The major media outlets, television, radio, the blogosphere, the Washington Post, the New York Times' estimable Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy and Nelson Schwartz have been reporting on California's drought and water woes, and there has been an inevitable rising tide of confusion and misapprehension as a result. The most frequently expressed misunderstandings are (1) Farmers are getting 80% of the water and are exempt from Governor Brown's mandatory 25% water use reduction – this is an unfair distribution of pain; (2) California shouldn't grow almonds and lettuce in the desert; (3) Californians, or at least Southern Californians, let water run down the street, water lawns where they shouldn't have lawns, have too many swimming pools, and deserve no sympathy for their wastrel ways.
While (1) derives from MSM reporting and sloppy general public thinking and (2) is half false, (3) is fair. But we haven't yet understood in public, in print, on the air, that this drought, and rising sea levels due to climate change, have driven us into fundamentally changing the economy, technology, and culture of California, the 7th largest economy on earth. We are in the beginning of a revolution. We must change our plumbing, our infrastructure, our financing, or insurance, and our values.
I'd like to use these misunderstandings and complaints to get into the revolutionary overhaul we're entering. Please follow below the Elegant Cheeze Doodle.
To dispose of Complaint (1), Farmers are getting 80% of the water, and are exempt from the governor's mandatory 25% reduction requirement,let's look at the map of California water delivery projects. (This is not an easy map to examine; it has lots of icons and text and it's best viewed enlarged.)
The red squares represent federal Central Valley Project (CVP) dams and reservoirs. The blue squares are California State Water Project (SWP) infrastructure. Purple = SWP–CVP shared infrastructure
Green = other federally owned/operated infrastructure; Grey = State and private infrastructure.
Bold letters and colored squares denote reservoirs
Bold italic letters and colored (except light blue) lines denote canals/aqueducts
Light blue lines denote rivers
Looking at this map, several things are clear.
1. Water from federal and state water projects is delivered to some but not all of California.
2. Not all of California has dams and reservoirs.
3. The water delivered via water projects originates in the mountains in the north of the state and in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the east of the state.
4. Along the California coast, from the Oregon border to Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County, there are no reservoirs connected to the federal or state water projects. (San Francisco is connected to Hetch Hetchy dam, in the Sierras, just outside of Yosemite.)
5. From Lake Cachuma down to the Mexican border at San Diego, there are no reservoirs connected to the federal CVP or to the SWP. Los Angeles infamously gets its water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which devastated the Owens Valley and Mono Lake. San Diego gets its water from the Colorado River Aqueduct.
(For a list of all the dams and reservoirs in California, large and small, see this.)
The State Water Project and the Central Valley Project were built in the 1930's to deliver water from northern California to the great Central Valley, for the specific purposes of managing floods, providing water to farmers and towns during dry periods, and fostering agriculture. Here is a map of the Central Valley Project service area.
Looking at the first map, the map of water projects in California, if you live anywhere in California that is not on the Central Valley Project, the State Water Project, or the Colorado River Project, what comes out of your faucet doesn't come from the projects that water Central Valley agriculture. (Contrariwise, Los Angeles, population 3.8 million+, takes its water from what had been rich farm land and fresh water marsh habitat for millions of birds and their predators and prey.) Agriculture is not depriving you of water.
It's also relevant to recognize that the CVP's and SWP's purposes are to serve and develop agriculture. That was the intent of Congress in making the loans to fund the construction of the CVP. See the Federal Rivers and Harbors Act of 1937-38 in which the project was reauthorized "and declared to be for the purposes of improving navigation, regulating the flow of the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento River, controlling floods, providing for storage and for the delivery of the stored waters thereof... for the reclamation of arid and semi-arid lands and lands of Indian reservations, and other beneficial uses, and for the generation and sale of electric energy as a means of financially aiding and assisting such undertakings and in order to permit the full utilization of the works constructed to accomplish the aforesaid purposes.”) Under federal law, “reclamation” of arid and semi-arid lands means converting “waste” lands to human purposes, primarily agriculture. When the Reclamation Act of 1902 was signed, the primary goal of the program was to develop the West by promoting family farming, and limiting land speculation on parcels of dry ground that would receive irrigated agriculture. (That last goal did not work out so well.)
The third matter to address is the figure “80% of the water.” According to the Public Policy Institute of California, statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban.
Also per the PPIC, approximately nine million acres of farmland in California are irrigated, representing roughly 80% of all human water use. (Presumably, all human water use in the state of California.)
How can these two statements be consistent?
It depends on how you define “use”.
In measuring water use, the California Department of Water Resources uses some key definitions. One is “Consumptive use.” Consumptive use is “a use of water that removes the water from the system so that it cannot be be recovered for reuse by some other entity. Consumptive uses may be considered, legally, as beneficial or non-beneficial. A beneficial consumptive use would be crop evapotranspiration.”
On the other hand, there is “Dedicated water.” Dedicated water, as defined by the Department
of Water Resources (DWR) is "water distributed among urban and agricultural uses, used for
protecting and restoring the environment, or storage in surface water and groundwater reservoirs.
In any year, some of the dedicated supply includes water that is used multiple times (reuse) and
water held in storage from previous years. This is about 40 to 50 percent of the total annual
water supply received from precipitation and imported from Colorado, Oregon, and
Mexico.”
Dedicated water includes water flowing in the Wild and Scenic Rivers. In reality, about half the water we use gets re-used, and fits the definition of dedicated water.
So. If you mean water consumptively used by only agriculture, municipal, and industrial users, then agriculture uses about 80% of the total use, about 24.66 million acre-feet of water per year. But if you mean “dedicated” water, which includes environmental uses, such as allocations for reservoirs, recreation, and fish and wildlife, then agriculture's share is closer to 40% of all uses. The total of all uses is about 61.24 million acre-feet per year.
Is it the case that agriculture's 40% or 80% use of water is exempt from the governor's mandatory 25% water use reduction, and that constitutes a disproportionate allocation of pain? California agriculture is exempt from the governor's executive order, but they've already lost the entire delivery of the State Water Project. And some water districts have lost as much as 75% of the CVP water.
Groundwater overdraft, which has been an increasing problem since the 1970's, is no longer a useful alternative for many growers. There is an ongoing market in water, meaning growers can sell some or all of their water allocations to other users – but this is where we begin to see the revolution.
When the State Water Project turned off the taps in November 2014, it wasn't just growers who were left to rely on rain, local surface water, and groundwater. It was also about 200,000 residents of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and San Ramon; about 330,000 residents of Fremont, Newark and Union City; and about 23 million people from Silicon Valley to the Tehachapis, according to the Contra Costa Times article cited above.
This means that the SWP, the single largest user of energy in California, has significantly cut its energy use. The SWP, in sending water from the San Francisco Bay Delta to Southern California, uses 2-3% of the all the electricity consumer in the state, per the Natural Resources Defense Council. In pumping water 2,000 feet over the Tehachapis, the highest lift of any water system in the world, the SWP uses approximately one-third of the total average household electric use in the LA region.
It also means that agriculture is being forced into massive changes. Agriculture can not compete financially with municipal and industrial water demand. Agriculture uses a lot of water per crop to grow things – cotton, corn, alfalfa, almonds, apples - but we don't pay very much for our agricultural products. But the cost of water is rising like Jack's bean stalk.
In 2014, per the San Jose Mercury News, Harris Ranch Beef Co., one of the nation's largest family-owned agribusinesses, paid $1,350 an acre-foot at auction for Kern River water from the Buena Vista Water Storage District, near Bakersfield. Paramount Farming bought $11 million worth of water at the same auction. The Santa Clara Valley Water District paid $582 to $862 per acre-foot to rice farmers in Glenn and Colusa counties who had too little water to make a rice crop, but enough water to sell.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District paid $75 an acre-foot for Placer County Water Authority surplus water from the American River. Only months later, the Placer agency sold water to the San Joaquin Valley's Westlands Water District for $325 -- more than four times the East Bay rate. The East Bay benefitted from a long-term contract, lower delivery cost and shared regulatory expenses.
“You can't pay $1,000 per acre-foot to grow cotton,” Shafter farmer Fred Starrh told Bloomberg Business. He planted almonds instead, for which there is increasing demand – from Asia. Almonds use as much water as 74% of California households, per the news article. California supplies 80% of the world market for almonds, and almond prices continue to rise.
Tomatoes: According to Western Farm Press, in 2013, California produced 14 million tons of tomatoes. But in 2014, the price went up by 17 percent, largely due to the cost of water.
In California, 500,000 acres of agricultural land were abandoned in 2014, according to the University of California at Davis.
Growers are shifting from crops with high water use like cotton and alfalfa to crops with high cash value, high market demand, and lower water costs. Almonds, wine grapes, vegetables, tree fruits, will continue in production. But there will be less land being farmed, as growers increasingly avoid cotton, corn, and wheat, high-water use crops. According to the USDA, in 2014 corn acreage in California dropped 34% and wheat production dropped 53% from 2013, and cotton dropped 60% in the past decade.
Certainly, California farmers are changing from old irrigation techniques of open unlined
canals, open in-air irrigation, and surface soaking, to drip irrigation, root zone sensors, motion sensors that tell the water sprayers when a cow is in the barn, rather than spraying water at pre-set intervals. But more efficient irrigation is not likely to create another half a million acre-feet of water. And the state's current Housing Authority plan still calls for more population, more housing. And, the people of California passed Proposition 1 in the last election, permitting the construction of greater heights on existing dams. Unfortunately, the ability to trap more water depends on more water falling, which does not square with the ongoing drought. State and federal forecasters have not provided reasons to hope for a return to yesteryear's regular rain regime.
California's agricultural production is rapidly changing, the costs of everything we grow – meat, dairy, poultry, tree crops, fruit and vegetables – can be expected to rise continuously. The environment, fish and wildlife, forests and marshes, continue to suffer under the pressures of drought and increased human appropriation of land and water. And we people in California are going to have to change our behavior a lot, under the governor's mandate of 25% water use reduction, and probably for the next 50 years. Fountains and lawns in the desert, golf course watering, lawn watering, having a lawn, having a swimming pool, leaving the water on while you brush your teeth – these will become increasingly expensive. Washing your car, no. That can be done at a car wash that uses recycled water. Native plants in, fresh water thirsty landscaping out. Grey water landscape watering in. Flushing toilets with perfectly good drinking water, out. Flush toilet replacement with recycled water toilets or compost toilets, in.
But wait, there's more.
Rising Sea Levels
Due to climate change, according to the National Academy of Sciences, sea level rise along the California coast in the Bay Area will rise 8 inches within 18 years.
The Pacific Institute has a very useful interactive map of the impacts of sea level rise on the California coast and on the San Francisco Bay.
In just the San Francisco Bay Area, sea level rise will bring the following changes:
1. Increased salt water intrusion upstream, sending the salt water mixing zone further east into the Delta
2. Increased salt water intrusion upstream on coastal streams and bay side streams, impacting mixing zones and the root zones of riparian plants, probably causing the die off of salt-intolerant plants.
3. Increased salt water intrusion will cause changes in the forage plants of the dairy industry.
This will also affect horses, sheep, elk and deer.
4. Increased sea level will increase high tides, and raise water pressure on bayside and shore line underground and underwater installations, such as BART tunnels, bridge pilings, building foundations, underground cabling, etc.
5. The low spots on Highway 101 near the coast in San Mateo County will need to be re-engineered.
6. The low spots on Highway 101 near the Bay in Marin County will need to be re-engineered.
7. Increased salt walter intrusion will cause shifts in subsurface pipes, requiring re-engineering of underground sewer, water, and electric cable pipes; it will also cause wells and septic fields to fail.
The state is in line to spend billions of dollars dealing with sea level rise, and is “woefully unprepared”, according to a state legislative report referenced in an article on Think Progress.
If we make a table of cultural, economic, technological, agricultural and environmental changes due to extended drought, sea level rise, and its mother climate change, we see a strong case for the word “Revolutionary,” meaning thorough, great, marked change.
Old New
Using drinking water for flushing toilets Recycled water flush toilets, compost toilets
Open agricultural canals, above ground Drip irrigation, lined canals, plant-covered canals
water wheel agricultural irrigation
Fountains in the desert No fountains in the desert
Lawns in the desert Native plants in the desert
Green golf courses Brown golf courses
Washing your car with a hose Washing your car at the car wash only, or paying a fine
Watering the lawn with the hose Watering the native plants with grey water
Leaving the water running while you
brush your teeth Not
Growing cotton commercially Not much
Growing corn commercially Not much
Growing wheat commercially Not much
Growing alfalfa commercially Not much
Agricultural water at $25 per acre-foot Agricultural water at more than $1250 per acre-foot
Boating at Bailey's Cove, Lake Shasta Gone with the water
Delta smelt Dead and gone
Endless growth Dude, there's no water
The governor's 25% reduction in water use is a start; the Proposition 1 plan to increase the height of dams to catch more water seems - counterintuitive. The state's Roman Empire plan of endless growth, endless building, as Nagourney et al point out, seems to have hit the limit, although as recently as 2014, the Marin Municipal Water District chief engineer told the county board of supervisors that there was still enough water to build more housing units, given certain assumptions. Those assumptions did not include 4 years of drought, mandatory reductions, or future reductions in use. The state water districts must present their Urban Water Management Plans every 5 years, and 2015 is the year. We will see what the water districts of California report. There is still the conflict between reality and the state Housing Authority's demand that we plan for more growth. There is no particular reason to think that rationality will prevail - look at Phoenix, Arizona, for example.
Finally, Do we grow almonds and lettuce in the desert?
Almonds no, lettuce yes. We grow almonds from Tehama County in Northern California to Kern County in the south. Here's a map. We infamously, again, grow lettuce in the Imperial Valley, which is certainly the desert.