At the July 25th meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council, the Council heard an update from the Department of Water Resources on hydrologic conditions and a panel of water managers briefed the Council on how their particular agencies and regions were meeting the challenges of the dry conditions. At the request of Council members, staff will be arranging for the Council to have regular updates on drought conditions, water operations, and the related impacts on stakeholders and the Delta ecosystem through the end of 2013 and beyond as needed and as conditions remain dry.
“January to May this year have been the driest in recorded history since 1920,” began Keith Coolidge, Executive Manager for External Affairs, “and there are real concerns about balancing and managing water supplies. Today’s presentation will begin with a brief big picture reminder of where we are as well as a look at specific effects on communities and regions around the state,” he said.
GARY BARDINI, DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES
Gary Bardini from the Department of Water Resources began by recapping California’s drought history. “We’ve had droughts and shortage in the past … we’ve had major droughts which were 1929 through 1934 and 1987 thru 1992; there was a severe drought in 1976-77; folks remember that it literally didn’t rain pretty much that year,” he said.
In 1977, the state’s population was 22 million; it was the driest on record, and 47 out of the 58 counties declared states of emergency, he said. During the drought 1987 to 1992, there were 30 million people and 22 or 23 declarations at the local level, but Mr. Bardini noted that the water project was able to make full deliveries for the first four years. “Then as time went on in 1991, there was some cutback to the urban areas, so you can see that while we had those droughts, our ability to manage it is a little different than today.” He added that there have also been local droughts, such as in 2002 when it was the driest on record for Los Angeles and San Diego.
The last year, 2012, was the beginning of the first dry period after the 2007-2009 drought and State Water Project allocations were at 65%, and on the Central Valley Project, allocations were 40% for south of Delta and 50% for Friant. This year, the State Water Project allocation is down to 35%, with 20% for south of Delta and 62% for Class 1. “Colorado River has a lower level of shortage probability but it’s obviously dry on the Colorado basin also,” he said.
“When we came off of 2011, we came in with huge storage – it was a wet year, we topped it off and that helped provide deliveries in 2012 based on that, and of course we’re running through that storage rapidly now, and we’re using about 2 to 3 million acre-feet per month,” he said. “In general, where we’re at is that we’re at about 77% of our average and I think by the end of September, we should be at about 76% of storage, on average.” He noted that groundwater levels particularly in the Central Valley and Salinas Valley are dropping and as surface water deliveries are curtailed, this will expand.
“At the center of it is the reliability of the system as a whole, and we’re looking at where we’re at day-to-day operationally, as we try to make these improvements,” he said. “There have been initiatives and investment that’s helped, but nevertheless the ability to manage is getting more difficult than it was back in 1977 or even 1987. As we’ve been doing it, we’ve been losing ground.”
The Department has been working on Integrated Regional Water Management with 48 planning efforts underway across the state that address aspects of reliability, he said, as well as a significant increase in recycling and water efficiency improvements. “While this is helping reliability as a whole, it is creating demand hardening and less flexibility for conservation and shortage moving forward, and that’s part of the new challenges we’re facing,” said Mr. Bardini.
Everybody wants to know the trigger – are we in a meteorological drought, or a regulatory drought or a hydrologic drought or what the U.S. drought monitor does – but they are all varied, he said. “There’s no magic definition – it’s basically determined at the local level. We typically view that when we have two consecutively abnormally below years along with storage dropping below 70%, that we’re going to look at more strain at the local level, and we feel at that point we’re in a hydrologic condition of drought through the state as a whole, but the state’s a big place.”
Everything is driven locally first, moves up to the counties and operational areas, up to the state and federal government for declarations and emergency resources when conditions go beyond the local agency’s ability to respond, he said. “Multi-year drought at the state level is not a state level emergency; however, the state will work with the local emergency folks as they need state resources because resources have been exhausted at the local level, and then the Governor will do proclamations in which OES and DWR will respond.”
The Department continues to monitor what is happening at the local level and communicating with Cal-EMA and the Governor’s office; they are also doing communication and outreach to communities, monitoring and forecasting of water conditions, climate research, and helping smaller communities with groundwater issues as well as facilitating water transfers.
“We’re running out of soft money of bond funds that allow us to do this, so we are posed with fiscal cliffs in financing,” he said, noting that they are working with the administration on this. “There’s no real source of funding for small community problems, so while we’ve had those tools in the past, we’ll have to work with the administration if this gets worse and to figure out how to provide that kind of support.”
We’ve learned that impacts are highly site-specific, he said. “Small communities relying on groundwater are usually the ones that really end up with shortage immediately while the larger communities using urban water management plans usually can manage three to four years in general, although that’s a generalization and it will vary.”
“When I started my career just under 30 years ago we used to plan for the seven year drought of 20-34 and we used to design for what we used to call ‘firm yield’ and we try to make reliability at that level,” he said. “The reliability that we’re at today is that within one or two years, we find consequences and shortage across the state, so I look at how we managed 30 years ago I would say over time we’ve lost ground in our ability to provide reliable water supply.”
DISCUSSION: WHEN IS A DROUGHT AN EMERGENCY?
Chair Phil Isenberg noted that Mr. Bardini had said that generally a multi-year drought is not a state emergency. “I find that puzzling; explain that if you would.”
“What I mean by that is that the local agencies generally can address it at the local level through their management plans,” responded Mr. Bardini. “It hasn’t necessarily been asked to be elevated up to the state OES. Typically, it is handled at the local level and the shortage of most of the water agencies and special deliveries have a contingency to deal with that.”
“When is it a state emergency?,” asked Mr. Isenberg.
“When the local [conditions] exceed the local’s resources to deal with it,” replied Mr. Bardini. “Obviously the state is concerned about what is happening at the local level, but as for the management of actions, the local agencies with their plans are adequate to address multi-years. The only caveat has been these small communities, which are problematic.”
“How does DWR know whether or not local agencies have a capacity that is adequate to meet the challenges they face?” asked Mr. Isenberg.
Mr. Bardini answered that the Integrated Regional Water Management Plans and the urban water management plans provide some indication of how they are able to manage …
“But we know from previous written documents from the Department and testimony here that DWR does not review the urban water management plans to determine whether or not they are a correct reflection of the facts, or whether the agencies are in fact following their own plans. So you’re taking the statements of the agencies on their own?” asked Mr. Isenberg.
“Absolutely,” said Mr. Bardini.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there is no state plan itself,” replied Mr. Isenberg. “It is a compendium of local plans that the state is watching, and you respond if a local agency would ask for a declaration of emergency … but per se, there is no state trigger for action. … I think for all practical purposes for the administration, it’s impossible to maintain that posture. I do believe that the choices we make as a society on what are regional or localized problems, we ought to prefer regional or localized solutions as opposed to a continuation of grandiose and very expensive things that are supposed to solve everybody’s problems for all time. I don’t think the state is going to be able as time goes on to step back and say it isn’t a state problem until gets to be a crisis or near-crisis. And it doesn’t smack of planning – because for example a small reduction – 2,3,4,5% in demand buys you additional months or years in a system that is stressed, but if you don’t start early, then the actual reductions have to be more severe later on.”
JASON PELTIER, WESTLANDS WATER DISTRICT
Jason Peltier from Westlands Water District began by stating that he would be talking from the Westlands perspective, but a number of other irrigation districts from Tracy south to Mendota are similarly affected. “In total it’s about a million acres of farmland and other refuges and small communities and large communities. We’re all in the same circumstance in many ways.” he said. “That million acres of agriculture – there are 9 million acres of irrigated agriculture in California so it’s a good chunk of what drives the ag economy in the state.”
“We fully recognize that we fit into a bigger context and we are sensitive to the realities of upstream implications,” said Mr. Peltier. “There are certainly upstream impacts and all kinds of water management implications of dry hydrology to say nothing of the ecosystem impacts. … we could well have an initial allocation zero or very low number next year, and it’s going to be a function of hydrology and it’s going to be a function of how the prescriptions and limitations on the project are implemented. For us it is major alarm bell time. We have a crisis on the horizon and we have a duty to our customers and the communities we support to act and be prepared.”
“You can’t wait until you realize that the hydrology is bad or the restrictions are so bad that we’re at a 0 or 10 or 15% water supply to start making decisions … Certainly we’ve had 20 years in the CVP service area of coping with shortages; we’ve had three full supply years in 20 years, other years we’ve had 40, 60 up to 90% reductions in water supply and we’ve got some basic response mechanisms that will be used. We know farmland will be fallowed. We know water purchases to the extent that the water market can function will be made, and we will see continued overdraft of our groundwater resources, but none of these are sustainable long-term,” he said, noting that 80% of the district is now using drip of mircosprinklers to maximize their water efficiency.
Mr. Peltier said he’s been working for over 20 years to find administrative solutions to these problems: “In our work so far for this year, we’ve identified 50-some actions that could be taken in categories of statutory changes or exercising statutory discretion, operations changes, ecosystem monitoring, physical changes in the system,” he said.
It’s definitely different than where we were in 1977, or even in 1992, said Mr. Peltier. “We’re in a very different place because of two significant drivers,” he said. “One is that Shasta, for all practical purposes, is a million acre-feet smaller than it was in those times. It is a 4.5 million acre-feet reservoir, in 1977 we drew it down to about 700,000 acre-feet; today we have a prescription from the NMFS that says don’t or do everything possible to not draw it down below 1.7 million acre-feet, so there’s a million acre-feet reserved for temperature control on the Sacramento River that is not accessible, it’s not usable for human use.
“We’ve also had a significant and continual layering of restrictions and prescriptions on project operations,” said Mr. Peltier. “I think that the important exercise that the agencies need to go through is to examine those restrictions and limitations and find where have they worked, where have they not worked, where is the discretion and how might we evolve those.”
There are many restrictions in place that dictate how the projects are operated, but Mr. Peltier tries to remain optimistic: “We can see an improvement in our water supply and not have that come at the cost of the ecosystem or the fisheries. That’s what I want to believe and that’s what I want to pursue. Obviously taking actions that would threaten some of our sensitive fish species are going to be controversial, but I think we need to go in with an open mind to the science.”
He then discussed the current Trinity River issue that they are dealing with, explaining that there is a potential significant salmon run return on the Klamath River and the agencies have identified a significant possibility of disease. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, the tribes and others have asked Reclamation to make an extraordinary release of Trinity water down the river to freshen up the lower end of the Klamath River and this is above and beyond the water that has already been reserved for Trinity River operations and improvement of instream flows, he said.
“While we are certainly supportive of pursuing measures that are protective of the fish, we have significant science questions as to whether those disease problems can be resolved with this water,” said Mr. Peltier, “but really we have a huge policy issue that we think is an example of what we’re going to see elsewhere as we go into potentially a drought crisis. Where are the equities and where are the responsibilities and the burdens placed for taking extraordinary actions?” He noted that the replacement water and power costs for that water could be as much as $30 million. “And where does that fall? It falls on the CVP water and power customers. I think there’s a bigger public policy question that needs to be addressed here relative to the public benefit, the ecosystem health, and the factors driving conditions on the Klamath River.”
“In the water community, we are really good about fighting each other, and we’ve got a long history that has it so we can fight each other, break bread together, and fight each other and have fun, and fight each other in court and so on,” said Mr. Peltier, “but we also have a history in times of crisis coming together – mutual aid and mutual assistance and working to try and find ways to lessen problems for our neighbors and our fellow water managers in the state is something I can’t put my finger on right now, but I know there’s a spirit of cooperation.”
CINDY KAO, SANTA CLARA WATER DISTRICT
Cindy Kao began by noting that the Santa Clara Valley Water District provides water supply, flood control and watershed stewardship to Santa Clara County, which includes the Silicon Valley. The district serves 12 retailers, 15 cities, and almost 2 million people.
On average, 55% of the district’s water supply is imported with 40% of that being conveyed through Delta, she explained, and that percentage increases in dry years. “In 2013, about 80% of our surface water will be imported, and of that, imported supply, 80% is conveyed through the Delta. This is just to emphasize the fact that we are very dependent on the Delta.”
Ms. Kao also noted that storage has been decreased in some of the local reservoirs due to seismic concerns, so they have 50,000 acre-feet less of carryover storage than they normally would.
“This year we are in the process of taking more water than we ever have before out of our Semitropic Groundwter Bank located in Kern County,” she said, explaining that since the water bank is downstream, they receive the water through an exchange: “We take water from the Delta, it’s conveyed to us through the Delta, and the water in Semitropic is delivered downstream, so again we’re relying on a significant amount of transfers this year which come through the Delta. The recurring theme here is that we are dependent on the Delta supplies, especially in the dry years.”
At the same time, dry conditions and regulatory constraints have caused difficulties bringing some of those supplies in, said Ms. Kao. She explained that the district receives their Central Valley Project supplies through an intake at the San Luis Reservoir, and this year with the reservoir is projecting to drop below 200,000 acre-feet for an extended period of time, this could result in algae in the upper surface layers of the water column being drawn down into the intake, disrupting water treatment processes.
“At one point during this year, the reservoir elevation was projected to drop below the bottom of the lower Pacheco intake which would cut off our supply completely, so that has been a concern,” she said. “In response we’ve been preloading Anderson Reservoir, our largest reservoir, with CVP supplies before water quality problems begin so we can draw from that reservoir before the low point. And we’ve also had to put panels on the upper intake to close that off and prevent algae from coming in.”
“It has been challenging for us, but if there are no additional disasters and assuming we’re able to take water from San Luis reservoir during the low point, we should be able to meet our demands in 2013,” said Ms. Kao.
SCVWD has made investments in groundwater recharge, subsidence control, and groundwater banking, and is working to double recycled water production, with the district planning to meet future growth and demand through conservation and recycling alone. “Although we are investing in local sustainability, our Delta supplies are foundational for the water supply reliability of Silicon Valley, and 2013 just illustrates how dependent we are on those supplies,” she said.
DAVID GUY, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WATER ASSOCIATION
David Guy began by presenting a graph of the Sacramento Water Year index, noting that the various water year types are scattered throughout the record. “As water managers you have to prepare for a variety of water scenarios,” he said. “Water managers have to plan, and some think that with climate change, this is only going to get sharper.”
The drought of 1976-77 was a very instructive drought because it was very short but very intense, he said, with reduced flows throughout the Sacramento Valley and some districts in the Sacramento Valley having zero supplies. A similar dynamic was in play during the drought of 1988-92, which also coincided with the emergence of the endangered species act on the scene. “There were a couple of injunctions prohibiting the diversion of water in the Sacramento Valley during that time which of course spawned a whole series of fishery-related programs which we’re pretty proud of,” said Mr. Guy, adding that there is a lot more work to be done.
During the drought of 2007-2009, water service contracts were again reduced, and the Governor was involved, said Mr. Guy, noting that folks responded in the Sacramento Valley to help in that regard. “There are neighbor to neighbor transfers, and then there’s internal management that can happen on a limited basis, recycling, reoperation and remanagement within districts, as well as crop-shifting and idling, as one of the responses as well,” he said.
There are a lot of other parts of the state that want water, and with Oroville and Shasta reservoirs located in the Sacramento Valley, the valley has a role in that, he said. “Opportunities to reoperate and transfer water are obviously one way to help meet the flexibility and supply demands in other parts of the state,” said Mr. Guy. “And of course that can include this year folks on the Sacramento River looking at some reoperation opportunities to flatten flows during the fall to provide some additional water in storage for a variety of benefits,” he said.
However, he cautioned officials to manage expectations. “I think there’s this feeling that there’s all this water available in the Sacramento Valley to solve the rest of the problems in the state, and that of course is simply not the case,” he said. “But, that being said, there are some opportunities.”
Sacramento Valley managers are actively managing water for a variety of beneficial purposes, and that includes the farms, the cities, the fish, the wetlands – it’s all integrated, he said. “During the dry years, the challenge that we have is to try and provide water for all these purposes and the sustainability has been the focus of the water managers in the region … You don’t wait will till the drought and then do this; a lot of this has been done in advance of the drought to try to prepare.”
In conclusion, Mr. Guy shared four thoughts. First, California does have a system to deal with water allocation, he said, lauding the State Water Board’s notice in July. “I give the water board a lot of credit in that regard, they set a good tone and they also struck that right words, and I think that was really helpful.”
Secondly, active water management is important. “As groundwater demands increase during the dry period, it’s really the efforts that have gone on over the past some years to make more groundwater available that is really key,” he said. “I think it gets lost sometimes but there are certain areas in the Sacramento Valley that were overdrafted 20 years ago and because of conjunctive management and surface water, those areas are now very sustainable with respect to groundwater, and as you start going into this dry cycle, there is sustainable access to that groundwater because of those efforts.”
Third, the value of surface storage is not talked about enough, he said. “The value of surface storage is important for the cold water pool, it’s important for the farms, the cities, your whole suite of purposes, recreation, all the things that people care about in California, and right now it feels to me like there are certain efforts in California that are actually trying to undermine the ability to have surface storage during these critically dry periods,” he said. “I think we should be going the other direction and thinking a lot more creatively to have that surface storage as well as making sure that we can bank underground in other places as we can throughout the wetter years.”
And lastly, “collaboration … it sounds a little bit trite, but face it, that’s how we get through these situations, and I know in the Sacramento Valley we have a long record of collaborating with folks throughout the state to help make these dry situations work,” said Mr. Guy.
MARGUERITE PATIL
Marguerite Patil, Contra Costa Water District, began by noting that the water district serves about 500,000 people in central and eastern Contra Costa County and that the water district is a Central Valley Project contractor with four intakes in the Delta. “All of our supply comes from the Delta,” said Ms. Patil.
CCWD’s Los Vaqueros Reservoir was built not necessarily for water supply benefits but for water quality benefits said Ms. Patil, explaining that they fill the off-stream reservoir with high quality water from the Delta when it is available, and blend it with the Delta supplies when the water quality isn’t so good, usually in the fall and especially in dry years.
“We also have invested in drought supply and emergency storage in that reservoir, and in fact, investing is kind of our game because we’ve invested about a billion dollars over the last fifteen years to improve our supply and quality, including conservation, water recycling and a number of other local projects,” said Ms. Patil.
This year is not looking good, said Ms. Patil. “It’s a dry year but in some ways it looks more like a critical year. We’re seeing outflow decline rapidly because of the need to try to preserve more water in upstream storage, so what the means to us where our Delta intakes are is that we’re seeing water quality decline. The way we measure that typically is looking at salinity levels and we’re seeing them skyrocket, and I’m not really exaggerating,” noting that the CCWD’s saving grace is the new $120 million intake on the Middle River, which so far has been able to divert water of a reasonable water quality. “Even though it’s July, it looks like the worst of a fall condition to us. We’re hopeful that we’re going to see reasonable water quality at Middle River that will carry us through the fall, but we’ll be blending more than we normally would with our Los Vaqueros supplies.”
Ms. Patil said they are coordinating quite a bit with the Bureau of Reclamation and State Water Project operators, because the operations of the water projects does affect their operations as well.
Unfortunately, the district doesn’t have the drought reserves they would like to. The district recently expanded Los Vaqueros Reservoir from 100,000 to 160,000 acre-feet, but in order to do that, the reservoir had to be drawn down, and they have only been able to fill the reservoir up to 122,000 acre-feet so far. “So we’ve made the investment, but storage really helps you when there is water in it, not just sitting there,” said Ms. Patil. She said they were letting their customers know and encouraging them to renew their conservation efforts and to use water efficiently.
“Moving forward, we’re big fans of regional solutions, and moving forward we are seeing a greater need for regional cooperation, and we’re looking at things like sharing some of our Los Vaqueros storage with other agencies in our region, helping facilitate water transfers, improving our operational flexibility not just for our agency but for the region, and working with Jason and others with the Delta project coalition to see what actual projects can we get done in the near term to try and improve the situation,” she said. “We want to make sure we can work together the best we can.”
DISCUSSION: HOW CAN WE HELP?
Councilman Randy Fiorini stated that the Council’s responsibility is to implement projects and actions and help coordinate the activities to meet the coequal goals, and water supply reliability is one of those coequal goals. He then asked panelists to name one thing that could be implemented in the next 5 years that would lead to improving water supply reliability in California.
“BDCP,” answered Mr. Bardini.
“The biggest thing that could happen that would improve reliability would be greater project integration,” said Mr. Peltier. “We have this balance that needs to be struck between the CVP being long on storage and the SWP short on storage, relatively, and the SWP having tremendously more conveyance capacity compared to the CVP. If you can put those two projects together there could be some operating efficiencies there.”
“We would be looking for a long term solution for the Delta,” said Ms. Kao. “It needs to be a comprehensive solution. Right now, BDCP is the only thing out there that approaches a comprehensive solution … also streamlining water transfers so we can get the water when we need it in the dry years.”
“I think recognizing the value of the surface storage during these critically dry periods, and that includes surface storage as well as opportunities to reoperate that storage more effectively and then a serious evaluation of new storage opportunities such as the Sites Reservoir,” said Mr. Guy.
“We’re looking at constructing a pipeline from our facility at our transfer pump station to the South Bay Aqueduct at Bethany Reservoir,” said Ms. Patil. “What this basically does is it interties East Bay MUD to CCWD to San Francisco to the whole Bay Area. We’ve looked at regional interties before, but regardless of what happens with Delta conveyance or storage or anything else, we think it’s a no-regrets conveyance improvement project.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
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- Click here for the staff report for this agenda item.
