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Brunell: Growth in West puts pressure on water

By Don Brunell

Published: April 3, 2018, 6:02am

As we deal with our population growth, we must address sufficient supplies of drinkable fresh water for residential, commercial, agriculture, fisheries and industrial needs.

Not only will our numbers continue to climb, but so will competing pressures for fresh water. While demographers can project population growth fairly accurately and planners are good at assessing future needs, nature controls the supply of rainfall and mountain snowpack, and when it occurs.

For example, precipitation in California’s agricultural region historically fluctuates with periods of above-average rainfall followed by periods of below-average rainfall. In 1897, the Central Valley received 13.6 inches of rain, but only 4.6 inches the following year. In 1958, the region received more than 23 inches of rain while the next year, it received less than 8 inches.

Most recently, California experienced a severe four-year drought culminating in 2015. Two years ago an estimated 564,000 acres of prime cropland were left unplanted because of the critical water shortage. Economists at the University of California, Davis estimated the drought caused $2.7 billion in economic losses and cost 18,000 farmworkers their jobs.

The water shortage was so acute that Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a 25 percent reduction in household usage, which forced many homeowners to rip out their manicured lawns and plant desert plants among sand and rocks.

Then in 2017 record rain and snow overwhelmed the state. By February, there was so much water in the reservoir behind Oroville Dam — the tallest in the United States (770 feet high with a lake containing 1.1 trillion gallons of water) — that it was at 151 percent of normal capacity. There was so much water pressure the lower spillway began collapsing.

Late last summer in Southern California near Santa Barbara, heavy rains falling on mountains scorch by wildfires created flash floods where huge boulders rolled down narrow creek beds, burying homes and major roads.

With that in mind in 2014, California voters, with bipartisan support, approved a $7.5 billion bond to expand water storage and improve flood control. The vote allocated $2.7 billion for 11 water-storage projects.

“Yet the California Water Commission, which doles out the cash, has tried to scuttle 11 water-storage projects. It says the projects would provide negligible public benefits as required by the law,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized on March 7.

WSJ added: “The proposed Sites Reservoir in Northern California could store up to 1.8 million acre-feet of water. According to Republican state Assemblyman Frank Bigelow, Sites could have captured more than 586 billion gallons of runoff between last October and February –enough to supply 13.3 million Californians for a year. The Sites Reservoir would help California’s endangered chinook salmon by increasing the amount of cold water in rivers available during droughts.”

Our country’s population last year topped 325 million. Much of that growth has been along our Western seacoast. Washington and California grew nearly three-fold.

What is happening in California with water-allocation disputes is a harbinger of what is to come in our state as well.

If we release too much water from reservoirs, how will we sustain ourselves during dry spells? What happens to the 670,000 acres of Eastern Washington farmland that depend on irrigation? What happens to the 82,000 agriculture-related jobs and $1.5 billion in wages? How will we replace the 75 percent of our electricity that is generated by hydropower?

We need to carefully assess our total needs and implement the strategies which will ensure our children and grandchildren have adequate supplies of fresh water.

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