As California drought drags on, hard choices lie ahead

Problems as daunting as the California drought tend to breed scapegoats.

Maybe your villain of choice is the Delta smelt, an endangered fish at the heart of a battle over the state’s dwindling surface water. Maybe it’s the bottled water industry, which has come under national scrutiny in the wake of a Desert Sun investigation. Maybe it’s golf courses, or hydraulic fracturing, or almond farming.

All of those water uses have faced hard questions, and rightfully so. Many of them will be discussed Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at the SoCal Energy and Water Summit, a collaboration between The Desert Sun and Burke Rix Communications.

But if you’re looking for a simple fix for California’s long-term water crisis? Well, you’re probably out of luck.

“People love silver-bullet solutions, but there is no silver bullet for California water,” said Peter Gleick, a leading water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute think tank. “If there was a silver-bullet solution for California water, we would have solved our problems years ago.”

California has a long history of periodic dry spells, and they’re almost certain to get worse. Climate change is likely to bring more frequent and more severe droughts, and decades-long “megadroughts” could become increasingly common. The state’s population, which has more than doubled over the last half-century, will continue to rise.

Preparing for that future — and coping with the current drought — requires a wide range of solutions, experts say. The answer isn’t conservation, or drip-irrigation farming, or desalination: In the long run, it’s all of the above.

“We have to think about this as an opportunity to do better for the future,” Brian Stranko, California water program director for The Nature Conservancy, said earlier this year. “We have to take advantage of the crisis and take action.”

A time to save

On April 1, Gov. Jerry Brown visited a Sierra Nevada meadow that usually had more than five feet of snow at that time of year. In 2015 it was dry as a bone, for the first time in 75 years of measurement.

Brown had already asked Californians to cut their water use by 20 percent, but mostly they had ignored him. So as he stood on that dry meadow, he announced a mandatory 25 percent cutback, the first of its kind in state history. Local water agencies would be required to make it happen, or else face fines of $10,000 per day.

“We’re in a historic drought and that demands unprecedented action,” Brown said at the time. “We’re in a new era. The idea of your nice little green grass getting water every day, that’s going to be a thing of the past.”

So far, Brown’s strategy is working.

In June — the first month of mandatory cutbacks — the state’s urban areas slashed their water use by 27.3 percent. The next month, they managed 31.3 percent.

Water experts see conservation and efficiency as low-hanging fruit: They’re far cheaper than developing new water sources, and they don’t usually entail significant lifestyle changes. Water-efficient toilets, shorter showers, letting your grass fade to a golden brown — all those savings add up.

Many water agencies now offer rebates for tearing out grass, since outdoor irrigation is the biggest water use for most homes. Those rebates have been popular. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for instance, ran through $350 million in funds in little more than a month.

“There was a long time when I mentioned desertscape and it was like it was a bad word. Nobody wanted to touch it. They just believed in green grass,” Tim Salvador, vice president of operations at Sunshine Landscaping in Thousand Palms, said in April. “But they’re finally starting to get a little bit educated that we don’t have limitless water.”

Even in the Coachella Valley — long known for its lush image as an oasis in the desert — residents are rethinking how they use water. Green lawns are still pervasive, but desert landscaping is becoming increasingly popular.

“There’s a little bit of sadness about how beautiful Palm Springs is with all the huge lawns and everything, so lush,” Palm Springs resident Vince Calcagno, who has cut his water use in half, said in July. “But on the other hand, it is the desert. This is where we live. And we’re in a crisis. It seems like a small price to pay for it to be a little less pretty.”

Still, the desert has struggled to meet Brown’s conservation mandate.

The Coachella Valley as a whole is required to save more than 25 percent, because its residents use so much water to begin with. So far, none of the region’s six water providers have met their targets.

“It’s really critical in these first summer months for suppliers to be meeting their targets,” Max Gomberg, a senior environmental scientist with the state water board, said in June. “If they’re off the mark during the summer, when the greatest volumes of water savings is possible, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for them to make that up in the later months.”

On the farm

Brown’s conservation mandate has its critics. Many of them note that urban water use accounts for just 20 percent of water that goes toward human consumption in California, with agriculture responsible for the other 80 percent. Why doesn’t Brown require farmers to cut back by 25 percent, which could lead to much larger savings?

The reality is more complicated.

Farmers have, in fact, faced dramatic cutbacks. State and federal agencies have slashed surface water deliveries to Central Valley farmers, saying there isn’t enough water in California’s rivers and streams to meet demand. In June, the state water board took the dramatic step of cutting off supplies to some pre-1914 water rights holders.

Fallowed fields are nothing new in the Imperial Valley, where farmers are learning to live with the largest rural-to-urban water transfer in U.S. history. As part of the 2003 agreement, the Imperial Irrigation District is selling much of its Colorado River water to San Diego County and the Coachella Valley, allowing urban areas to keep growing.

That doesn’t mean farmers can’t do more to conserve — ideally a lot more.

Even with hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland left dry, California farmers have brought in record-high revenues during the drought, partly by increasing their groundwater pumping and partly by switching to higher-value crops, like water-guzzling almonds. Many farmers still use flood irrigation, rather than sprinklers or drip irrigation.

The agriculture industry’s reliance on groundwater pumping has had serious consequences. Water levels have fallen across the state, causing the ground to sink in certain places and putting long-term water supplies at risk. In the Coachella Valley, groundwater levels fell an average of 55 feet between 1970 and 2013, a Desert Sun analysis found.

“The future in California is just not bright, and we have to come to terms with that and begin actively managing our groundwater supplies for sustainability, for the future,” Jay Famiglietti, a UC Irvine professor and senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in 2013.

Switching to drip irrigation is expensive, which is why agencies like the Coachella Valley Water District have started offering rebates for farmers who abandon flood irrigation. But some experts believe that stronger action is needed to encourage farmers to use less water, either by irrigating more efficiently or by planting less water-intensive crops.

“Farmers don’t like to be told what to do any more than any of the rest of us do. But we’re in a drought, and what do you do in an emergency?” Gleick said earlier this year. “I do think there’s been an effort on the part of policymakers to try and treat agriculture with kid gloves.”

Supply side

Even if farmers keep cutting back, it will only go so far to alleviate the state’s water woes. The country depends on California for a huge proportion of its fruits, vegetables and nuts, and agriculture will always require a lot of water.

Which leads to the other half of the water equation: supply.

For years, California responded to periodic water shortages by finding new ways to produce and move water. The state built massive dams, reservoirs and an engineering marvel known as the State Water Project, which carries water from the state’s relatively wet northern region to its dry southland.

Some politicians and advocates are now calling for more dams and reservoirs, to the chagrin of critics who say those projects would damage wildlife while doing little to improve the state’s water situation. Others have called for huge pipelines to bring water to California from other regions, although experts have usually dismissed those suggestions —including proposals to pipe water to the shrinking Salton Sea — as impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Perhaps the most popular idea for increasing California’s water supply? Tap the Pacific Ocean.

Desalination is a simple concept: Pump water from the ocean, remove the salt and drink. State officials are evaluating 15 proposed desal plants, and the largest such facility in the Western Hemisphere will open in Carlsbad this year.

“Obviously we’ve done tons in conservation, but we have to have enough water,” said Sandy Kerl, deputy general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, which will buy water from the Carlsbad desal plant. “You have to have some base level of water. You can’t conserve what you don’t have.”

Desal’s critics point to the technology’s high costs, intense energy use and potential impacts on marine life as reasons for caution. While they agree the state will probably need some desalination eventually, they believe now is not the time, saying there are many cheaper, safer strategies for meeting California’s water needs. Those strategies include more stormwater capture, a greater focus on conservation and increased water recycling.

“There is a real concern that by building desalination plants, it does reduce pressure to develop cheaper options,” Heather Cooley, water program director for the Pacific Institute, said earlier this year.

As state and local officials work to balance supply and demand, they’ll be paying increasing attention to groundwater. Brown signed landmark legislation last year that could lead to restrictions on pumping for the first time, although it will be years before the law fully takes effect.

Sammy Roth writes about energy and water for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.