After finishing my hydrology degree, then going back to school and receiving 2 years of additional water treatment training, I am now working for a coastal water district here in the Bay Area.
Before I say anything else, I strongly urge anyone interested in California's water problems to read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.
As previously mentioned big AG and industry consumes 90% of our freshwater supply. Yes, some of this water is used to grow crops that are actually staples of our daily diets, but much more of it goes to luxury crops, many of which are exported to China (and other countries) for profit. Food crops such as almonds and walnuts are incredibly water intensive.
For instance, it takes one gallon of water to grow one almond and five gallons of water to grow one walnut.
California's ~40 million residents use less than 10% of the state's water supply. Central Valley farmers have received incredible amounts of welfare. Billions of dollars worth, subsidized by you and me.
Any large scale projects are years off into the future. The only feasible route I have read about in regards to a pipeline from BC Canada to California is via Idaho and Nevada owing to the (BLM) Federal Bureau of Land Management. The BLM can ignore the protests of individual states and build pipelines on federal land. The BLM owns enough land in those 2 states to feasibly construct a pipeline. You will never get a pipeline through Oregon and Washington. You will never get a pipeline from the Mississippi. We are already feeling the long-term environmental impacts of damming the West. Dams are out of favor now, and there is not much left to dam.
Desal is a very expensive form of water production. Incredibly energy intensive. Most plants I know of are using reverse osmosis technology, which is cheaper than previous methods, but still dependent upon energy rates. As solar becomes a more efficient source of energy, desal may become a more viable form of water treatment. However, there are also negative environmental impacts related to building and operating desal plants. Desal is not the panacea it's often made out to be.
Reclaimed/recycled water: This to me is an exciting alternative to the above scenarios, but again very expensive because of the need to build a secondary distribution network to deliver the water to customers, since you cannot at this time mix first-stage treated water and recycled water. I believe, though I could be wrong on this, that Orange County is already injecting treated wastewater back into the aquifer to help replenish their dwindling groundwater supplies. I do not know how long the water must remain in the aquifer before it can be pumped. However, there are growing concerns over pharmaceutical drugs, the result of people dumping them down their toilets, entering our water system via reclaimed water.
Individual usage:
There are many encouraging signs of growing awareness in my district. People are allowing their lawns to die. Outdoor water usage usually accounts for the bulk of a customer's monthly water bill. The goal within our district is to get people to use 75 gallons per day per person. This is an easily reachable goal, if customers curb their outdoor usage. Tear out the lawn and replace it with drought-tolerant landscape. Replace your old 3-5 gallon toilets with lower-flow 1.2 gallon toilets. Install rain barrels. Our district offers rebates for every conceivable water improvement. Our pumping is down 25% from February of 2013 to now.
Water rates will continue to rise. That's the conundrum for a district. Raise rates and customers, except for the extremely wealthy, tend to use less water, which means less income, which means districts raise rates again. It's a vicious cycle. Costumers tend to become conservation weary. They feel they are saving water only to watch their bill double and triple.
Maintaining treatment plants, wells, tanks, and a distribution network is expensive. Employees are expensive. Water has been cheap for too long. No more. Probably never again in California unless technology renders droughts meaningless. I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.
Another problem in my district, that is somewhat separate from much of the rest of the state, is saltwater intrusion. 100% of water in my district is groundwater and as we continue to drain the 2 aquifers supplying our system, saltwater is starting to encroach inland. We are working with Stanford and the USGS, among others, to monitor and study this problem.
I went to college in Southern California and still visit friends there frequently. Unfortunately, many people in SoCal treat water like an afterthought. 25-30 million people live in what is a desert. That bill is going to come due soon enough. In fact my best friends down there have an acre of lawn and a swimming pool in a neighborhood that averages 105* days in the summer. We disagree on a few things.
Long story short, California's water problems are complex. There are no one-size fits all solutions because the state has such various terrain and climate. Sometimes I think it's this complexity that frightens people into inaction.
However, maybe it's not that complex. Maybe it's time to abandon all these multi-billion dollar projects and look at ourselves in the mirror. As others have mentioned, here in the US we are always crying "More, more, more!" Well, maybe it's time to stop whining, stop complaining, stop thinking it is our American right to have a green lawn in a desert, and start using less.
Hey, less is more. Isn't that the BPL motto or some such.
(This officially concludes the longest rambling post I will ever contribute to BPL. I am on-call and tired from a 14-hour day. Cheers.)
