Thankful for the rain.

Aquafornia is an indispensable site as Chris pulls together all of the essential water news for Californians and then links to the source. A good example is this story on the future of Lake Mead as covered by Las Vegas Channel 3 TV.

Lake Mead is at its lowest level since it was filled back in 1937. Most experts agree it will go much lower.

In the bay area we have had more than a normal November's rainfall. I have recorded some 2.5 in. on my deck. The ground is wet and I have captured some 200 gal. to make sure that our suburban lot sized orchard stays hydrated in the coming cold days. Still, this is a La Niña year and therefore somewhat unpredictable.

Water is political quicksand in California. I have yet to pay attention to the political action in Sacramento without getting the impression that it is all posturing for votes rather than truly planning for a sustainable California. Given that we have a new Governor, a Jerry Brown says that he is old enough to be able to do what is right rather than just what is politic, there is some scant hope, but I doubt it.

KGO-TV (ABC Channel 7 from San Francisco) will have a story tonight regarding California's Water Wars. I hope that Dan Ashley will act as an explainer rather than just be a mediator of a he said - she said special interest cat fight.

So, I guess that I am thankful for the water I have and conserve it as best I can. Being Green is about more than Politics.

Changes at California Greening

Over the next week or so, we will be adding a new author to California Greening: Martin Zehr (a.k.a. Mato Ska). He will be keeping you up to date on water issues and I will focus more of my time on Global Warming. I need to take a day or so to set things up correctly, but I am sure that you will find his posts to be right on target.

However, there is one today that I want to bring to everyone's attention. It started with a Twitter update from Matt Weiser of the Sacramento Bee. He noted that the Big 5 was meeting on water.

Then, thanks to Aquafornia, I was pointed to story of that meeting as told by the LA Times.

So as the clock ticks toward a Sunday deadline for signing or rejecting more than 700 bills on his desk, Schwarzenegger has engaged legislative leaders in a game of chicken, threatening a mass veto if lawmakers don't strike a deal to upgrade the state's water system.

Imagine that, almost every bill out of the Legislature left to rot on the Bill Terminator's desk. To think that I took the legislature to task for not passing what should have been a no brainer bill, AB 560.

Aside: At one time, I had hopes that the constitutional convention would help structure a way out of this mess. Now, I am not sure. Waiting for an update which I hope to get today.

Our friends at Restore the Delta did not let this go by without comment.

Where are the adults in Sacramento?

Yes, the Governor has told Legislative Leaders that he wants a water package on his desk by Friday night before he will act on the 700 bills sitting on his desk. But with a significant portion of the Legislature not in town, and members scattered all over the world presently, can that really happen?

I only see one legislator in Sacramento whom I trust to deal honestly with water, to require the type of regional water planning that Martin ardently and articulately champions. That is Lois Wolk. She may be the only adult that got elected.

If you have not signed up for the Delta Flow from Restore the Delta, please do. (Kalmran did.) They are not frequent but they do let you know how the politicians are failing us all. You can find a list of the back issues of Delta Flows here as well as a box where you can fill you email address to sign up. Better yet. Join.

Water is not important until you are thirsty.

It's been a long time since I posted much about water issues, so this is a reminder that the problems are real, that Mark Twain was right and that we are all being sold a bill of goods starting with Senator Feinstein, flowing through the Delta and ending up in the San Diego like Delta Water.

Click Read more! to get the meat of this.


Some disjointed bits of information which I hope to bring together by the end of this piece.

Fresh Water: Where does it come from?
The availability of fresh water is one of the most important needs of all humans. Much of the fresh water in the world is tied up in ice, either at the North and South Poles, in the Greenland ice sheet or in glaciers. Six of the largest rivers flowing through the most populous countries on earth are fed by glaciers in the Himalayas. These are the Indus, Ghanges (India), Brahmaputra (Banghladesh), Mekong (Cambodia, Vietnam), Yellow and Yangtze (China). Hundreds of millions of people are dependent on these rivers and, during summer, on the glaciers that feed them.

The problem is that these glaciers are melting. In fact, the rate is fast enough that the changes can be observed from space. The dust layers that marked the US and Soviet atomic tests from the 1950's and 1960's are gone.

The potential dislocation of so many people due to a lack of water is a crisis that Obama did not even mention today. For India, the events in Mumbai, as horrific as they were, pale in comparison. Things that happen on climatic time scales do not make good news.

California's Delta is about more than fish.
In California, we are also facing a crisis due to local weather and the potential of a worse crisis due to global warming. I have written a lot about the problems of the California Delta. One reason that I don't cover this more is that the AquaMaven does such a great job at Aquafornia. In fact, I have this as an RSS feed so that I get so see it every day. The reason I said that we are being sold a bill of goods can be seen in this recent post on the status of the Delta. It is from the Stockton Record.

It’s a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. More than 200 agencies have some say on what happens in the vast Delta, and the product of their labors doesn’t seem to satisfy anyone, as fish die and the water supply shrinks.

So, what can an individual do other than shower with a friend or let the lawn turn brown. I pay attention to the weather reports. I live where I can see the area's largest reservoir from my family room window. It is below normal levels for this time of year. The Sacramento Bee reported today that we would have normal rainfall this year. Even that may not be enough to restore the reservoir from it's current condition.

While Governor Schwarzenegger has made a lot out of his Delta Vision Task Force, all of those involved knew that the only solution he would accept was a new "conveyance" through or "canal" around the Delta so that more water was made available for Central Valley Agriculture and Southern California suburban lawns.

One organization has managed to pull agricultural interests, some regional developer interests, environmentalist and sportsmen into a coalition for common sense. That is Restore the Delta. Today, they published a set of principles and a platform for 2009. I fully support this approach and reproduce the platform here as it is not yet online at their web site.

Restore the Delta's 2009 Platform

Over the last six months, Restore the Delta staff, board members, and advisors have worked to create a campaign platform that expresses our vision for restoration of the Delta. Below are the principles of this work. The campaign platform will be used as a tool to make our vision known to legislators and for organizing volunteers throughout the year.
To create in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta a world-class region in which productive agriculture and habitat protection are successfully interwoven, Restore the Delta advocates the following principles:

Restore the flow of fresh water by immediately reducing exports to a level compatible with protecting Delta communities. All proposals for long-term Delta management must be based on a firm understanding of Delta freshwater needs and must include strong protection of sufficient flows of water necessary for public health, agriculture, and habitat for native and desirable species. We advocate restoring enough Delta outflow pattern to return the mixing zone of salt water and fresh water to the western part of the Delta near Suisun Bay. We also advocate restoring freshwater flows to the San Joaquin River by retiring drainage-impaired lands loaded with selenium and salt in the Central Valley. Appropriate and sustainable water export reductions must be made before any proposals for alternative export conveyance or diversion are considered.

Protect the Delta from unrealistic water planning strategies and uses. The Delta is a common resource that should provide the same quality freshwater supply to all Delta users. The State Water Project will never develop all the water supplies outside the Delta on which the export program was based. We call on the State to recognize natural limitations on water supply and to enforce Water Code provisions that restrict exports to water not needed in the Delta itself.

Restore proper governance of the Delta. The State Water Resources Control Board must be empowered to enforce existing water codes regarding water quality and quantity. A fully-funded SWRCB enforcement staff must operate independently of board members charged with creating regulations and water rights decisions.

Adopt flexible strategies for managing water and habitat. All Delta planning must address increased flood risks, sea level rises, and peak river inflows that are likely to result from climate change as well as address possible seismic events. These plans must allow for incremental responses to ecosystem changes. Any isolated facility for moving water through the Delta is inherently inflexible, and we reject it. We advocate managing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a primarily freshwater estuary. Proposals for facilities such as fish protection diverters, set-back levees, gates, and barriers should be evaluated with a view to the core principles of protecting the flow of fresh water and fisheries while maintaining flexibility of the whole system.

Respect the experience and expertise of Delta landowners. We advocate creation of a conservancy that will ensure local control of the Delta, prevent forced access to private land, protect the continuity of the Delta, mediate purchases of agricultural land, identify restoration projects and enhance existing public access, and provide funding for levee maintenance. We urge support for Delta landowners who maintain levees for the benefit of the Delta, adjacent communities, and regional infrastructure.

Encourage regional self-sufficiency. We encourage statewide conservation, recycling, reuse, and regional self-sufficiency to generate up to 7 million acre feet annually in areas of need outside the Delta, using as a model measures instituted by the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California urban agencies such as the Metropolitan Water District. We advocate replacing reduced exports and addressing potential flooding with flood plain recapture, ground water replenishment, and demand management initiatives, and we advocate use of recycled urban and agricultural water, ground water desalination, water use efficiency, and urban run-off management.

Ensure emergency readiness to protect the people, property, and infrastructure of the Delta and to provide for a healthy ecosystem. In consultation with Delta experts, the State must immediately prepare and fully fund a comprehensive flood plan and emergency readiness plan.

The attitude of the San Diego Tribune stands in sharp contrast to the practical goals of Restore the Delta. It is much more of a gimme what want cause I gotta grow approach and places the growth over any ecological concern. Their November 26th editorial is headlined Give 'em the hook and they are not talking about fish. It goes on the verbal attack immediately.

Environmental activists continue to deny Californians more water in the name of saving fish.

How dare they deny us our right to use as much water as we want? Such a difference from Restore the Delta. Their timing was impeccable as another lawsuit was filed Monday, Dec. 1.

Calling it “the biggest lawsuit about the biggest ecological and legal catastrophe in California today,” the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) filed suit in Sacramento Superior Court Friday, November 28, 2008, to protect Delta public trust resources—including endangered migratory fisheries of salmon and open water fish species—and to end wasteful and unreasonable diversions of water from the Delta by big state and federal water projects.

The suit also asks the court to halt irrigation of several hundred thousand acres of selenium contaminated lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the drainage from which pollutes
wetlands, the San Joaquin River, and the Delta.

Lastly, there are two conferences on Water taking place in San Francisco this week. In one, Corporate Users will learn how to manage towards sustainability. In the other, concerned groups will talk about the privatization of water and how that could deny water rights to individuals in the name of corporate earnings. If you think about the melting glaciers, it is not unusual that one of the organizations protesting privatization has connections to India.

We have already seen examples of failed water privatization in California, especially in Stockton where the city tried to outsource its water department to a private firm.

California agriculture and climate change

Thanks to Chris at Aquafornia, I was pointed to a very interesting article in the Daily Democrat, Woodland, CA. It is one of the few recent articles that goes beyond the conventional wisdom on these issues.

How will climate change affect Yolo County's agriculture? There is much in the news these days about the potential effects of higher temperatures, rising sea level, and drought in the Western United States, but translating these global trends into local projections for agriculture is not an easy task.

That is not an easy topic to understand, let alone explain to an audience that may not be accustomed to hearing it. Writer Louise Jackson gets to the meat of the matter fairly quickly. Click Read more! to get my view.


To begin with, Jackson does not spend any time on the "what is the real cause" question.

It is generally recognized that much of the climate change that will occur during the next two to three decades is based on greenhouse gasses that have already been emitted by human activities such as use of fossil fuels and fertilizers.

Now all of the urban greens may think of cars and driving and heating our homes, but Jackson makes a very key point by adding the word fertilizers to the list. Not only do fertilizers contribute directly to global warming, nitrogen is normally delivered in the form of urea, manufactured from natural gas. It is a double hit, because natural gas is being touted as the alternative for oil in powering our transportation system.

After going through a list of the various probable crop changes that will be required by a warming climate, Jackson gets to the effect of changes in precipitation.

In the future, more Sierran precipitation will arrive as rainfall, and snowmelt will come earlier in Spring. Due to Yolo County's location, it is expected to be less vulnerable to water shortages than agricultural locations further south in California that are dependent on deliveries of water from the Delta pumping stations.

But the reduced Sierra snowpack will increase flooding along the Sacramento River, presenting economic and ecological tradeoffs for ecosystem restoration vs. farming

For me, this all says that Greens had better become more involved in the issues over the food we eat" how and where it is grown, delivered and prepared.

I have long believed that these changes will dominate politics in this state for a long time to come and a Green Party that is not engaged will not be around long. I have also stated that the battles which mean the most to California's future are not going to be fought in the coastal cities, but rather in the Central Valley.

As Green work through a strategy for 2010 and beyond, there must be a focus on doing more where the need is greatest.

LA Housing Plan ignores Water

I picked up a bit of information at Aquafornia today. The City of Los Angeles, following nearly a century of swallowing Mulhollands' Water now feels so comfortable in it's position that it can produce a Draft Housing Element for the General Plan that totally ignores the reality of water and the effect that a changing climate will have on it's supply. I'll quote the entire segment from today.

Los Angeles’ draft Housing Element ignores water issues, says the Westchester Parents blog: As water supplies are being sharply cut back and restrictions are being imposed on residents, the 225 page draft barely devotes a single page to the water supply system for housing. It begins by stating unconvincingly that the “water supply for new projects is generally adequate.” The entire section of the draft devoted to Los Angeles’s water supply is just four paragraphs and two bullet-points long while elsewhere, the document devotes a dozen pages to other forms of non-potable water such as grey water, storm water and waste water. The plan doesn’t safeguard the supply for current residents, says the blogger. Click here for more from the Westchester Parents blog.

Los Angeles Greens have shown more leadership and direction on Water issues than any other locals in the GPCA. They have officially endorsed the Sustainability Principles of the California Water Impact Network. I hope that they can organize some official push back on the LA Planning process so that the availability and distribution of water is more than an assumption, it is something that is calculated, planned for and that the distribution is both environmentally and socially just, considerations that have long been sacrificed on the altar of growth.