You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event, in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information.
This is the letter for week 20 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to see topics for all the strike letters, see this story.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
Because, whether it’s rising or vanishing,
water determines whether or not life continues on this peninsula.
This week’s topic is Water Access.
Currently
- SF uses recycled water in Harding Park, the Fleming Golf Courses, and the east side of Sharp Park Golf Course. A plan to use recycled water in Golden Gate Park, Lincoln Park Golf Course, and the Presidio Golf Course, and for “other landscaped areas for irrigation,” is projected to be in place by November 2020.
- SF uses roughly 65 million gallons per day, among the lowest per capita use in CA. The majority of our water comes from Hetch Hetchy, with the rest from local surface reservoirs in Alameda and San Mateo Counties and from groundwater pumped from the Westside Basin Aquifer.
SF’s water goals
The goal of OneWaterSF is holistic resource management. Examples include:
- An ordinance requiring all new buildings over 250,000 sq ft to install on-site non-potable water reuse systems for storm water, rainwater and grey water for anything not requiring potable water (toilets, cooling towers, etc.)
- Conducting a pilot trial of blackwater recycling for non-potable uses.
- Allowing the expansion of a brewery water reuse project.
However
- While dendrochronology data from Central Valley Blue Oaks show that the most recent drought is not unusual or a historical anomaly in terms of measured precipitation, when combined with temperature increase (which causes more and faster evaporation), the most recent drought was the most severe three-year span (with drier soils) of any in the last 1,200 years.
- NASA predicts rainfall will decline by 20-25% in CA by 2100.
- The Sierra snowpack is endangered by hotter temperatures producing precipitation as rain instead of as snow. Temperature increase also causes snow to melt faster, and makes it likely that by 2050 during drought there will be no Sierra snowpack at all.
- CA groundwater faces multiple threats: overdrawing, aquifer collapse (for example, from land subsidence), saltwater intrusion, non-point source pollution and contaminant plumes, and fracking (at play as well in aquifer collapse and non-point source pollution).
- Hetch Hetchy depends on 280 miles of pipeline and 60 miles of tunnels that travel over 167 miles and cross 4 county lines and three major earthquake faults.
- SF gets roughly 46% of our energy from various size hydropower projects. Moving to 100% renewable energy will likely increase that percentage just when water for such projects will become less available and less dependable.
- According to the World Resource Institute, California is facing significant stress on water availability that will intensify with global heating. Water stress, caused when people use water at a faster rate than it is replaced, is a problem that becomes much worse during drought – or even a prolonged period without enough rain.
So what does SF need to do? We need:
- 100% water recycling, including of blackwater, for all residences, all buildings, and all uses. We cannot afford to waste anything, and definitely not water. This is not new or dangerous technology; Namibia has been recycling blackwater into potable water for 51 years.
- And we need to do this now. The window for affordable long-term municipal bonds is closing rapidly, and the timeline for beginning building a water system that can deal with flooding and drought is only in the next 18 months.
It’s time. We have a climate emergency. If we’re to survive, you must act now!