Category Archives: Drought

January 22, 2009 · :

Everyone laughed at my merry wit, but I was only sixty percent kidding.

I was chatting with some people from my agency about how to talk to the press about this drought. (This is not a problem for me, mind you. The press does not contact me.) Reporters keep wanting to know whether we can attribute this drought to climate change. There are a bunch of answers to that, mostly variations on “we don’t know.” One answer is, ‘we’ll know in retrospect’; reporters apparently don’t want to wait a couple decades to know what to call this drought. The problem with attributing this drought to climate change is that Californian hydrology has always had a ton of variance. This is the third worst two-year drought since we’ve been keeping records, but we are still within historical variance. (Shoot. For that matter, historical variance goes way outside the bounds we’re used to. Here’s a write-up of a neat tree ring study that shows paleodroughts that lasted for centuries.) In one sense that is kinda handy. At a talk I went to last summer, the guy from PG&E said that because they had to build their hydropower generation facilities to handle such a wide range of flows, they don’t expect to have to replace their hydropower facilities for about a decade. Even though they’re seeing more high flows, and believe they’ll see floods more often as spring snow turns to spring rains, they’ll still be within the range of flows they designed for. But it does mean that we can’t say for certain that this unusual drought event is from climate change.

The conversation turned to what to say about the concept of “the new normal”. The Planning and Conservation League is promoting the concept that this drought will be “the new normal” under climate change, and what should we say about that? That’s a little rough too. The climate will change steadily for at least a century; we don’t know where it will stabilize. For as long as we can realistically foresee, normal will be continuous change. So when reporters ask if this drought will be the new normal at the end of that? I suggested “Dear god. We hope so.”, but I didn’t see that in the papers this morning. This is why my work doesn’t let me out in public.

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December 15, 2008 · :

Lay of the land.

Couple months ago, the Pacific Institute put out a report, one in a series laying out a vision for California in 2030. Their overarching premise is that we have enough developed water sloshing around the state to get us through 2030, if we stop wasting it. They put out a volume on urban water use, but urban water conservation bores me to tears*, so I didn’t read it. They followed that with a report on the agricultural water use side. Since every last detail of irrigation is inherently fascinating, I read it breathlessly. They assert that agriculture can not only use substantially less water, but would profit by doing so.

Reaction to the report was mixed. It attracted a lot of attention, and in general people take what the Pacific Institute has to say pretty seriously. Some people liked it a lot. Others didn’t.

Enviros tended to like it because they see agriculture as the only potential source for the amount of water it would take to restore our rivers and the Delta. So much the better if agriculture can withstand the loss of that water and even thrive. Also, the Pacific Institute is talking big numbers, 3.5 MAF of water. That’s more than the size of the only proposed new dams that are real possibilities. We won’t need those dams if we can get that water from agriculture!

Ag didn’t like it, predictably. They don’t like being told they aren’t doing a good job at the livelihood that is also their identity. They especially don’t like being told that they aren’t doing a good job based on an outdated but widespread perception of their practices. They don’t like the implicit threat that the outside world is coming for the water they’ve always used. They (possibly mistakenly) see new dams as the only way of continuing their way of life, so they don’t like reports that suggest that dams aren’t necessary.

I’m sure you remember the sensational swirl of editorials, and how you yearned for someone to go through the report section by section and discuss each piece. You were hoping someone would look at it side by side a critique of the report issued by four irrigation professors. My heart heard your heart, dear reader. That’s what we’ll do this week.

*Here. I can tell you what it said. Meter water use and bill by volume. Fix leaks, big and little. Replace appliances. Switch out lawns and collect stormwater. That’s all good stuff, but just typing that bored me. I know you don’t come here to read boring things, so we won’t be talking about urban water conservation much here.

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December 12, 2008 · :

Empty reservoirs, fires encroaching on houses, snowless peaks.

These are high drama pictures; you’ll suck in your breath as you click through.

I will say that the slide that said “Hope is not a strategy.” irked me a little. When the Governor declared a state of emergency for the California drought, why didn’t we immediately start to implement the State Drought Plan? Oh yeah. Because there isn’t one and no one contemplates writing one. There are some scattered concepts, like letting ag fend for itself and starting a drought water bank. But really. The state is flailing on this; there is no comprehensive strategy or prioritizing for droughts. Certainly no one thought to write such a thing in the several wet years we had in the early 2000’s.

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