Yes, California
@pvowell what are your top recommendations?
This is a recent Twitter exchange between Peter Gleick and
myself. Sorry, Peter, but I just couldn't answer in 140 characters or less. And my apologies to Leo Tolstoy for my rip off
of his book title. But here, in a great deal more characters than allowed by
Twitter, is what I would like to see done to deal with this drought, and California ’s
water supply moving forward. I know some
of this you’ll agree with, Peter, and some you won’t; others reading this will
have opinions different from either of us. But the first and one of the best
actions we can take is this sort of dialogue.
As much as people seem to think Californian’s are
environmentally conscience and all practice conservation already, it’s my
experience that a great many people still have a long way to go in doing
meaningful water conservation. I’ve been
to so many rate case meetings were people testify how they have just two people
at home and only use 25 CCF of water a month
(that’s 18,700 gallons, or more than 300
gallons per person per day). Or they complain that rates are so high, instead
of the acre of turf they used to enjoy, they have to suffer with only a quarter
of an acre now. The issue of whether
clean safe water is a human right has been in the news a good deal in the past
year, but my experience is all too often people take that to mean they have the
God given right to use as much water as they bloody well want at little to no
cost. That has to stop. Mandatory rationing during the drought and
steeply increasing block rate structures all the time should be used to force serious
conservation.
I think the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) has got to
move forward. The Delta is in precarious shape, physically and
environmentally. Its ability to continue
to provide water to Southern California is in serious jeopardy. Talk about hasty actions: If we continue to
do little or nothing to deal with this issue, the Delta will collapse and water
deliveries to Southern California will be seriously
limited or even halted all together. If
that happens, you’ll see hasty decisions made to quickly provide new water
supplies that will wreak environmental, social justice, and budgetary
havoc. The BDCP isn’t perfect, but it’s
a controlled plan that we can move forward with, and that needs to be done.
Desalination has got to become much more prevalent in California . The Coastal Commission should never have
killed the Huntington Beach project
posed by Poseidon; that project should be resurrected, and more of the desal
projects planned up and down the coast moved forward as well. Is there an environmental cost to these
projects? Absolutely, but those costs
can be minimized without killing the projects.
But no project is without any environmental cost, just as for each of us
to get out of bed every morning and live our normal lives there is an
environmental cost. If we want to
continue to live our lives here in California ,
then desalination will have to play a bigger part in providing us with water. The energy use and associated expense of
desal continues to fall, and funding for research into lowering those costs
even further should be a priority.
There you go, Peter.
My top three recommendations for moving forward with California ’s
water supply problems. Thanks for asking!
