Dear Congressman Huffman,
Per your invitation for response to and commentary on your Drought Response Bill, below are my comments.
I recognize how great an amount of time and effort goes into creating, editing, and proposing any legislation. I grew up in Washington, D.C., in a political family. My father was President Reagan's Treasury Undersecretary for Tax Reform and Fiscal Policy. I worked at EPA's office of Policy Analysis during the Reagan administration. I know that the circumstances under which you labor are even more strenuous than they were when I served. I want you to know that I am enormously grateful to you for spending your time serving us, the people. In the legislative critique that follows I have kept in mind the enormity of the hill you must climb and the rocks and brambles in every step of the way.
My greatest concern with the Drought Response Bill as presently constructed is that it does not address the greatest problem we face, which is the unsustainability of California's current economic and water policies.
Our agricultural, industrial, and municipal uses of water are premised on an infinite supply of land and water, however inconveniently interrupted by drought, groundwater overdraft, the cost of additional plumbing, et cetera.
At present, we have numerous severe water problems in California, including:
1. Unsustainable agriculture, based on groundwater overdraft, reliant on water piped from north to south, and driven by market demand rather than by sustainability policy or science.
2. Unsustainable municipal and industrial growth, not constrained by any sustainability policy or science.
3. No sustainability policy.
The Drought Response Bill effectively spends additional federal monies on more plumbing, to capture and distribute any additional water that falls. This is a very bad idea, in my view, and duplicates the efforts of California Proposition 1, which passed on the November 2014 ballot. My view is that we must create sustainability policies based on scientific data, and modify our economic development accordingly. This bill does not undertake this necessary elementary premise, which has been missing since the California and federal legislation of the 1930's that gave us the state water project and the central valley project.
I have written a fair bit about the current drought and I hope my attempts at fairness and understanding of the concerns of all stakeholders come through. If I may, I would direct your attention to this recent article.
Some of the ideas in the Drought Response legislation were discussed in the 1980's, by Environmental Defense Fund attorney Tom Graff and myself. For example, your proposal to cover existing open canals to prevent evaporation loss of water has a certain attractive quality, but its down side is that covering the channels will effectively kill the birds and wildlife that depend on those canals for drinking water and for food. That is a loss that has not yet been quantified by studies; there is no data, so far as I know. As one alternative, the canals could be lined, and also covered with aquatic plants.
Desalination
The desalination plant of Monterey County, for example, came after ten years of discussion with the regulatory community, while growth in the county had been allowed to continue until the rivers were dried and the groundwater overdrafted. There is a mighty arrogance in this endless continuation of construction without water. A rational response is, if not punitive, certainly not encouragement.
The idea of a desalination plant at or near Point San Quentin has been proposed several times. However, the impacts of the brine outfall into the federally listed winter run chinook salmon and steelhead runs is not known. The construction of a desalination plant under the conditions that will prevail in the coming 2 decades, with the inevitable rise in sea level and bay levels, has not been addressed. 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. With 8 more inches of sea level rise, a desalination plant on San Francisco Bay would have to be engineered to allow its intake and outfall pipes to accommodate these changes.
More construction of more projects seems to overlook the climate impacts we know we will be facing.
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.
These are things on which the Drought legislation could focus.
I would urge you to take another run at this legislation and I'd be happy to help you in any small way I can. In its present form, I think it requires additional analyses of impacts such as those I have mentioned.
Very truly yours,
Martha E. Ture