Massive diversions of water in northern California have attained the status of “best practice” in water management. This practice runs contrary to sustainability as an underlying principle of water allocations. Water politics in this state is focused in a state legislature that is not reflective of the needs of users. Looking at the ecological changes around Owens Lake may not be as important as looking at the ramifications of the diversion of Owens Lake to Los Angeles. The series of articles at the website http://m.ammoth.us/blog/2010/04/owens-lake/ are updates of the current status on the ecosystems surrounding Owens Lake and the changing relation between urban and rural ecosystems.
Not mentioned in this narrative (Wyoming is in Los Angeles) is the battle waged by agricultural and ranching users in the Owens Valley region that reached the level of armed conflict. Unless a new model, based on adaptive governance and regional water planning, is adopted throughout the state of California, the political influences of southern users will continue to have their way.
States, such as Texas, have demonstrated the effectiveness of regional water plans and have increased the ability of local users to construct plans based on regional supplies. The issue is how can we establish processes that protect the the needs and concerns of local users, address the hydrological and environmental ramifications of decisions when others are free to come in and open the spigot for others. At what point do decisions that rob one region of the water resource for the benefit of others reach the level of being arbitrary and capricious? Why are voters throughout the state empowered to make the decisions that will not impact on their lives?
Underlying the questions is how we try to learn the lessons from the Owens Valley experience. It’s all very good for us to aesthetically gaze on the remarkable changes in Owens Lake ecosystem. It’s another thing to incorporate the reasonable concerns of users who are robbed of their needed resource as a vital component before decisions concerning diversions are made.
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rholmes says:
April 27, 2010 at 9:06 amThanks for the comment, Martin.
The last thing we would want to do is merely “aesthetically gaze” on Owens Lake! Though I won’t deny that mammoth has a bit of fascination with weird and broken ecologies, our fascination has as much to do with the histories, functions, and futures of those ecologies as it does to do with their aesthetic properties.
It is quite true that this post skipped over the Water Wars and the ethical ramifications of the diversion of water which collects in the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, but it should be noted that a discussion of both the history of conflict over water rights in Owens Valley and of the contentious future of southern California’s demands for water is part of the text which we are reading, so the issue has by no means escaped our notice.
You raise a very interesting and difficult question, which is how best to balance the water needs of a distant majority with the obvious economic and environmental water interests of the localities that they obtain their water from.
I’m curious what your proscription for resolving that tension would be — it seems to me that you feel the decision-making process is rigged in a way that disadvantages the Owens Valley (which, historically, is obviously accurate), but what does a more just allocation look like to you?
I’m not familiar with Texan regional water plans, but I’d be quite curious to learn more, particularly if those plans do demonstrate a more equitable resolution of this tension. Can you point us towards a source that discusses them?
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Martin Zehr says:
April 27, 2010 at 10:35 amThank you for your response.
As a participant in the Middle Rio Grande regional planning process, I spent close to ten years working in a model of ecological democracy in the Albuquerque-Rio Rancho region of NM. I would point you to the website of the Middle Rio Grande Water Assembly as a specific model in which I was engaged. The website is: http://www.waterassembly.org The plan is accessible on the Home page.
My reference to the Texas plan is a result of the frequent news articles that have appeared in regards to the updates that are ongoing in Texas. Also, as good as the process was in the Middle Rio Grande, it failed in the implementation stage because municipalities failed to utilize its recommendations and overview. Despite the fact that governmental entities, irrigator associations, county commissions and flood control agencies signed off on the plan before it was submitted to the Interstate Stream Commission, the Bernalillo County Commission was the only entity to reference the plan in its water conservation ordinance.
As a Green urban user, I spent much time on the Urban Users and Economic Development Advocates’ committee that was represented on Action Committee. As a member of that committee, I represented Green [Party] urban users and sought to integrate quality of life issues with the plan’s recommendations and preferred scenario.
The reason for this is a political issue. As users in California know, those making the decisions are not those impacted the most by them. The planning process in California is top-down and has little real authority in regards to establishing regional water budgets or Public Welfare statements. Its advisory character is directed towards a state plan that remains weak and undirected in regards to regional users, the science and the environment. Furthermore, the state legislature continues to undermine regional planning through inter-regional diversions to both urban and rural users in southern California. Likewise, the oveerlapping jurisdictions and conflicting agencies continue to make water management and administration a Gordian knot if we were to establish adaptive governance and regional planning as the underlying principles.
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Martin Zehr says:
April 27, 2010 at 2:18 pm“if we were to establish adaptive governance and regional planning as the underlying principles.”
should read “UNTIL we slice through it by establishing adaptive governance and regional planning…”
The planning template provided to the 16 planning regions in NM by the Interstate Stream Commission included a stipulation for regions to provide a plan that was not dependent on transfers from other regions in order to be balanced.
The goals of the MRG plan included a stipulation to “balance growth with renewable supplies” that was opposed by the WRB of the Middle Rio Grande Council of Governments thereby making an administrative body of the local municipalities a significant obstacle in the implementation of the regional plan. (see section 1.3.3 of the plan )
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rholmes says:
April 28, 2010 at 9:51 amThanks, Martin. We appreciate you taking the time to relay your experiences and providing us with a first-hand account of the politics of hydrology, attesting to the importance of good, responsive governance and transparent planning processes (through what sounds like their unfortunate absence).
From the executive summary, it looks like the Middle Rio Grande plan was a very reasonable document.
These are exactly the sorts of issues which architects and landscape architects need to be able to negotiate successfully and publicly (and ethically!), if we’re going to contribute to the planning, design, and re-design of large-scale infrastructures.
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Showing posts with label diversions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diversions. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
California Water Use, Water Rights and Diversions
Outdated compacts between states and the federal government exist in regards to the needs of upstream and downstream water deliveries to those states through which rivers flow. Most of the requirements on the states were formulated prior to the massive population growths and increased demand for the water resource in Western states. For example, the Colorado River Compact was established in 1922.
The states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California are states included in the Colorado River Compact. In December 2007, new guidelines were developed by the Secretary of the Interior to address declining water flows in the river due to drought. Senator John McCain, to his credit, advocated the Compact be renegotiated.
Most states have not done so, often for fear of losing allocations. Instead, they have often had to face lawsuits from other states for delivery failures. Such was the case on the Pecos River, when the state of Texas took the state of New Mexico to court for failing to fulfill deliveries and for not establishing effective water management to protect downstream supplies. The result was a lawsuit that resulted ina federal Special Master being brought in to manage the waters of the Pecos in NM and the state paid $70 million to meet the requirements of the Compact. As a result of the law suit, the state of NM established a Strategic Water Reserve to guarantee downstream deliveries.
Regions should not presume allocations from sources outside the region and need to define the amount of surface flows that they can use, define groundwater use in the context of recharge needed for aquifers and balance growth with renewable supplies. California is a downstream user in regards to the Colorado River, but regionally, municipalities and regions within the state have frequently been fed supplies by aqueducts from one region to another. In accounting, the underlying issue is simply maintaining a balanced budget within the water basins of our state.
Countless users with water rights in California have not been adjudicated in regards to their current use of their guaranteed supplies. Unless water rights are adjudicated, there is no public protection in regards to actual beneficial use of the water allocated to them. They can sell their rights, as some are in the Central Valley and make more then they could by farming the land, even if they have not actually been using the actual amount of water to which they have legal rights to. Or municipalities can rob their water supply, such as Los Angeles did from Owens Lake or San Francisco with the Hetch-Hetchy. The peripheral canal proposal in the Delta is yet another example of diversions from one region to another determined by political clout.
The water bubble bursts when the river flows decrease significantly or when municipalities go after more water rights from agriculture but have no more actual water that they can draw on, or when diversions from estuaries impact salinity of freshwater. Like investment banking this is simply shuffling water around on paper without the actual water there to back them up or recognizing that freshwater supplies might actually be reduced due to seawater intrusion. Like the crisis in the financial system, this method of accounting has its own "day of reckoning". And it is coming sooner then most states, especially California, are prepared for.
The states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California are states included in the Colorado River Compact. In December 2007, new guidelines were developed by the Secretary of the Interior to address declining water flows in the river due to drought. Senator John McCain, to his credit, advocated the Compact be renegotiated.
Most states have not done so, often for fear of losing allocations. Instead, they have often had to face lawsuits from other states for delivery failures. Such was the case on the Pecos River, when the state of Texas took the state of New Mexico to court for failing to fulfill deliveries and for not establishing effective water management to protect downstream supplies. The result was a lawsuit that resulted ina federal Special Master being brought in to manage the waters of the Pecos in NM and the state paid $70 million to meet the requirements of the Compact. As a result of the law suit, the state of NM established a Strategic Water Reserve to guarantee downstream deliveries.
Regions should not presume allocations from sources outside the region and need to define the amount of surface flows that they can use, define groundwater use in the context of recharge needed for aquifers and balance growth with renewable supplies. California is a downstream user in regards to the Colorado River, but regionally, municipalities and regions within the state have frequently been fed supplies by aqueducts from one region to another. In accounting, the underlying issue is simply maintaining a balanced budget within the water basins of our state.
Countless users with water rights in California have not been adjudicated in regards to their current use of their guaranteed supplies. Unless water rights are adjudicated, there is no public protection in regards to actual beneficial use of the water allocated to them. They can sell their rights, as some are in the Central Valley and make more then they could by farming the land, even if they have not actually been using the actual amount of water to which they have legal rights to. Or municipalities can rob their water supply, such as Los Angeles did from Owens Lake or San Francisco with the Hetch-Hetchy. The peripheral canal proposal in the Delta is yet another example of diversions from one region to another determined by political clout.
The water bubble bursts when the river flows decrease significantly or when municipalities go after more water rights from agriculture but have no more actual water that they can draw on, or when diversions from estuaries impact salinity of freshwater. Like investment banking this is simply shuffling water around on paper without the actual water there to back them up or recognizing that freshwater supplies might actually be reduced due to seawater intrusion. Like the crisis in the financial system, this method of accounting has its own "day of reckoning". And it is coming sooner then most states, especially California, are prepared for.
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