California is experiencing its third year of drought, statewide, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which provides two-thirds of California’s fresh drinking water and yields a giant portion of the nation’s food supply, is dangerously close to running dry, water conservationists and water managers say.

Yesterday, federal officials vowed to act. During a visit to Sacramento, Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes met with local interests – farmers, fisheries, families and municipalities in the region – and promised to free up more water for their use. He acknowledged that the drought has compounded a pre-existing condition – the overall degradation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Hayes said that restoration of the vital delta is as significant as the restoration of Florida’s Everglades or the East Coast’s Chesapeake Bay.

“Not only is it a crucial ecosystem that is in peril, but more than 20 million Americans in the most populated state in the nation rely on it for their drinking water,” Hayes said. “The status quo is not sustainable.”

Help can’t come too soon. In Fresno County alone, thousands of farmers have lost income and crops due to the drought, which is now ending its third year. According to a county request for a gubernatorial “State of Emergency” proclamation in April,  due to “surface water allocations (that) have been reduced to zero percent… Fresno County farmers (will have to) fallow thousands of acres  of crop land… (and) 250,000 acres will not be farmed in 2009 due to lack of water.”

The Sacramento-San Joaquin estuary is where two of California’s largest rivers converge and intermingle with saltwater from the Pacific Ocean. It is the West Coast’s largest estuary, hosting 500 species of wildlife, including 20-plus endangered species (the salt harvest Suisun Marsh mouse and the Delta smelt among them; it also is a critical migratory channel for regional salmon). It serves cities and farms from the Bay area to the Central Coast to Southern California – encompassing approximately 738,000 acres of farmland, yielding crops such as asparagus, grain, pears, corn, hay and tomatoes, and bringing in over $500 million each year.

But with the current drought, those contrasting needs have become more pronounced. Consider that over the past three years, California’s rainfall has been 35 to 25 percent below average. The state received 63 percent of average rainfall in 2007-2008; 72 percent of the average in 2008-2009; and 75 percent by the end of June 2009 for the 2009-2010 water year.

The timing of Deputy Secretary Hayes’s visit to Sacramento couldn’t have come at a less convenient time for the city itself. After a report last week that municipal water usage has spiked over the past three years while residents’ has been restricted,  capital city officials are scrambling to figure out what happened – What caused, for instance, a 76 percent increase at one city property alone over the past two years?

The story, which appeared in the Sacramento Bee on Sunday was based on three years’ worth of metering records. It reported that at city properties overall, expenditure of the precious resource jumped by 22 percent.

The two biggest city guzzlers were a golf course and public park, and the city’s historic cemetery, where the Bee reporter noted antiquated watering systems that left wasteful pools of water.

The office of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has not yet responded to a request for comment by GreenRightNow. But with the U.S. Department of the Interior finally weighing in on California’s water woes – something the Bush Administration artfully dodged for eight years  - the California capital is most likely putting its nose to the grind – and trying to figure out its own civic water balance.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Las Vegas is hot and dry, as it should be, since it’s in the desert. Years of droughts in southern Nevada have emphasized the point.

The area usually only gets about 4″ of rain a year, anyway.

Despite that, the allure of Vegas has drawn an estimated 400,000 new residents since 2002. And then all those thousands of newcomers planted pretty lawns and lush landscaping.

Green lawns don’t belong in the desert. Keeping them green means a constant drain on southern Nevada’s precious and limited amount of water.

Today, even though the recession has halted Las Vegas’ population growth, the city still has more than 1.8 million residents, and 40 million visitors a year.

The source of all water in southern Nevada is Lake Mead, fed by the Colorado River. The lake’s water level has dropped dramatically in the last decade. In 2008, one report said, the water level of the 250-square-mile lake was 102 feet below its old waterline.

Fear that a large, heavily populated region of the United States could be without adequate water in the not-too-distant future has prompted swift and creative responses from the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Ten years ago, they started the Water Smart Landscapes Rebate program, providing cash back to home and business owners who yank out their turf and replace it with native plants and water-saving landscaping.

Since it started , the authority says 130 million square feet of grass has been removed, and billions of gallons of water saved. An estimated $138 million in turf rebates have been paid out. One report said that between 2002 and 2007, even as Las Vegas’ population boomed, water use dropped by 15 billion gallons – an 18 percent decrease.

In that region, turning landscapes into low-water-use xeriscapes can save about 75 percent on the annual water bill, another report said.

The water authority pays $1.50 for every square foot of grass removed and replaced with native landscaping — up to the first 5,000 square feet. Hit the 5,000-square-foot mark and they’ll still keep paying, $1 a square foot up to a maximum of $300,000 a year.

Other cities in the dry southwest have implemented similar programs. Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power started a program last month to pay single-family homeowners $1 for every square foot of grass they pull up and replace with drought-tolerant plants and permeable ground cover. The department will pay up to $2,000.

Twenty-nine cities within California’s East Bay Municipal Utility District (including Alameda, Berkeley and Oakland) can get 50 cents for every square foot of grass they replace, up to $1,000 to single-family residences.

Cities in Arizona, Mesa and Chandler, for example, also give cash back to those who replace grass with low-water plants.

Even though cash for grass programs are popping up in drought-ridden states across the country, they have a long way to go to match Las Vegas.

In addition to the grass payback, Southern Nevada’s water authority instituted a water-saving car wash program, providing coupons to car washes that either recycle their own water or send it to a treatment facility for recycling. Residents can get money back for buying a swimming pool cover (without it, the authority says, 10,000 to 15,000 gallons of water can evaporate from a pool). There are other programs, as well.

Other useful information from the water authority includes a step-by-step how-to video to go from grass to low-water landscaping.  There is a chart to show how much water can be saved by making the change, and a before-and-after photo gallery of beautiful landscape conversions.

Photos from Southern Nevada Water Authority, before and after photo gallery

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

This Global Change Research report released this week is a compendium of the expected fallout from climate change in the U.S.

It’s not something you’ll want to curl up with in place of your bedtime novel; it won’t make you hazy, happy and sleepy (picture yourself bolt upright, watching crime news to calm down).  Still, for those of us deliberately trying to keep our heads above the sand (or our real estate above the tide) it’s a must read.

I recommend skipping a lot of the governmentish intros and conclusions. Cut to the heartland synopses; these assessments of each region are a great reality check. This section of the report is stout and specific and will wrest away any fuzzy notion you have that climate change will just make things a tad warmer and we’ll all wear fewer sweaters.

For instance, the report projects that under the worst case scenario,  average temperatures in Carbondale, Ill., at the end of the 21st Century could parallel those of Houston today; blueberry cultivation, maple syrup harvests and dairy farming could go bye-bye, or nearly so, in the Northeast and on the Great Plains, the great and beneficent Ogallala Aquifer could, ummm, how to say it nicely…dry up.

I’ve synopsized some of the synopses below to give you more details from four sample regions.

NORTHEAST:
Flooding coastlines could cause the most havoc as sea levels rise, threatening real estate worth trillions up and down the coasts. Manhattan’s 100-year flood zone, for instance, could expect a flood of that magnitude every ten years by the end of this century, instead of once in a century. Warmer temperatures also will create air quality issues and increasing demand for air conditioning. The length of winter could be cut in half across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Temperate crops like apples and blueberries will no longer be adapted to the region, under worst case scenario projections. Forests will be pushed northward. Heat will stress dairy cows, damaging milk production. Cod and lobster fisheries will be diminished.

MIDWEST:
Changing average temps could make climate in Michigan more like that of Arkansas or evenNorth Texas. Downstate Illinois could end up feeling more like Houston. Increasingly frequent severe heat waves, though, would be lethal, with blasts like the one that killed tens of thousands in Europe in 2003 occurring about every other year by the end of the century (under the “higher emissions scenario”). The Great Lakes would warm and lose water to evaporation, with lake levels falling by one to two feet, choking out fisheries, reducing hydropower and degrading water quality. Longer growing seasons will potentially increase row crop yields – but heat waves, floods and increased insect pests will make growing food more challenging.

SOUTHWEST:
Hotter temperatures are reducing snowpack and river flow, and a northward shift in storm tracks are zapping precipitation.The resulting water scarcity would (and already does) threaten croplands in California and municipal water supplies in populationcenters like Phoenix and Las Vegas. As the situation worsens, it could lead to “conflict” over competing needs. During more frequent droughts, for instance, water set aside for agriculture would have to be diverted to urban areas. Desert and forest fires would become more frequent, and invasive species could gain a stronger foothold, jeopardizing native biodiversity.

GREAT PLAINS:
Higher temperatures here could soar to more than 10 degrees higher by the end of the century under the “higher emissions” scenario, or 6 to 7 degrees under the “lower emissions” scenario. (Throughout the report, projected changes are described this way, based on how well greenhouse gas emissions are controlled.) Coupled with more frequent heat waves, drought and heavy rainfall, the region would experience changes in water availability and agricultural and ranching activities. Withdrawals from the Ogallala Aquifer system could overrun input, leading to problems irrigating crops. Rising temperatures would help more insect pests survive winter, and weeds also would flourish. Playa lakes that preserve prairie wildlife would dry up, and agricultural wastes will continue to clog them, further depleting the aquifers.

So that’s the bad news, and there’s plenty more of it in the sections on Alaska, the Coasts, the Islands, the Northwest and the Southeast.

The report contains a few nuggets of good news. The Great Plains are primed for wind power. Chicago is pioneering heat mitigation in urban areas with green roofs and vegetation areas. King County (Seattle) is repairing its levee system to prepare for sea rise. Some flood walls were redesigned after Katrina.

But these seem like flotsam on vast floodwaters. Much more will be needed, and soon.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Need a break from all the seasonal cheer? Researchers at the University of South Carolina have delivered this for the holidays: a detailed “Death Map” showing the weather that’s likeliest to kill us in whatever part of the U.S. we’ve decided to call home.

Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas!

The map, kidding aside, is actually making a well-timed debut as the freshly minted Obama Administration is promising to focus on global warming.

According to the color-coded map, which divides the U.S. into 12 weather regions, heat and drought beat out all other meteorological events or trends as the deadliest weather “hazards”. After studying nationwide data going back to 1970, the research team of geography professor Susan Cutter and geography doctoral candidate Kevin Borden found that heat and drought caused 19.6 of the weather-related deaths in the nation. That was followed by “severe summer weather,” (near as I can tell this category includes thunderstorms, high winds and lightning) which accounted for 18.8 percent of deaths and winter weather at 18.1 percent.

Catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires, which garner disproportionate news coverage, were responsible for 5 percent of weather-related mortalities. (In defense of news crews, property destruction can be much worse with these single-weather disasters, not to mention that their freakish randomness makes them more frightening.) And Californians, mudslides, along with avalanches, (obscurely and ominously identified as “mass movement” events) accounted for another almost one percent.

The USC scientists hope their map can help improve emergency preparedness.

It may also serve as a reminder that keeping cool in summer and warm in winter remain as critical energy challenges, not only so that the country can conserve its resources, but to save lives.

See the full article in the International Journal of Health Geographics. (Warning: This is an academic work; laypeople may want to skip to the pretty and informative charts at the end.)

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The year 2008 is expected to finish as one of the 10th warmest years on record, since record keeping began more than 150 years ago, according to a report this week from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Also in 2008, Arctic sea ice dropped to its second-lowest level since modern satellite monitoring began in 1979.

Because NASA tracks this sea ice “extent” you can get more information from their site, and see an animation of the melt from Jan. 2008 through late summer, which is as close to an illustration of global warming as it gets. (Scientists like to point out that climate change is not the same as weather change; a given year’s weather is but one component, one frame in a film, of the overall gradual warming of the planet.)
As you can see from the above photo, you might be able to see Russia from Alaska, but you can not see any  Arctic ice in August.

The WMO estimates 2008’s global combined sea-surface and land-surface air temperature is about half of a degree Fahrenheit above the annual average temperature of of 57.2°F (14°C) from 1961-1990. However, the global average temperature in 2008 was slightly lower than in the immediate previous years because of strong La Nina pattern that cooled ocean temps, moving from the Pacific tropics and beyond.

In addition to a worsening melt of Arctic sea ice, WMO noted that 2008 saw climate extremes such as heatwaves, snow storms, devastating floods and severe and persistent droughts, manifested in the U.S. by flooding in the Midwest and drought in the Southeast.

These weather extremes included:

Regional temperature extremes — There were above-average temperatures all over Europe in 2008. In most parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden, winter was the warmest recorded since the beginning of measurements in 1850.

But a large part of Eurasia saw bitter cold, with parts of Turkey recording the coldest nights in nearly 50 years. In southern South America, particularly in Argentina, there were record-breaking low temperatures. But Argentine also had mean July temperatures more than +3°C above average, and in large parts of Argentina, Paraguay, southeast Bolivia and southern Brazil, 2008 brought the warmest July in the last 50 years. There also was a record heatwave in Australia, along with south-eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Drought — The American Southeast experienced moderate to exceptional drought, and continuous dry conditions across northern and central California hindered efforts to contain numerous large wildfires.

Southern British Columbia in Canada recorded the fifth driest period in 61 years. Portugal and Spain had their worst drought winter in decades. Other major droughts occurred in Argentina, Uruguay and south-eastern Australia.

Flooding and intense storms — Heavy April rainfall along with saturated ground and snow melt led to widespread flooding in Missouri and Indiana and 2008 became one of the 10 worst years for tornado-related fatalities.

Through August, a record 1,489 tornadoes resulted in 123 deaths.

Canada faced snowfall records. There was a large number of strong thunderstorms in Germany, and heavy rain in West and East Africa caused the worst recorded flooding in Zimbabwe.

Tropical storms — There were 16 named tropical storms in the Atlantic and eight became hurricanes, five of which reached Category 3 or higher (averages are eleven, six and two, respectively). For the first time on record, six consecutive tropical cyclones (Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike) made landfall on the United States, and a record three major hurricanes (Gustav, Ike and Paloma) hit Cuba.

The East Pacific had 17 named tropical storms, of which 7 evolved into hurricanes and 2 of them into major hurricanes (averages are 16, 9 and 4, respectively).

Artic sea ice down –  During the 2008 melt season, the overall ice volume fell to less than that in any other year. In a widely reported event, nearly one-quarter of the massive ancient ice shelves on Ellesmere Island collapsed.

When legislators cross party lines and governors publicly plead for water reform, you know the country’s water crunch has reached a new degree of direness.

And yet, some conservationists ask, who’s really listening?

In late July an Opinion column appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other California newspapers. In it, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and senior U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, attempted to jolt water-hoggers into acknowledging that their state is in a full-blown water crisis.

The unlikely duo delivered frightening news: California’s largest reservoir, the Shasta Reservoir, is operating at only 48 percent capacity this year, and the state’s second largest water storage reservoir, Lake Oroville, has less water to spare than it has in three decades. California’s multi-year drought has allowed wildfires to gobble up more than a million acres this year. And job-loss has become a major factor, they say, noting that in two of the past three years, the Pacific salmon fisheries (which impact tens of thousands of jobs) have shut down because there just isn’t enough salmon for fishing.

In light of those facts, you have to scratch your head over why Americans, who consume two to three times the amount of Europeans daily, still squander water, the most essential thing to life itself.

Jason Morrison, a water expert from the non-profit Pacific Institute in Oakland, CA, says it’s simple: Because water is cheap, and economics still trumps ecology as a motivation for conserving it. The only problem is, water’s not just an “environmental” issue; it’s the glue to entire nations’ economies, their food supplies, their industry, their people’s day-to-day life. It’s a survival issue.

And though California (and Nevada and Arizona) might be the most obvious victim now, many scientists believe other states in the U.S. will face the same situation very soon if aggressive action isn’t taken.

Morrison and others at the Pacific Institute believe that any real change will be driven by utility policies – “like pricing and metering. There are some parts of the world, even some parts of the United States,” he says, “where sites aren’t even requiring meter readings for their water users. Sacramento was one, until recently.”

Understanding the situation in their own backyard, Schwarzenegger and Feinstein have worked together for almost two years to come up with a nonpartisan water policy that would address individuals, water-service providers, industry and agriculture, and set an example for the rest of the country.

Their Opinion piece should’ve scared the pants off all Americans – since California’s economy is among the ten largest in the world. In their nonpartisan plea, the two concluded that if the state doesn’t put an “emergency compromise” water package on the state’s ballot this November, the results – a drought worse than anything California has experienced – loom as early as next year.

And that, they stated, would be “catastrophic for our water supply, our environment and our economy. Already, farmers are taking agricultural lands out of production, and building permits could be put on hold, causing the loss of thousands of jobs. …”

That last issue, loss of jobs, is part of a bigger motivator for water conservation: Money. It all comes down to money.

“Water is a relatively low cost item,” explains Morrison, director of the Pacific Institute’s Economic Globalization and Environment Program. “It’s hard to get businesses or water users to pay attention to conserving a resource that’s been so devalued – or to cherish it.”

Speaking to GreenRightNow by phone from Oakland, the advocate – who helped represent the conservationists’ side in the recent CEO Water Mandate – discussed what’s really going on with water in the United States, and why, despite evidence to the contrary, many Americans just haven’t gotten it.

WATER: THE PRICE ISN’T RIGHT

“Right now, they have no incentive to use water more wisely – because it’s so cheap. But what’s changing is, locally, municipalities are looking at full-cost pricing to reflect how much it takes their water service providers to actually deliver it, having that reflected in the price of water.”

Only then will consumers start to conserve, he says, underscoring the adage that people don’t change their destructive behavior until it hits them in their wallets.

Traditionally, the cost of water hasn’t conveyed the fact that its supply and demand are at odds. When the supply of something is limited or shrinking, its rising cost alerts consumers to eminent shortages. Just look at the current crude oil market (which is based largely on perceived shortages). Until recently, though, local governments and even global corporations haven’t put water in the same economic context as other natural resources.

A prevailing factor is agriculture.

“One of the biggest water users in the world is agriculture. When you look at what or who consumes the most water, it’s 70 percent agriculture. Even in countries where the water systems are more developed, there are huge places where agriculture can get more efficient,” Morrison says.

“Also, the Ag lobby in this country, and in others, is a very powerful force in shaping water policies, including pricing,” he says. “When it comes to implementing policy changes that would drive (conservation), they’re blocking much of the legislation.”

The reason? All across the American West, big agriculture has what’s called senior water rights, allowing large-scale farmers to ignore water shortages and conservation requirements, and also giving them first dibs on water.

“In the Western United States,” Morrison explains, “the water rights are dictated by the doctrine of ‘prior appropriation’ . They’re first in line for water – they have first rights, so that it’s there when the region comes into drought periods and (others) have rationing.”

This pro-ag policy forces individuals, and even water utilities, to make do when supplies are already being heavily rationed. But pro-environment groups like the non-profit Water Heritage Trust say that’s an outdated practice, not just for human consumption but for the survival of wildlife and the waterways that support them.

The organization, part of the non-profit Resources Renewal Institute founded in 1985 by former California Resources Secretary Huey Johnson, asserts that the restoration of “free-flowing water” is essential to resolving extreme scarcity throughout the West. Their focus is on wildlife, but what’s good for wildlife, in this case, could be good for humans.

“As California and the west were settled… (w)ater rights were established on a seniority system of ‘first in time, first in right,’” the WHT explains on its site. “No one thought to allocate to fish, birds and other wildlife the water they needed to survive. Probably no one could conceive or even imagine that they would ever be gone.”

But, the organization notes, “At last things may be changing. For the first time in 150 years of managed water allocation in California, a legal precedent has been established to preserve the water rights of wildlife. … Additions to the California Water Code, specifically Section 1707, establish the right to reserve water for the ‘purposes of preserving or enhancing wetlands habitat, fish and wildlife resources or recreation in, or on, the water.’”

Experts in all walks of water conservation agree that the legislation and litigation out West can provide a blueprint for the rest of the U.S.

People like Morrison (and his boss, Pacific Institute co-founder and president Peter Gleick, a powerful force in shaping international water policy) believe that only when the debate over who has water rights shifts toward the individual – or even wildlife – will consumers get a true sense of water’s “value.” They say that once big fish like the “ag lobby,” which wants to keep water cheap, are forced to play fair, pricing will underscore the true scarcity of water. That’s already occurring in Europe and other developed nations where stricter policies make it more expensive.

AMERICANS CLUE IN

Some find it curious, though, that Americans, who like everyone else rely on water for their very existence, may not appreciate water’s preciousness until our market – i.e., the cost of it as a commodity – makes us realize just how precious.

Still, Morrison has reason to be optimistic.

“It is happening already – through these changes in water policy. I do think water is one of those resources that is hard for people to see as a global issue, because it’s such a local resource. It’s hard for people who live in Michigan or Sweden, which are surrounded by water, to understand water scarcity.”

It’s just a matter of trickle-down, though. When water scarcity in California makes purchasing a head of broccoli in Michigan as expensive as, say, buying a new CD or T-shirt, then perhaps consumers will notice.

Reducing the issue to its essence, Morrison puts water conservation on human terms, reminding us that it’s part of the larger “green” approach – and that invariably, even the most stubborn resisters will be forced to comply.

“Water is just another one of those areas of the green movement. And we’re coming out of this slumber, so to speak, as a society. We haven’t been really fully aware of how we misuse and over-use these resources that are so precious.”

Clearly, that’s changing. The fact that Republicans and Democrats are crossing the aisle to address water, our most valuable resource, speaks volumes.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media