Every five years the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) releases an updated version of the California Water Plan - a comprehensive compilation of water data that, as its name implies, is the overarching guidance document for water policy in the nation’s most populous state.

Introduction

Every five years the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) releases an updated version of the California Water Plan - a comprehensive compilation of water data that, as its name implies, is the overarching guidance document for water policy in the nation’s most populous state.

During the height of California’s water development, the Water Plan charted an impressive to-do list of development projects designed in response to a rapidly growing population. Once the expanse of the State Water Project (SWP) was realized, updates of the Water Plan, while still important, assumed a more uneventful and noncontroversial stance.

“It has been seen as DWR’s plan, even by other state agencies,” said Kamyar Guivetchi, who heads DWR’s office of statewide integrated water management. “From their perspective, it’s been DWR’s water supply plan.”

Times have changed, however. Spurred by legislative mandate, the scope of the Water Plan (often referred to as Bulletin 160) has expanded to encompass more viewpoints and to serve as a better overall guide for state and local officials as they pursue adequate water stewardship. The newest Plan comes during “one of the most significant crises” in California history, according to DWR, with fish species in decline, reduced water supply allocations by the SWP and Central Valley Project (CVP), drought, climate change and court decisions all contributing factors.

In his foreword to the 2009 Water Plan update released March 31, DWR Director Mark Cowin wrote that the document reflects “a new reality” of how water is managed and sustained and “a new direction” for water decisions. “This reality includes significant challenges: ecosystems in peril, the uncertainties of climate change and sea level rise, and population growth to name just a few,” Cowin wrote.

Users of the Water Plan are more receptive to the document. An extensive outreach process coupled with a rigorous internal review and the culling of water data from a wide swath of state government has resulted in a report that, while lacking in direct authority for expenditures or mandates, provides direction for a more sustain¬able and reliable future.

“This is a first,” Guivetchi said. “As we transitioned to 2009, we recognized we needed to involve other state agencies that deal with water and work together to guide the development of this plan. We have described how the 21 state agencies relate to the Water Plan and described about two dozen of their companion state plans that affect water management.”

The changes to the Water Plan are not lost on those who have a stake in its development and outcome. “It’s an important policy document that has become increasingly important,” said Dave Bolland, senior regulatory advocate with the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). “Ten to 15 years ago it seemed more or less a technical exercise but the last couple cycles have taken a very important, policy-setting tone.”

Bolland acknowledged there had been concern that past versions of the Water Plan would be issued and “stuck on a shelf,” but the 2005 and 2009 versions really open up the water planning process. Bolland was part of the 45-member advisory group that began meeting in 2007 to help formulate the 2009 Water Plan. Members focused on following up on some recommendations in the 2005 document, including forming the technical basis of water use that’s well understood at the state and regional scale.

Included in the Plan are projected scenarios for 2050 that rely on several factors to give people an idea of what the state might look like in terms of water supply and water demand. The estimates range from a demand decrease of some 2.5 million acre-feet of water to a demand increase of about 6 million acre-feet of water. The Plan notes that a “significant improvement” to the 2009 version is “a quantitative look at the uncertainty” surrounding future climate change.

The Plan offers nine policy recommendations for decision-makers and water users, beginning with the call to “implement and invest” in the Water Plan’s actions. According to Guivetchi, the recommendation is there by design to emphasize that others need to make decisions to implement the plan.

“That may seem like a no-brainer, yet we have legislation that says the Water Plan doesn’t mandate anything or appropriate any funds,” he said. “This recommendation is saying, ‘Hey, we need to invest in the Water Plan’s strategies and actions.’”

Previous versions of the Water Plan have been criticized for being too DWR-centric and for being too dissonant as attempts were made to convene an unwieldy number of stakeholder advisors. Honing the document to a manageable size and scope remains a work in progress but initial reaction by many stakeholders is positive.

“I think overall we are pleased,” said Grace Chan, manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s (MWD) resource planning and development section and the urban state water contractor representative on the advisory committee. She said the recognition of water supply reliability is much more prominent in the Plan. “It seems like it was hardly mentioned before but this time there is a big improvement,” Chan said. “It does reflect the thinking of the co-equal goals.”

Others criticize the Plan for repeating information presented four years ago and for not prioritizing the list of actions that need to be taken. “It was my hope that the [2009] update would build upon the awareness developed in the previous version and actually recommend priorities for investment,” said Jonas Minton, water policy planning advisor for the Planning and Conservation League and a former deputy director at DWR also served on the advisory committee. “Considering the collapse of so many fisheries and the growing uncertainty over water supply reliability, this plan needed to provide much clearer direction.”

Guivetchi acknowledged that some would like to see more prioritization but that DWR doesn’t want to upstage regions in their water planning. “We want to prioritize where state funding and state resources are needed,” he said. “How we prioritize them in the next Water Plan should be informed by the emerging Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) plans and their list of programs and projects.”

The Plan’s scenarios for 2050 follow up on the 2005 Water Plan which projected outcomes for 2030. Incorporating several growth factors, DWR portrays a future in which the state could have as many as 70 million people spread across a landscape that once hosted fields of crops and produce. In another scenario, it is posited that “strong policies are in place to preserve prime agricultural lands,” and that “inspired by a series of legal decisions, California’s Legislature has enacted several comprehensive programs to protect and improve water quality, protect fish and wildlife, and protect communities from flooding.” (See page 9).

The Water Plan describes some potentially dramatic impacts to the state’s hydrology resulting from climate change. The Sierra Nevada snowpack that is the basis for the state’s water supply could decrease as much as 40 percent by 2050, a storage volume of about 6 million acre-feet (an acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons). Rising temperatures, diminished snowpack, more extreme events and other conditions “will increase stress on the water systems in the future,” the Plan says. “Because some level of climate change is inevitable, the water systems must be adaptable to change.”

The Water Plan recommends creation of a water finance plan for integrated water management on a statewide and regional basis. “Although recent bond measures have provided a down payment for improving California’s water and flood systems, and the environment, the state Legislature should conduct a formal assessment of state and local financing mechanisms to provide a continuous, stable source of revenue to sustain the programs described in Water Plan Update 2009,” the Plan says.

The idea of a broad-based water fee has never been well-received in the user community, which does not believe an additional charge to a water bill is an equitable way to finance distant, larger projects aimed at improving overall water supply reliability. “It’s quite controversial – they have put a foot in the door,” Bolland said. “It’s certainly an important issue [and] how we address it with specific implementation measures is yet to be determined.”

Former MWD General Manager Ron Gastelum said the finance plan recommendation “assumes that the California Water Plan is more than an advisory document, or that the state has assumed responsibility to actually assure sufficient water supplies for the beneficiary rate payers to justify asking them to pay.”

“There is no commensurate legal obligation to make sure there is enough water for people and the economy, however it is paid for - bonds, water rates, private investments, etc,” Gastelum said. “Hence, there is lacking a foundational nexus articulated between what the state would deliver for whatever fees or charges it would exact to create this stable and continuous revenue source.”

Guivetchi said there’s increasing awareness that another financing mechanism besides bonds is necessary to meet the state’s water needs. “We can’t finance all our needs on [general obligation] bonds; we need other revenue sources,” he said. “People have not agreed what those other revenue sources will be; they could take the form of fees but I think the time is approaching for the Legislature to take up this discussion again.”

This issue of Western Water examines the changed nature of the California Water Plan, some aspects of the 2009 update (including the recommendation for a water finance plan) and the reaction by certain stakeholders.

Click here to purchase a copy of the entire article.

Editor’s Desk

We were proud to be the organizer with UC Davis of a very significant agricultural groundwater conference and meeting of minds recently. The meeting – the first held in perhaps two decades anywhere in the world – included the latest scientific, management, legal and policy advances for sustaining groundwater resources in agriculture around the world. Groundwater constitutes nearly half the world’s drinking water and much of the world’s irrigation water supply. It was exciting to meet people from Europe, India, Australia, Africa and Iran who are on the forefront of solving ag groundwater quantity and quality issues and learn how developing countries are engaging rural farmers working at reducing contamination.

We decided to develop this event with leadership from Thomas Harter, the Robert M. Hagan Chair for Water Management and Policy at UC Davis. Dr. Bob Hagan spent over 50 years as a professor at UC Davis and had been a long-term board member and president of the Water Education Foundation. When he passed away, he left funding to the University to endow a chair to continue his life’s work helping farmers improve their water practices. Following in Bob Hagan’s footsteps, Dr. Harter serves as the interface with farmers to learn the latest in water science and research to assist their farming practices and use of water.

More than 100 speakers participated in four concurrent tracts and four plenary sessions during the three-day event. Many of the participants then attended a one-day tour of the Sonoma area north of San Francisco and saw dairy and winery practices related to groundwater use.

-  Rita Schmidt Sudman

In the News

Water Rate Increase Spurs Threat of Lawsuit in Southland Dispute

The long-standing animosity over water rates between the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) has flared up again after San Diego officials took a step toward legal action June 10 with the approval of a lawsuit against MWD over 2011 and 2012 water rates.

SDCWA, which has tangled in the past with MWD over similar economic issues, said the conflict stems from how the water wholesaler passes along the costs it incurs for acquiring and distributing water. MWD is the largest water supplier to SDCWA, accounting for about 50 percent of the San Diego region’s supply. SDCWA disagrees with MWD’s delineation between the cost of water and the cost of transporting it. The rift dates to 2003 when MWD separated its billing into transportation and supply categories.

Sources said a decision in favor of SDCWA could be precedent-setting and disrupt the ability of elected boards of directors to make decisions on rate-setting.

In a June 20 press release, Claude A. “Bud” Lewis, chair of SDCWA’s board of directors, said MWD “charges too much for using its facilities to transport water and spends those revenues to subsidize the water supply costs of other MWD member agencies.”

MWD spokesman Bob Muir said his agency would have no comment until the lawsuit is actually filed.

SDCWA claims the rates approved by MWD in April will result in an overcharge of $30 million in 2011 and $34 million in 2012 for the transport of water from the Colorado River from the Imperial Valley. Since 2003, SDCWA has received a growing percentage of its water supply from its long-term water conservation transfer with the Imperial Irrigation District and conserved water from projects that lined portions of the All-American and Coachella canals.

The lawsuit potentially jeopardizes a funding subsidy for the Carlsbad desalination plant. SDCWA has an agreement with MWD in which it would receive as much as $250 per acre foot from MWD for a term of 25 years. There is an MWD rule, however, that allows it to terminate incentives if a member agency legally or legislatively challenges the MWD water rate structure. Thus, if SDCWA does pursue the lawsuit, it could prompt MWD to terminate its incentive agreement.

The SDCWA/MWD dispute has lingered for decades and involves the question of how MWD funds its fixed costs and charges its member agencies for wheeling water. “If MWD continues to set annual rates using the same flawed formula, the Water Authority’s ratepayers will be overcharged as much as $230 million annually by 2021,” according to SDCWA’s press release.

In a March 30 letter to SDCWA, Brian Thomas, assistant general manager and chief financial officer with MWD, wrote that the cost of service and rate methodology are “reasonable; consistent with California law” and consistent with water industry best practices. SDCWA claims MWD’s pricing structure loads 80 percent of the cost of water into transportation – a considerable cost because San Diego is the largest transporter of water in Southern California.

– Gary Pitzer