Water

By Dan McCrory

We need to find ways to protect one of our most important resources.

Irrigation: 40 percent Thermoelectric power: 39 percent Public Supply: 13 percent Industry: 5 percent Livestock, aquaculture: less than 1 percent Domestic (self-supplied): 1 percent Mining: 1 percent

Of course, the water used for thermoelectric power is used for cooling massive turbines and can be recycled and used for other purposes.

How will this impact our water supplies and help us parcel out water equitably for a variety of needs? Statewide, approximately 80 percent of developed water in California is used by irrigated agriculture. Over the next 30 years, as cities, suburbs and rural communities continue to grow, a slight reduction in the agricultural proportion is expected. Some of this reduction is attributable to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which will be taking a greater share of State Water Project (SWP) supplies, leaving less available for the SWP's agricultural contractors. In addition, agricultural districts are finding that they can improve water-use efficiency using, for instance, drip irrigation or switching to crops that use less water. Some of them have profited from this strategy by selling or leasing un-needed water for urban use or to provide environmental benefits.

Since the late 1970s, surprisingly, urban water use has increased only moderately as urban agencies throughout the state have found new ways to provide safe, clean and reliable water supplies for their constituents. Increasingly, these agencies are turning from remote dams and reservoirs to a host of other alternatives that are more cost-effective, more reliable, and usually more environmentally friendly. They include building local reservoirs to store water, promoting conservation, desalination, wastewater reclamation, and, in partnership with agricultural districts, using transfers and exchanges to meet demand.

Carefully-kept statistics (and the 2013 draft report from the California Water Plan), tell us that, on average, groundwater meets about 35 percent of California's agricultural, urban, and managed-wetlands water uses or about 15 million acre-feet per year. In dry years, this percentage increases to 40 percent to 60 percent statewide. In specific regions, groundwater may meet up to 70 percent or 80 percent of the water use.

Fortunately, for us, there are a lot of organizations looking at alternative solutions. Pacific Institute is one of them. Their report, "California Water 2030: An Efficient Future," posits through a series of formulas that it's possible to save 20% of California's water by 2030 without, they state, "new inventions or serious hardships." They suggest implementing new water-efficiency standards on appliances, rebates for buying those appliances, and an expansion of more efficient irrigation methods in agriculture, to name a few. Once elected, I plan to introduce legislation utilizing a number of their suggestions.

I'm also interested in innovations presented by the TreePeople organization. From their website: In cities across the U.S. there is often an abundance of hard pavement accompanied by a lack of trees. Together, these conditions create an environment that cannot capture storm water. Instead, storm water runoff flows across hard surfaces and into rivers, lakes and oceans, picking up trash, pet waste, pesticides and other pollutants along the way.

Through demonstration sites that use best management practices (BMPs) to collect and treat storm water onsite, TreePeople is advocating for a citywide system of cisterns and infiltrators to help capture storm water runoff and recharge the natural, underground aquifer -- just like a mature oak tree.

This innovation also reduces the amount of pollution that reaches our waterways.

TreePeople has already implemented several programs in conjunction with Los Angeles City agencies. I will author legislation to promote and implement these programs at the state level. I hope to avoid the war of diminishing resources that threatens our state.