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GUEST: Barry Nelson, co-author of “In Hot Water,” and co-director of NRDC’s Western Water Project

This week Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been touring California to promote a six billion dollar bond measure to address water shortages. The governor hopes to have his bond measure up for a vote as early as the February 2008 primary. Bond money would go toward constructing two reservoirs, improving groundwater storage and redirecting water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta to Southern California and the Bay Area. In response to Schwarzenegger’s proposals, State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has announced a five billion dollar plan of his own. Perata’s proposal would distribute funds to regional water projects in contrast to what he calls the governors “top-down” solutions. Concerns over the state’s water supply have heightened as California experienced an extremely dry rainy season this year. Largely missing from the drought discussion, however, are projections on how climate change will affect our water supplies. A new report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council titled, “In Hot Water,” argues for a paradigm shift in the way water supplies are managed in light of climate change. The study argues that proposed solutions such as river diversions and traditional dam building cease to be viable options in terms of meeting the challenge climate change poses to our water supplies.

Download the entire report at: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/hotwater/hotwater.pdf

For more information, visit www.nrdc.org.

Rough Transcript:

Kolhatkar: The methods of water management, such as river diversions and traditional damn building, even if you don’t talk about the issue of climate change, have these been methods that you would say are good solutions to water management?

Barry Nelson: Well, that’s definitely how California and much of the West has met most of its needs for the last century and a half. As cities have grown, as new agricultural areas came into production, we have traditionally looked for another river to damn, or a river to take more water out of. And, what we are learning as a result of the tremendous scientific activity around global warming is that, especially in the West and especially in the Southwest, we are reaching the limits of that. A lot of people recognize that we are going to loose snow pack as a result of global warming. We may loose more or less, depending on how effectively we try to prevent global warming. But we will see less snow pack in the future and more rain. That’s the impact a lot of people are aware of. But global warming is going to affect us, our water resources, in a host of ways. We may get less rain, we are likely to see more extreme draughts, and we are likely to see, in total, less water in our rivers, which means that the old approaches are reaching limits. In the Colorado River Basin, we have seen eight years of draught. We don’t know if that draught was specifically caused by global warming, but we know that global warming will produce more draughts like that.

Kolhatkar: Now, hasn’t damn building, in general, over the world, been found to possibly have contributed also to climate change?

Barry Nelson: There is some evidence that, in tropical areas, as vegetation decomposes in reservoirs, that contributes to green house gas emission. So there is some evidence in that regard. The green house gas connection, though, that is often forgotten in California, is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy, and therefore greenhouse gases, to pump water from Northern California to Southern California and from the Colorado to Southern California. So, by investing in water conservation and reducing the amount of water we take from those rivers, and there will probably be less to take in the future, we save a lot of energy. So conservation, especially in Southern California, is part of a greenhouse gas solution.

Kolhatkar: So, you just mentioned some of the current sources of water that supply the major metropolitan areas in the state. Before we get into some of the report’s findings, can you broaden that description a little bit? What exactly is the current status of how water is managed in the state of California?

Barry Nelson: Well, the biggest single source of surface water in the state is the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, and we pump a significant amount of that water, an enormous amount of water, into the Central Valley. Now, people need to remember that, even with all of California’s tens of millions of residents, 80% of our water is still used by agriculture. A lot of that water is delivered cheap, or even free to agriculture, and a lot of that water is used to grow subsidized crops. So there is huge potential for cost effective conservation in the agricultural community. Farmers are smart. If we have water policies that pay farmers to waste water, they will waste water, if we have water policies that encourage farmers to conserve, they will do that, too. So that’s where we need to start, because that’s where so much of our water is. For Southern California, the three big sources are: local sources – surface water and groundwater, water imported from the Colorado River, and water imported from Northern California from the Bay and Delta. And what we are learning from the science around climate change is that two of those sources – water from the Bay-Delta and water from the Colorado River – are likely to decline over time. And the scientific community has really reached a consensus, especially in the Colorado River Basin, where, for a variety of reasons – the most simple one is: hotter temperatures mean more evaporation – the National Research Council concluded that we are going to see less water in the future in the Colorado than we see today. So we should be planning to take less water out of that system, because there will be less water available in the future. And the way to do that is conservation, wastewater recycling, groundwater clean-up and a host of modern water management tools.

Kolhatkar: Right. I want to talk about that in just a moment, but, before we get there, you mentioned that 80% of the water in California is used in agriculture, but according to your report, you also say that half of all urban water is used on lawns and landscapes.

Barry Nelson: That’s right. About half of our water in California in the urban sector is used outdoors. It’s used on lawns, landscapes, in homes, industrial facilities, schools, institutions, and so forth. And most of the investment we have made in the last 20 years in water conservation, and Southern California has made big investments in water conservation, most of that has been indoors. So, the real growth area in water conservation is outdoor water conservation that can save a tremendous amount of water very cost-effectively.

Kolhatkar: So people who have very large, very green lawns in their front yards really ought to start thinking about conserving water a little bit better. What are some of the ways in which they can do that?

Barry Nelson: We are doing that right now in our home. There are a couple of ways to do that. We bought a home that had a 1940-style landscape and we are slowly replacing that landscaping with draught-tolerant landscaping. It looks better than the old landscape did when we moved in, and it saves a lot of water, it’s going to be easier to maintain. The other thing people can do is to install better irrigation systems. Drip irrigation will save a lot of water. There is actually new technology coming on the market now that makes irrigation much easier. Some of this new technology is actually sprinkler systems driven by pagers, where a remote computer tells your irrigation system whether it is cloudy today and irrigate less, rainy today and don’t irrigate at all, or sunny today and go ahead and irrigate. So there is a lot we can do to use water more efficiently in the landscaping area, just as inside. We have really shown that toilets and shower heads and dishwashers and washing machines, when they are more efficient, can save a lot of water, and a lot of money.

Kolhatkar: That’s what one can do on an individual level. Now, let’s talk about the main part of the report, which is how water ought to be managed according to the NRDC and yourself, in order to take into account things like climate change for the state of California. One of the issues that your report talks about is for regions to work more closely together to take advantage of local conditions and interconnections. What does that mean exactly?

Barry Nelson: What that means is that water provides us lots of services, but it also has multiple challenges, and Southern California is actually a terrific example. The mountains of Southern California are very steep and prone to flooding already. Climate change is going to mean more intense storm events in those mountains, probably. That means a risk of increased urban flooding. So, what we think we need to do, for example, is to invest more, not just in flood control systems, but in systems that are designed to capture flood waters and get them into the ground, where Southern California can use that water in the future. If we do that, we are not just investing in flood protection, we are investing in water supply and reducing run-off to Southern California coastal waters, which means through that sort of cooperation among different agencies, we can have flood protection, water supply and cleaner coasts.

Kolhatkar: Now, I’m wondering if you can comment on the water management plans by officials in the state of California, particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to address water shortage, as we already discussed, that he basically wants to try the traditional approach of damn building. But then what about Don Perata’s plan, the Senate President Pro Tem, who wants to distribute funds to regional water projects?

Barry Nelson: You know, that’s a perfect example of the difference between old thinking and new thinking on water issues. The traditional approach in years past was to go out and build more damns, and the Governor has proposed putting most of our money into damn building. Now, if we were to do that, something that would be tremendously expensive, most of that water would go, again, to agriculture, not to urban areas. So, urban areas would pay for the bonds, agriculture would get most of that water.

Kolhatkar: And when you say agriculture, you mean agrobusiness?

Barry Nelson: That’s right. Agrobusiness interests in the Central Valley. There are some enormously large, very politically powerful interests, especially in the Southern Central Valley, and that is really where the pressure is coming from for these new damns. It’s not coming from urban water agencies; it’s coming from agricultural interests, who hope that urban rate payers, urban tax payers, will pay for these bonds to build damns that will deliver more water for agriculture. The tragedy is that the water from those new damns, because there is so little water left to capture, is enormously expensive. Some of these damns could produce water more expensive than desalinated sea water, but vastly more expensive than conservation and reclamation and so forth. The Governor’s proposal is to put most of the money in this bond into the old-fashioned approach that we think generates less water over time because of global warming. It’s also designed to generate the water for agricultural interest, not for urban interest. What Mr. Perata has proposed, is that state investments be designed to be partnered with local investments, and allow local agencies to tailor their needs. So, for example in Southern California, Southern California water agencies are cooperating on the kind of flood control measures that I mentioned. That might be the best approach for Los Angeles, to invest in flood management that produces water supply benefits and clean water.

Kolhatkar: And with climate change we could see a lot more flooding?

Barry Nelson: That’s exactly right. So what we have concluded is that the old tools, things like diverting water from rivers, traditional damn building, just mining our groundwater, we are going to see less groundwater with more evaporation. Those tools are probably going to be our worst bet over time, and that things like landscape conservation, remember, if you have a lovely green lawn, keeping that lawn green in 20 or 50 years could take more water in the future because of higher evaporation rates. That means landscape conservation, in contrast to damns, could actually save more water in the future than it saves today.

Kolhatkar: Now, what about the issue of wastewater recycling? Not just conservation but actually recycling the water that is already used?

Barry Nelson: Well, there is a significant amount of ways for recycling already happening in Southern California. That water, generally speaking, is used on industrial facilities. It is used for irrigation purposes. Sometimes it is used to recharge groundwater or to keep saltwater out of coastal aqueducts, coastal groundwater. So there is a significant amount of wastewater recycling being done today, using that water for appropriate purposes. And, what’s interesting is that, the state, a year ago, wrote a new water plan for the state of California; the State Water Plan Update, and that plan identifies, not from an environmental perspective, but from a water management perspective, where the water is going to come from to meet our future needs in California. And the biggest areas, the areas where the water is to meet future needs, are wastewater recycling, conservation, especially, by far the winner, and cleaning up contaminated groundwater to make that groundwater usable. Those sources, that’s where the water is to meet California’s future needs.

Kolhatkar: And so the governor is not even looking at the state’s own report?

Barry Nelson: That’s exactly right. The state’s own report says that those sources I mentioned, conservation, better management of groundwater and recycling, that’s where the water is to meet our future needs. And the best way to get that water is through integrated regional management, the sort of cooperative efforts that Mr. Perata’s bond proposal emphasizes.

Kolhatkar: Finally, Barry, we are preparing ourselves, or bracing ourselves, for what seems to be the inevitability of global warming, but of course, shouldn’t these conservation methods and others that you have mentioned be accompanied by trying to reduce our impact on the planet, and try to reduce global warming in general?

Barry Nelson: That’s exactly right. One of our primary recommendations is that we don’t want to wait. When you look at water resources, not just draughts, as we have been talking about, but there also is the potential for floods in urban areas, the potential for greater fire risk. We don’t want to face the worst case scenario, and we think that the water message in the West really tells the public that we need to redouble our efforts to get global warming under control. California, at the state level, has taken some very significant action there. We think Congress needs to do exactly the same thing.

Kolhatkar: Well, Barry Nelson, I want to thank you very much for joining us today.

Barry Nelson: Thank you very much for having me.

Special Thanks to Claudia Greyeyes for transcribing this interview