“Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting about.” – Mark Twain
Maldistribution
Tensions over California’s “liquid gold” are as old as European settlement, and they spring from the state’s notorious maldistribution of water. California’s northernmost peaks and valleys receive a bountiful rainfall. More than 100 inches of rain and snow cascade down upon this corner of California annually, nurturing the giant redwoods and the ponderosa and Jeffrey pine that make up the rugged but beautiful big river landscape.
Travel to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and the landscape is far different. Here you’ll see a thirsty plain covered by the dry stubble of native grasses. Scratch the surface and you will find layers upon layers of incredibly fertile soil deposited over millions of years. All that is needed to make this land fruitful is water, but not much is to be found. In a typical year, only six inches of rain will fall.
The contrast between these two landscapes illustrates the dichotomy that is California, a state that has been quite accurately described as both parched and soggy.
Settlement
The pioneers who settled the Golden State and those who have succeeded them did not choose to build their towns and farms in the fog-shrouded mountains of the far north, where most of the rain and snow fall. Nor did they locate them along the banks of the rivers that empty millions of gallons of water into the sea each day. Instead, they built along the coast next to the great harbors, on the broad coastal plains, and in the many valleys of the state.
Only one major California city, Sacramento, located where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet, has enough water available locally to meet its needs. Other communities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, Oakland, Long Beach, and a host of others — have had to go elsewhere, singly or banded together, to supplement their water needs.
The same is true of agriculture, an industry that has created greater wealth than the Gold Rush that kickstarted the California dream. The orchards, vineyards, and fields of the Coachella, Imperial, Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Santa Clara Valleys are green and productive because water has been brought to them to supplement nature’s meager supply. To this day, agriculture, still a key industry in the state, uses approximately 80 to 85 percent of all water consumed in California.
Mother Nature’s uneven assignment of water is only made worse by the state’s climate: a repeating yet unpredictable cycle of drought and rain. The rainy spells can last a long time — the dry ones can last even longer. Because of this, Californians for centuries learned to capture and store water when available and then make it last. It is a strategy we still follow today.
Californians, unable to change the capricious climate, have taken other steps to obtain a reliable supply of water. To transport water to areas of need, we have criss-crossed the state with a network of dams, canals, pipelines, aqueducts, and pumping plants. This work began with the missionaries, who studied the waterways of the ancient Greeks and Romans and diverted creeks and streams to bring water to their fields. As the state grew, individual efforts like theirs gave way to collaborative efforts on a local, regional, statewide, and even federal basis.
But even the most collaborative efforts to find solutions to California’s water supply problems feel the strain of the politics that dominate California’s waterscape. Conflict over the best uses of water in the state was and is inevitable. Because of its scarcity in certain areas, water has always engendered strong feelings, pitting neighbor against neighbor, region against region, farmer against citydweller.
Today, the state’s agricultural, urban, and environmental users of water continue to compete for the limited supply, a drama that plays out every day in the state capitol and throughout the state. Urban areas need water for domestic and industrial use, while others need the same supply for irrigation, for hydroelectric power generation, and for recreation. Flood control is demanded upstream, while downstream requires a steady flow of water to protect fish and wildlife.
Sources
Californians find their two most reliable sources of water to be the Colorado River and the Sacramento/ San Joaquin Delta, and many of the great water systems were built to tap into their abundant supply. But after years and years of unchallenged use, fueling California’s growth, these waterways have become less dependable sources.
The Colorado River runs through seven states and Mexico, with nearly 25 million people dependent upon it for their water. (17 million of them live in Southern California.) Every drop of the river is adjudicated to one of these eight parties, but historically, if one state does not use all of its water, it can be used by the next state down the line. California is allotted 4.4 million acre-feet of water from the river each year, but in the past has been privileged to use surplus water over and above its allotment. But, as other Western states along the Colorado, such as Arizona and Nevada, are growing, less water is being left for Californians. An agreement last year with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior gave the Golden State 15 years to scale back its dependence on surplus water from the river and stay within its allocation.
At the same time, concerns about aquatic species in the Bay/Delta compete with urban and agricultural water supply needs. The Bay/Delta provides valuable habitat and migration corridors for many species, including the winter-run salmon and Delta smelt, which are listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. Increasing amounts of Bay/Delta water are allocated not for agricultural and urban uses but for environmental uses to help these and other species recover.
With these two critical sources less reliable than in the past, water agencies and others are looking for new and different solutions, becoming more creative in how we use, reuse, and allocate water.
Changing Attitudes
While the big water projects have served and will continue to serve their purpose, the days of the huge dams and aqueducts are over. Since the first comprehensive State Water Plan was published in 1957, attitudes and ways of managing the state’s natural resources have changed. The philosophy of the “greatest good for the greatest number” has been broadened to include the needs of the environment and the wildlife it supports. Today, we know the importance of protecting the fragile ecosystems that surround us, and the projects we build attend to environmental needs.
Today, Californians must look over the horizon for new sources of water and new ways to extend the useful life of the water they have. As we have seen throughout the history of water in California, obtaining a new water supply takes time and planning. It cannot be done overnight. Meanwhile, the state must find new ways to wring more uses from the same amount of water.
Conservation
Water conservation is one obvious way Californians can do more with less, and a long history of drought has trained most to conserve this scarce resource as a way of life. Year after year, the state ranks among the top in the nation for the lowest per-capita use of the precious resource. But the sheer size of the state’s population earns it a place among the highest users of water overall.
Conservation will continue to be one of the most important ways to ensure water for the next generation, and those who choose to live here will have to continue the legacy of low per-capita water use. But now we must look at other ways to extend the useful life of the water we have, utilizing all of the technology available to meet the demands of urban, agricultural, and environmental concerns.
In response to these challenges, water managers have turned their attention to water transfers, recycling, and continued emphasis on conservation. Also, more attention is being given to solving water problems on a regional basis. Today we know that whatever we do, it must blend with the balance of nature. We cannot do one thing at the expense of another — the balance is too fragile.
Water from the Sea
For those of us in coastal communities, it is hard not to look west at the ocean and think, how can we make saltwater drinkable? Boosting water supplies through saltwater desalination is an obvious option, but an expensive one. Reverse osmosis, the necessary technology for the process, has traditionally proven much more expensive and energy intensive than other sources of water and other types of purification. But that won’t always be the case.
While it is still a costly process, reverse osmosis technology has been improving rapidly over the past few years. And, cost aside, desalination has many advantages over other water sources. The ocean is an abundant and dependable water supply, not subject to feast or famine cycles of snowfall or rain. Taking water from the sea does not deplete groundwater aquifers, nor does it impact salmon and other protected species. And the process generates water so clean it can be recycled several times before being dumped back in the ocean.
California has benefited from the vision of farsighted pioneers who understood the importance of water and built systems to serve a growing population. The challenge for today’s state water managers is to fulfill their role as stewards of this most essential resource, ensuring a reliable and high quality water supply for coming generations.
Author George Wein, AIA-E, is a retired partner in the Santa Monica architectural and planning firm WWCOT. He is a member of the board of the Metropolitan Water District as well as of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, where he is a past chairman of the association’s water committee. He served on Mayor Riordan’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Water Rate Restructure for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and chaired the external affairs committee of Metropolitan’s Blue Ribbon Task Force.
Originally published 4th quarter 2001, in arcCA 01.4, “H2O CA.”
