Snowpack still low

From redding.com, via today's BC:

The latest round of snow surveys -- done at the end of March and beginning of April -- shows the Sacramento River Basin at 46 percent of average for this time of year and the Trinity River Basin at 36 percent, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Statewide, the snowpack is at 39 percent of average.

Water, the west, and climate change

There was a great piece in the NY Times today on water, the west, and climate:

Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.

In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.

The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.

According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.

Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fights.

The whole thing is certainly worth a read.

One-sided dam?

There was a piece yesterday with an interesting (though a bit one-sided) history of the Auburn Dam and Peripheral Canal in Rocklin and Roseville Today written by Dan Walters:

Elvis Presley was a young man when bureaucrats and politicians began talking about two large projects to control and use the water that in seasonal rain and snow storms dump on Northern California.

Building a high dam on the American River near Auburn, water engineers reasoned, would hold more of the seasonal flows for later use while protecting the Sacramento area from flooding. A "Peripheral Canal," meanwhile, was touted to divert water from the Sacramento River around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for delivery to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California homes and industries.

Construction actually began on both. Site clearance and foundation work for the Auburn Dam began in 1967 while the chunks of the 42-mile Peripheral Canal route were dug out in the 1970s to supply materials for constructing Interstate 5 south of Sacramento.

Both projects, however, fell victim to the rapidly expanding power of environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s. The Jimmy Carter administration halted work on Auburn Dam, ostensibly to study its ability to withstand an earthquake, and while the Peripheral Canal project was pushed through the Legislature by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a referendum sponsored by an odd-bedfellows alliance of environmentalists and San Joaquin Valley farmers led to voter rejection in 1982.

"fell victim to the rapidly expanding power of environmentalism"? Come on, Dan, tell us what you really think! It's sad to me that the author didn't attempt to represent more of the reasons for why the Auburn Dam, for instance, may not be a good idea.

Walters has Auburn axed by Carter decades ago "ostensibly to study its ability to withstand an earthquake". The equally one-sided story told by Friends of the River, for instance, puts it this way:

A multi-purpose Auburn Dam on the American River near Auburn would cost more than two billion dollars, be constructed on several earthquake faults, and flood nearly 50 miles of river canyon visited by more than a half million people a year for outdoor recreation.

In any case, these issues are never simple one-sided things, and it is incredibly frustrating that writers continue to paint them as such. It seems inevitable to lead to the "us versus them" mentality, instead of promoting cooperation between the different factions that instead continue to war over California's water.

There are some great photos from a Colorado Water delivery to the Coachella Valley in this brief, general piece in The Desert Sun.

All over the West, and especially in the desert, water is a vital element we dare not take for granted. Yet even as California embarks on an endless quest for more water to provide for a rapidly swelling population, in our desert, water flows plentifully - for now.

Most of it is hidden from sight, 350 feet below ground in the Coachella Valley aquifer. But at times it's visible, by the millions of gallons, in a square mile and then some that's home to 18 percolation basins in the Whitewater River flood plain at Windy Point northwest of Palm Springs.

Operated by the Coachella Valley Water District, they make up one of three replenishment points for the giant underground reservoir. Two smaller facilities are in the Oasis and Desert Hot Springs areas.

Our water comes from far away, imported from the Colorado River by way of Lake Havasu, Ariz., in sporadic deliveries. One such delivery came in May, when these photos were taken.

The river water snakes its way through an aqueduct that pierces the mountain ranges north of the valley, then dips below ground and spills out at a rate of 300 cubic feet per second into the Whitewater River channel. (With three other delivery points in the aqueduct, that's half the potential delivery rate.) From there, it rushes south, slides under Interstate 10, turns southeast and empties into 700 acres of percolation ponds. At a rate of 2 acre-feet per acre per day, the water seeps into the aquifer, which feeds dozens of wells for municipalities and golf courses around the valley. The deepest well, 1,800 feet in the Indio area, doesn't reach the bottom of the aquifer.

Hetch-Hetchy restoration "feasible" but fabulously expensive

From the Fresno Bee, via today's BC news:

Environmentalists heard exactly what they wanted to hear in the Department of Water Resources' study on draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park: The project is feasible.

Those opposed to poking a hole in O'Shaughnessy Dam heard exactly what they wanted: The project could cost up to $10 billion, an incredible figure.

In other words, the long-awaited DWR report hardly moved the debate forward. That's not to dismiss the report; it just means that those inclined to debate this daydream now have vaguely better numbers to bolster their arguments.

Those arguments resumed in press releases even before last Wednesday's report was released. A chief proponent of the plan, Environmental Defense, crowed that the Schwarzenegger administration had determined "it is feasible to restore Hetch Hetchy."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has called water from Hetch Hetchy every San Franciscan's birthright, said the study proves that the cost of draining Hetch Hetchy is "indefensible, particularly given the tremendous infrastructure needs facing our state." Hetch Hetchy is hardly a birthright, but Feinstein is correct that draining it would be very costly.

The report's authors made no recommendation, and emphatically pointed out that every aspect of the report suffered from too little concrete information. To get better information, DWR's chief hydrologist, Gary Bardini, estimated a more complete study would cost about $65 million. There was no mention of who would pay.

Colorado flows low again

From the Las Vegas Sun, via today's BC news:

Water-system managers on the Colorado River had high hopes for high water at the beginning of this year.

Those hopes, like the snow on top the Rocky Mountains, are rapidly evaporating. The critical April-through-July runoff period in the mountains, which provides most of the water going to the river, is more than 25 percent off the average. The disappointing results make this the sixth year of the last seven in which flows were significantly below average.

"We still have a couple of weeks, but it looks like it is going to be a little disappointing," said Colleen Dwyer, a federal Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman. The bureau is the manager of the lower basin of the Colorado River, including Lake Mead. Las Vegas and suburbs get more than 90 percent of their drinking water from Lake Mead.

Water managers and scientists earlier this year had predicted near-average runoff. Hopes were particularly high because the previous year had spectacular snowfall in some areas that at least temporarily reversed five crushing years of drought.

"Around about April or March, it was looking like another decent year," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist with the Desert Research Institute's Western Regional Climate Center in Reno. "Runoff was looking at being close to 100 percent. But we got warmer temperatures and less precipitation, not dramatically so, but still it was considerably drier and warmer than usual. Both those things hastened the demise of the snowpack and sent it up to the atmosphere rather than into the Colorado River."
....
The warmer temperatures could mean that precipitation, when it does come, would come more as rain, less as snow. That's bad news for water-systems dependent on the Colorado River because rain evaporates more quickly and puts less water into the river.

Ken Albright, resource director of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, water wholesaler for most of Clark County, said there is some good news in this water year, which officially ends Sept. 30.

"Upper basin reservoirs are in many instances now full," he said of the lakes high in the mountains. "That is a good sign for us."

Climate Change and California

From the San Francisco Chronicle, via today's BC News:

California will become significantly hotter and drier by the end of the century, causing severe air pollution, a drop in the water supply, melting of 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack and up to six times more heat-related deaths in major urban centers, according to a sweeping study compiled with help from respected scientists from around the country.

The weather -- up to 10.5 degrees warmer by 2100 -- would make last month's heat wave look average. If industrial and vehicle emissions continue unabated, there could be up to 100 more days a year when temperatures hit 90 degrees or above in Los Angeles and 95 degrees or above in Sacramento. Both cities have about 20 days of such extreme heat now.

The good news: If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are significantly curtailed, according to the report released Tuesday, the number of extremely hot days might only increase by half that amount.

The report, released by the California Environmental Protection Agency, comes from the California Climate Change Center, established three years ago by the California Energy Commission. Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC Berkeley are responsible for the core research and about 75 scientists from universities, government agencies and nonprofit groups contributed to the report, which has been billed as a layperson's guide to technical documents prepared in support of initiatives to address global warming by Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators.

Judge declines to block All American Canal proposal

From the San Diego Union Tribune, via B&C:

In a case with implications across the arid West and into Mexico, a federal judge has refused to block a controversial water conservation plan aimed at providing San Diego with a vast new supply from the Imperial Valley.

The ruling this week by Nevada federal Judge Philip Pro lifts a potential legal hurdle to the $251 million project that involves building a lined 23-mile section of the All-American Canal near the Mexicali border. The project could save 56,000 acre feet of water – enough for about 112,000 households – from seeping into the ground every year. But, in doing so, Mexican farmers will lose that groundwater they have counted on for decades.

“This is a battle for the future of our city, of our region – and today's ruling only strengthens our resolve to halt the canal project,” said Juan Ignacio Guajardo, a member of a business group called Consejo de Desarollo Económico de Mexicali.

Describing many of the claims of damage as “speculative,” Pro's order denies a petition by two U.S. environmental organizations and the Mexicali business group to block the project.

More canal lining projects proposed

From the NC Times, via today's BC Water News:

Saying the water it would bring to San Diego County over the next century was too cheap to pass up, regional water leaders voted Thursday to spend an additional $38.3 million on a long-discussed project to line a canal in Imperial Valley.

Four North County water agencies opposed the expenditure, saying it wasn't quite as cheap as it looked.

San Diego County Water Authority board members also voted to spend $4 million more on a similar lining project in Coachella Valley.

The two actions mean the Water Authority, and county water ratepayers, will spend at least $134.3 million ---- on top of the $219.3 million the state is giving the Water Authority for the projects ---- to complete the projects for a total of $353.6 million.

Officials say the water that the canal-lining projects will bring to county residents will be the cheapest, most reliable portion of the county's water supply for most of the next 110 years.

"It is dirt-cheap water," Halla Razak, the Water Authority's Colorado River program manager, said during a break in Thursday's meeting. "I mean, trying to find new sources of water right now is like ---- not possible."