From Recovery, Page 14
runs short for any par- ticular reason. Unfor- tunately, the Colorado users are fighting over allocations, the resi- dents around Bishop want their land and their water rights back and Delta pumping is severely limited due to the Delta smelt, a tiny fish that is considered endangered and func- tionally extinct in the wild because only single
They fight every one of them. But they don’t offer any realistic alter - native. Community groups want community bene- fits with each taxpayer investment. That drives up the price, and delays every project. Bureaucratic inertia has delayed projects for years. We could be capturing twice as much
GUEST COMMENTARY
rebuild. Measure W grants for rainwater collection and treatment systems should also be considered. These upgrades are expensive and would otherwise be some- thing to avoid on top of all the other costs of rebuilding. The County also should consider incentiv- izing these property owners to rebuild with ADUs so that some additional good, in the form of additional housing, can come from this tragedy. Also, rental units that were under rent control will need to be clearly exempted from future controls or there will be no incentive whatsoever to rebuild them There needs to be a special team created to deal with the properties where the owner has chosen to walk away. Those properties could remain eyesores for years otherwise. Getting them acquired and rebuilt should be a priority. Every other similar fire area has had this problem.
The Politics of Fire and Water M ark Twain once wryly observed: “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Nowhere has that
become more apparent than in the kerfuffle between President Trump and Governor Newsom over the recent Palisades and Ea- ton fires. Both of them are right and both of them are wrong. Has our water system been mismanaged for the benefit of political expediency? Yes! Would more water from the north have
stormwater in local dams if we would just clean out the muck and sediment that has accumulated behind the 14 dams we control. The cities have spent less than 20% of the hundreds of mil- lions they have been given for stormwater capture projects. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been the weapon of choice to delay or kill any project that someone disagrees with. It’s the policy equivalent of an AR-15, but no politician will touch it. Our water supply is being dictated by special interests that have no concern for the consumers who are footing the bill for everything. Those interests have the ear of the politicians, and the result is a water policy based on bias and preference rather than engineering. In comes President Trump, the disrupter and chief, and he knocks all the checkers off the table. Right or wrong, he put everyone on the defensive. The public thinks he makes sense, because, in much of it, he does. Politicians and bureaucrats ar- en’t used to being challenged in front of a TV camera. The public doesn’t understand their leaders’ explanations, or excuses. The voters have a right to think, with the billions they are paying, ev- erything should be working. Now they find out, under the worst of circumstances, it isn’t. That’s a problem for the water industry. If the public loses confidence in their plans, the money will dry up. Now is the time for the Governor and our state water leaders to sit down with the President and the federal water managers and talk openly and plainly about how we are going to fix our teetering water infrastructure and provide a long-term, reliable and resilient water supply for consumers and agriculture. Wait- ing it out isn’t an option. Mike Lewis is Senior Vice President of the Construction Industry Air Quality Coalition and a former Chief Deputy to a past Los Angeles County Supervisor.
digit numbers have been found for nearly a decade. All of those have squeezed the water supply from outside the SoCal region. It has made even more urgent the need to assure a reliable and resilient local water supply. Local leaders have proposed building pipelines and intakes from the south of the Delta to the north to take the water out before it gets to where the fish live. That’s a $20 billion project. We have proposed a $3.6 billion local project to take high- ly treated wastewater and pipe it to the foothills to increase groundwater recharge. Voters have also approved a $300 million a year tax to build stormwater capture and treatment facilities to take advantage of every drop of the little rain we get in California. Taxpayers are also providing $250 million a year to fund a flood control system that needs to be modified to capture stormwater rather than letting it go directly to the ocean. The federal government has begun funding the repair of the five local dams that could be able to hold stormwater for groundwater recharge as well. Finally, the state voters have approved billions for new dams that have yet to be built. All the local water agencies have collectively offered millions in incentives and rebates for low-flow toilets, water-saving appli - ances and irrigation systems, leak detection, rain barrels, and turf removal and replacement with drought-tolerant plantings. One thing is for sure; we can’t conserve our way out of the problem. California’s per capita water use is 85 gallons per day. In 2015, it was 150 gallons per day. The state has set a goal of 47 gallons per person. That would be the lowest in the nation. Wasting water is not the problem in Southern California. With all of that, how is it that we still have a water problem? Politics! Northerners don’t think Southerners should be taking “their” water. Even though we only take 4% of what goes through the Delta to the sea. Environmentalists don’t believe in surface storage (dams).
Mike Lewis Senior Vice President Construction Industry Air Quality Coalition
benefitted the firefighters? No! Can the Presi - dent force some changes in the decades old California water policies? Yes! Does the public understand where their water comes from? No! That last question is the reason the President is able to conflate water allocations from the north with dry fire hydrants in the Palisades, although there is little direct relationship. We have plenty of water right now. Our local reservoirs are full due to conservation and careful man- agement by our water agencies. When California Senator Rubin Ayala chaired the water committee, he often said, “People think water comes out of their wall.” In those days, droughts were rare, water was plentiful and as long as it kept flowing the details were not important to most consumers. California’s water system is a clever, aging, Rube Goldberg construct that counts on snowpack accumulating as storage in the western Sier- ras, melting slowly, refilling reservoirs that drain slowly to the Sacra - mento-San Joaquin Delta, where it is picked up by pipes and pumps and canals and lakes that send it to the desert in the south where 27 million people live. For the south, that is just 30% of their supply. Another 25% comes from the Colorado River that gets its snowmelt from the Rockies. The Los Angeles aqueduct gets its water from all the land that William Mulholland bought for the City of Los Angeles in Owens Valley near the Bishop area; drawing its water from the snowpack in the eastern Sierras. The remainder is generated locally from groundwater sourc- es (recharged from stormwater captured in local dams) and recycled/ treated wastewater. With all those sources it’s been easy to juggle supplies when one
Rebuilding Infrastructure Rebuilding the roads and reinstalling the in- frastructure should be
the county’s first priority. Repaving could take years. Repairing water lines and other utilities must be done before anyone can build. Simple question. With today’s regu- lations and policies will the gas company be allowed to reinstall their gas lines or is everybody going to be required to build all electric homes? If so, can Edison supply the considerable additional electrical capacity? This tragedy should present a unique opportunity to develop a new model for government cooperation with private prop- erty owners who are the victims of natural disasters. Defaulting back to “business as usual” is not a solution. This is the County’s opportunity to demonstrate their nimble- ness at a time when the residents need to know that you have their back when they really need it.
16 | California Water: Special Edition
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