Sen. Josh Becker
Aging infrastructure, urban population growth and climate change are three factors why officials, experts and entrepreneurs are rethinking how a 250-year-old system is dating itself.
In an average year, we use 82 million acre feet of water in California. Agriculture uses 40% and urban areas use 10%, according to state Sen. Josh Becker, D-San Mateo, during a virtual town hall Thursday, Sept. 8.
“Unless we cut our greenhouse gas emissions. ... We will still see a significant increase in temperatures that are suspected to be the norm. And all these changes will affect water supply and quality,” Becker said in response to the heat wave we experienced last week.
Our once-through linear water system, while it has worked for the past 100 years, has given us a false sense of water abundance, said Newsha Ajami, Ph.D.,, chief strategy and development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
On average, a residential home uses 59% of the water outdoors; alternatively, focusing on indoor use for water, we only need the highest quality for our faucets, dishes, cooking and showering, which takes up around 13% of average residential use, according to American Water Works Association Research Foundation.
“We treat water to the highest quality, we bring it to your home and you use it for every purpose that you have, with that quality and that’s a serious inefficiency we have in our system,” Ajami said.
Reducing leaks, rethinking how to use water in the home, metering water at every scale, will be essential to move us forward, she added.
Ajami argues the nature in which we use our water needs to shift to not only conserving in drought years but when we have wet years as well so we can use our stored water like a bank savings.
“We have all this information around, how much energy we use for every device in our home but we don’t have that much detailed information about water because we have fallen behind when it comes to metering,” Ajami said.
San Mateo County is one of the counties in the Bay Area with voluntary cutbacks on water usage, but the effort is only a drop in the bucket. Climate change and rising temperatures have caused water to evaporate at an alarming rate, in what experts are calling, an “atmospheric thirst.”
“Literally, a warmer atmosphere is demanding more water from the planet,” Kristopher Tjernell, California’s deputy director of the Integrated Watershed Management Program, said.
Researchers believe by 2040 around 10% of California’s current water supply could be unavailable to us because of the increased rate of atmospheric evaporation due to climate change. Currently, statewide reservoir storage is averaged at 68% for this time of the year, Tjernell said.
“So, 68% is not a good number continuing the dry months ahead,” Tjernell said. “It has been worse in the past but it is definitely a sobering number amongst other statistics that are similar.”
Along with the governor, Becker supported funding $880 million to continue the state’s water resilience package with an additional $750 million for drought response. The 2021-22 budget package included an agreement to provide $4.6 billion across three years for water activities including $3 billion in the current year.
“These are the kinds of decisions we have to make now or otherwise we will suffer the consequences down the road,” Becker said.
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(3) comments
Nice try Mr. Becker. But, shouldn't the water companies and districts focus on the other 90% of usage first? Why beat up on the residential users? Easy targets? Political expedience?
Perhaps Mr. Becker can graciously tell us where the other half of our water supply is going. Let me help out – CA is allowing 50% of our water to flow out to sea. Here’s an easy peasy solution that won’t cost a thing… take 5% of the water being wasted and move it over to the urban use column. Voila, you’ve increased our urban water allocation by 50%. You’re welcome. What’s the next issue you want us ordinary citizens to help you on? BTW, what’s with not spending the billions in bond money available for water projects?
Glad to read of this and hoping to move forward in this direciton
Add two things
#1 is that we dump treated sewage into The Bay and is the main reason/source of current Red Tide killing off anything that lives in our Bay Waters.
Take San Mateo's sewage treatment plant as an example, including the current ~$1 billion upgrade.
We dump approx 20-22 million gallons of treated sewage into the bay EACH DAY and all of that, minus losses, can be treated to become potable water (drinkable). There is a 'yuk factor', but that shouldn't be an impediment.
The normal question is how do we find space for the ponds, etc...well...there should not be a need for ponds with the current technology and the other question is delivery. Delivery can be...should be to just pump the potable (tested hourly/daily) into the current potable water supply system.
These two articles has the information and references CURRENT California cities that have gone this route
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/08/19/direct-potable-reuse-why-drinking-water-could-include-recycled-sewage.html
https://abc7.com/orange-county-groundwater-replenishment-system-worlds-largest-water-recycling-plant-expansion-project/11988409/
#2 is with agricultural use of potable water.
Many articles address this and key is that most of our California agricultural water usage employs 20th Century water delivery methods, which has 40%-60% of the water never hitting the ground/plants that this antiquated system is trying to water
Drive down 99 or 5 and watch for the watering systems. Worst are those that has sprinklers tens of feet above the ground. That water is either/or both blown away or evaporates before hitting the ground
Israelis solved this issue decades ago and that is their drip system, which has been discussed with California agriculture...it costs too much and best motivator would be to increase their water cost
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