are just
as important to our farms as our land and water.
Other economic impacts
The impacts of starving our farms is far-reaching. Just from the
reduction of our cantaloupe acreage is a significant economic loss to
our economy. That reduction, 595 acres, would have generated over $4
million to our economy, $1.1 million of that in wages, and several
hundred thousand dollars in taxes. Every farm dollar would have been
multiplied by four or five in our distribution and retail sectors. The
crop produced would have fed over 2 million people their annual
consumption of the fresh fruit. All this for about 900 acre feet. About
the same amount that waters about 600 lawns per year.
What do we face for 2009?
The biological opinions for smelt and salmon have restricted
pumping from the delta since November 1, and consequently choking our
water supply. Even during storm events such as this week when rivers
have tripled in size, the pumps are restricted, and water flows to the
ocean. This week we have lost about 10,000 acre-feet per day. That is
enough water to irrigate my entire farm for two years. As rivers reach
flood stage, we expect pumping to be restricted even further due to
turbidity standards. Apparently when the smelt can't see the pumps,
these must be shut down.
Our government has not helped us. Most of the aid that Washington
sent to California for drought relief went to environmental projects
such as fish screens, and didn't produce any water at all. Some went to
fund groundwater wells which will exacerbate the depletion of our
aquifers. The two-gates project has been all but scuttled by the
Interior Department. Secretary Salazar came to my farm in October, gave
us little hope, and he has made it real. Madam Chairwoman, who else can
we turn to?
Among farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, there is a very real
urgency. We are watching as our future spills out the Golden Gate
Bridge to the Pacific every day. We cannot sustain another 2009. We
have already seen farmers pull our their almond orchards in the San
Joaquin Valley, and avocado growers decimate their trees in San Diego
County. All the water that has been deprived us, causing economic and
social devastation, has not improved the populations of smelt or
salmon. We have come to the point where our leaders must make some
sense of this and prevent further disaster to our farms and people. It
was done in New Mexico with the silvery minnow; it can be done here.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony to you and the
committee.
______
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you so very much for your testimony.
We are running a little behind. I want to be sure that we
are out of here shortly. Since there are only two of us left,
it may be making a little leisure. But I will start off with
Ms. Dunn.
This is more of a comment than a question, but is the
business community ready to put in financial, moral and other
support to solve the water problems, because normally the
polluters, the PRPs, potential responsible parties, walk away
and leave the taxpayer to pay for the pollution in many of the
areas. That, to me, is a great concern.
So while some of the businesses may say that they are
wanting all these benefits, there is also a cost to that, and I
want to be sure that we do not ignore that. So that is just as
a comment. But thank you very much for your testimony.
Ms. Dunn. Ma'am, if I may, I want to share with you that I
couldn't agree, and I think the businesses, certainly in my
organization and up and down the state, would concur that a
clean, reliable water supply, together with a clean
environment, is very important to business as well. They could
not do business without it. So that will happen.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Well, we may call on you for
maybe identifying some of those parties to help out.
Ms. Dunn. Absolutely.
Mrs. Napolitano. Dr. Gleick, have you calculated the cost
comparisons of the various types of water development projects
such as surface, recycle, and groundwater storage?
Dr. Gleick. We have done some of that. The water agencies
have done some of that. The state and the Federal Government
has done some of that. There are many different options out
there. It depends on what you want to build where.
We believe that the conservation and efficiency options
that I described very briefly and that are described more in
the report we are doing are the cheapest. They pay back the
fastest. They save water. They save energy. They let water----
Mrs. Napolitano. Such as?
Dr. Gleick. Well, for example, one of our suggestions is
replacing 2 million very inefficient toilets in the state. New
York City replaced 1.3 million toilets in three years in a city
of 8 million. We have a population of 35 or 36 or 37 million.
That would save an enormous amount of water.
Mrs. Napolitano. I might want to interject, but recently in
a briefing that I had with many water agencies, they said they
have tapped out. I don't believe it. I think you are right.
Dr. Gleick. Surface storage is an option. There are
discussions of a number of dams that have been proposed. They
seem to be very expensive, even the best estimates of what it
would cost to build a surface storage dam, and I can't remember
a surface storage dam that we actually built for what the
initial estimates were anyway, but we have lost a lot of
groundwater, as we have heard.
It is much cheaper to store water underground. We ought to
figure out a way to capture a lot of this runoff, store it in
underground reservoirs, underground aquifers. Now that is
conjunctive use. It is much cheaper. Desalination is very
expensive, but we might choose to build it for its reliability.
It is very reliable. We might consider building desalination in
Southern California, if we agree to take less water from the
Delta. That is an option that hasn't been discussed.
There are lots of answers here to your question, depending
on what you want to build where.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, thank you very much for your very
insightful testimony and to your answers, because I think you
have a lot of good, solid information for a lot of the water
agencies that we can benefit from.
Where do you think the best application of funds can be
made right away to get the biggest benefit in addressing our
supply issue?
Dr. Gleick. I think, in part, it is a question for many
farmers, for example, of coming up with upfront money for them.
Those farms that have not moved to drip, that have not moved to
precision sprinklers, that aren't able to measure their soil
moisture and irrigate when the crops really need it rather than
just when it is delivered by irrigation districts, or
irrigation districts who don't have the money to rebuild their
delivery systems so they can deliver water more accurately,
that is an upfront cost.
Some of those savings pay back over a long period of time,
but there isn't money for upfront expenditures. The Equip
program under the farm bill provided some of that money, but
that money ran out really quickly. That is one example of a
good source of--a potentially very fruitful source of money. I
have other examples I would be happy to share with you.
Mrs. Napolitano. All right. We would like for you to submit
it to the record, Dr. Famiglietti, can GRACE be used to
identify how much water is actually in the Central Valley
aquifer or, as far as that is concerned, in that Basin, and try
to figure out if there are any other aquifers that had been
unidentified that may have been spotted or you know there has
been some kind of activity that leads you to believe that they
may be usable for storage of rainwater capture, recycled water,
etcetera?
Dr. Famiglietti. GRACE cannot tell us the absolute amount
of how much water is there. It can tell us the changes from
month to month, but as we spoke earlier, I do think that there
is the potential to identify new sources, and I gave an example
before of how we see some signals of water storage variation in
places where we might not expect it; for example, in the Sahara
Desert.
So we can look there and see that there is a fair amount of
water stored in the Nubian aquifer. So I think that we can be
using it to do a little prospecting, if you will.
Mrs. Napolitano. So what would it take for us to request
that you begin that prospecting on behalf of California?
Dr. Famiglietti. Oh, not too much, but as I mentioned in my
testimony, I think the biggest thing is that the data will be
disappearing soon. So I think the biggest contribution that you
can make----
Mrs. Napolitano. Again, Commissioner Connor, help.
Dr. Famiglietti. And I can get you the names of the
appropriate NASA officials to speak with about how to increase
that priority.
Mrs. Napolitano. Very quickly, Mr. Luna, what is your
number one challenge to achieve water sustainability in the Los
Angeles area, and what options exist to achieve that?
Mr. Luna. I am big believer in education. So I think we
need to do more of that. When I say more, I praise the existing
information that has been out there, but we need to educate,
and we need to educate our youth, prepare them for how we are
leaving the status of this planet for them, and by preparing
them I mean appropriate tools, education-wise, culturally. They
need to appreciate it. So I think that is the biggest challenge
for the immigrant communities. It is not that we don't get it.
It is that we disconnect, and we come here, and we suddenly
forget that water gets flushed away, and that tap, that water,
is connected to other places.
So I think it is that connection and that water culture
that we need to build, is what I see as most challenging, but
also provides the best opportunity, because it doesn't cost
that much.
Mrs. Napolitano. And also in different languages. Mr.
McClintock.
Mr. McClintock. I was just pondering the question of
financial commitment that the Chairwoman raised with Ms. Dunn,
and it seemed to me a good opportunity to take a trip down
memory lane back to 1960 when California voters approved the
Burns-Porter Act. The Burns-Porter Act authorized the
construction of the State Water Project, including the great
California Aqueduct and the series of northern dams. It
included Oroville that I mentioned earlier.
That bond measure was $1.75 billion in 1960. You do the
inflation adjustment. It is about $12.5 billion in today's
money. So about $12.5 billion to produce the State Water
Project, essentially everything that we are dealing with today
that we depend upon for our water supply from Northern
California.
Now in the last dozen years, California voters have already
approved six bond measures totaling $17 billion, all of which
promise to increase our water supplies. So the question I would
ask Ms. Dunn is where is our generation's state water project?
Do you think the money that has already been committed has been
very well spent?
Ms. Dunn. None of these bonds, sir, were perfect, and many
of the bonds, my personal review, contained a lot of benefit
for the environment and not a lot of water in them, but the
reality is the nature of the bond processes--I know I do not
have to instruct you, sir--is such that they are a result of
many compromises. So even this bond package that is coming to
the ballot now is not perfect, but it does provide for a
delicate balance among both the environment and the economic
benefits that we need.
Yes, that is correct. The funds that we have received under
previous bonds probably didn't produce the infrastructure, all
the infrastructure, that we needed, but there were benefits in
them that helped.
Mr. McClintock. Speaking of the bond process, up until the
last generation, we first decided what project we were going to
build, what dam we were going to build, what canal we were
going to build. We went out and got bids on that, and once we
knew and had agreed to exactly what we were going to build and
how much it was going to cost, only then did we go to voters
with a bond.
When we went to the voters with a bond, it was a self-
liquidating general obligation bond. In other words, it was not
redeemed by general taxpayers. It was redeemed by the users of
the water and power from that dam in proportion to their use.
That has been completely turned upside down. The most recent
bond, and for that matter, the six that preceded it, don't
authorize specific projects. They establish grab-bags of money.
Why are we surprised then when that money is frittered away
on small projects that don't add up, don't begin to add up to
the magnitude of the Burns-Porter Act projects that had
produced the state water system.
Ms. Dunn. If there is a question in there, the answer is I
agree with you.
Mr. McClintock. Good answer. Mr. Collins, to what extent
does a renewed commitment to fish hatcheries roll into this
whole equation? I was very impressed by the enormous commitment
that the State of Alaska has made to salmon hatcheries off of
their coast. What role do fish hatcheries play in the salmon
population?
Mr. Collins. Hatcheries are absolutely necessary. We
wouldn't have any salmon left. You know, they were a mitigation
for when the dams went up. There were huge runs of salmon that
were naturally occurring that became extinct when, for
instance, the Friant Dam went up. We would be out of business
without the hatcheries, and we need to fund then fully and make
sure they keep working, and I think, expand them. If we expand
them, it will help everybody.
Mr. McClintock. I was very impressed by the--I forget the
exact figures--the astonishing number of salmon produced by the
hatcheries in Alaska.
Mr. Collins. Five billion.
Mr. McClintock. Should we be making the same commitment in
California?
Mr. Collins. We can't. We don't have the rivers and the
area that they need for that kind of production. I think it is
5 billion fish they have up there. We could definitely double
the number of hatchery production in this state, and it would
be a good thing.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you.
Mrs. Napolitano. Would the gentleman yield for a second?
Mr. McClintock. Sure.
Mrs. Napolitano. I was asking the staff. In other briefings
that I have been at, and hearings, I hear that some of the
folks don't like the hatcheries, because it dilutes the fish,
the species.
Mr. Collins. We have had hatcheries on Central Valley runs.
The Mad River hatchery started in the 1880s. Most of the
Central Valley fish are more homogenized than the individual
runs like the clam, if they are further up, because it is such
a long history. When it was started, they didn't know what we
know now about genetic policy. They are way, way better at it
now than they used to be.
They are very strong, these fish. I mean, they go out the
gate. If they can get through the Delta to get out, they are
this big, and three years later they are 35 pound fish. So they
are very excellent fish.
Mrs. Napolitano. Right. But I guess maybe what I am getting
is that we need to be sure we have hatcheries, and that is
alluding to his point, is that somewhere along the line we need
to support it, but ensure that they are run well.
Mr. Collins. Yes, and we need the wild fish. We need the
wild fish to be able to get up the river, too, and that is why
we need the water there.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you. Ms. Dunn, what is your number
one challenge to achieving the water sustainability in Orange
County, and what options exist to achieve it?
Ms. Dunn. I think the number one issue for Orange County is
continuing to educate the public on the issues of water and how
important it is to understand--it is interesting for me
personally to see how often folks don't even realize that so
much of our water in Southern California comes from the Delta,
how important it is to us. So education is important.
Mrs. Napolitano. So you would say that we have not done a
good job?
Ms. Dunn. I would say collectively, all of us, not just,
obviously, Congress.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you.
Ms. Dunn. But in addition, making sure that our elected
officials, our local elected officials, understand that they
set examples for conservation, for recycling, for understanding
water. I think that is an important component.
Mrs. Napolitano. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Del Bosque, what can
be done to achieve water sustainability for your farm and your
local cooperatives?
Mr. Del Bosque. In my local area, we have gone to high tech
irrigation systems. We are using all kinds of atmospheric
instruments and monitors. You know, when you are down to 10
percent, there is not much more you can do. You know, we are
doing it.
This old irrigator told me one time, he says, we are
working the water so hard, it is getting callouses, and that is
a fact. Our water that we put on our crops is literally put on
by eyedroppers. We have no runoff. We have no excess water.
There is nothing to recycle or reuse. it is all there, just in
the crop. So for us the only answer is to find some sort of
reliability in the water that we get.
I believe it is going to take some sort of storage, whether
it is surface storage or below ground storage. We are just
starved for water. There is no other way for us than to try to
increase our supply some way and to be a little more reliable.
Mrs. Napolitano. Recycle water for nonedible crops?
Mr. Del Bosque. For what?
Mrs. Napolitano. Usage of more recycled water?
Mr. Del Bosque. We have no water to recycle.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, no. We have a lot of rainfall, and
you are able to capture it, if you could find a place to store
it. Some areas use rubber dams to be able to capture runoff and
be able to have it trickle into the aquifers. There has got to
be ways of being able to continually look for solutions.
Mr. Del Bosque. Yes. I agree. We do need to, and nobody has
a greater sense of urgency about that than we farmers in the
San Joaquin Valley.
Mrs. Napolitano. Well, thank you to all of you. I would
state that we should have the media lined up here, being
participants and being able to get the general public
interested in the water solutions. Maybe it is because there
has been so much rain, they think the drought is over.
I would hope that somehow we are able to educate, as you
will: Yes, have a drink; turn the water on everywhere. The fact
is the constant message from most of the panelists has been
education. It is an important project. It is an important
topic. It is an important issue for all of us.
Please count on us in being able to do what we can. The
problem is, as everybody knows, if you are going to try to buy
air time, it is expensive. So we need to find ways of being
able to get the message out, whether it is to the water end
users in their bill, to getting the state to cooperate, getting
the media to understand the severity of the issue, and being
able to say, hey, we are going to have more unemployment and
some of you may be out of work. Maybe that will get to them. I
don't know, but somehow we need to work together, continue
working on that.
Thank you very much to all the panelists for your time, for
your ability to travel and be with us. This concludes the
Subcommittee's oversight hearing on ``Perspectives on
California Water Supply: Challenges and Opportunities.''
I thank the Members that came, my staff. Thank you,
Metropolitan. Thank you. I do want to close and honor Steve
Hall, a former member of the ACWA, and Wes Bannister from MWD,
and Tom Grant, Executive Director of the Environmental Defense
Fund.
Thank you to all witnesses for appearing. Your testimonies
and expertise have indeed been very enlightening and helpful.
Under Committee Rule 4(h), additional material for the record
should be submitted within the next 10 business days from
today. The cooperation of all of the witnesses in replying to
any questions submitted to you in writing would be most greatly
appreciated.
With that, this hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]