Guv Newsom wants to limit the water we use due to his refusal to create new dams, his demolishing four dams, refusing to build water storage facilities. Instead of punishment, maybe he needs to pro-active. Use his emergency powers to build water storage facilities, stop water flowing into the ocean, build desalination plants and create a real water recycling industry.
“Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps.
But as climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in technically feasible, though politically and environmentally complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
Not enough water, too much government.
As Bay Area faces prolonged drought, recycling and desalination are the only two real options
Conservation techniques alone are not going to solve the water crisis, experts say
By Jessica Wolfrom, SF Examiner, 5/24/22 h
Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps.
But as climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in technically feasible, though politically and environmentally complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
“We need a fundamental transformation of where we’re getting water from,” said Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, an association of local businesses dedicated to economic development. “And really, the two options are recycling and desalination.”
Desalination and wastewater recycling are not new ideas. Other countries with limited freshwater supply, including Algeria, Australia and Israel, have been removing salt from seawater for years, while places like Singapore and Orange County treat drinking purified wastewater as a fact of life.
Such technologies have cropped up in the Bay Area as well, with mixed results. For nearly two decades, some of the region’s largest water agencies, including the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Contra Costa Water District and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, have been exploring a desalination project that would diversify the region’s water supply.leSubtitles EN
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Pittsburg and Huntington Beach projects
In 2009, the coalition launched a pilot project in Pittsburg that processed brackish Delta water, proving that desalination was technically feasible. But shortly after the pilot ended, further action was stalled by the 2012 drought and a complex tangle of water rights that effectively killed the project’s ability to divert more water.
“Right now, desalination in the Bay Area is still at the drawing board phase,” said Covert. “It’s kind of on the back-burner.”
Critics of desalination, a process that uses reverse osmosis to remove mineral components from saline water, argue that it’s costly, energy-intensive and destructive to marine life, especially in coastal areas where biodiversity flourishes.
But proponents say that it’s just a matter of time before California’s water will dry up. It’s a reality that prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom this week to again implore water managers to aggressively conserve water, threatening future mandatory restrictions if water use is not reigned in.
“Given what we’re experiencing on climate change, the snowpack, our unpredictability and our prolonged droughts, I think it’s inevitable that communities even in the Bay Area will at least evaluate (desalination),” said Glenn Farrel, executive director of CalDesal, a nonprofit advocacy group. “All indications suggest that this is going to be an ongoing part of the conversation.”
Earlier this month, Newsom also threw his political heft behind a large-scale desalination plant planned for Huntington Beach — a fight that pitted him and industry groups against environmentalists, scientists, and eventually the California Coastal Commission, which, after a heated public tussle, voted to stop the project’s permitting process in its tracks.
“We live in California, in an arid climate — in an increasingly arid climate. Conservation needs to be a way of life before we move on to other methods that will have huge environmental impacts and maybe even exacerbate the drought,” said Mandy Sackett, California policy coordinator at the nonprofit Surfrider. Desalination “is such an energy hog — and it’s an environmental justice question, too, because that means we’re allowing these polluting, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure to remain in our communities.”
Though desalination shares much of the same membrane and conveyance technology with wastewater recycling, the latter requires less energy usage and is cheaper to operate given that there are simply fewer salts to process, which is why many favor recapturing water over desalinating it.
“We see the beautiful blue Bay, and it looks super clean — and in terms of public perceptions, maybe desalination is more attractive. But using highly treated wastewater actually generates fewer greenhouse gasses and is expected to have fewer regulatory uncertainties,” said Kirsten Struve, assistant officer of water supply at Santa Clara Valley’s Water District.
It’s also worth noting that Bay water may be more polluted than the half-million acre-feet of potable water that residents use once and then flush down the drain each year.
To put that another way, “Bay Area cities collectively dump enough wastewater in the Bay each year to quench the thirst of Los Angeles,” said Covert. “Tapping into that resource is the cheapest, most readily available way to strengthen drought resilience.”
SFPUC resisting change
Still, while recycling projects are rapidly expanding in places like Santa Clara and Orange County, San Francisco, due to its long-standing control over the Tuolumne watershed, has largely been insulated from the water woes in other parts of the state.
But as the drought drags on into its third year, some question its heavy reliance on a dwindling resource, arguing that The City is woefully unprepared to face the need to innovate new ways to source and save water.
“I think most San Franciscans would be very surprised to know that their public utilities agency is resisting new environmental requirements that would protect San Francisco Bay, its salmon and the Tuolumne River watershed,” said Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist at the environmental nonprofit Baykeeper.
Instead of pouring investment into new recycling infrastructure — a solution that would alleviate what Rosenfield sees as an over diversion of the Tuolumne while also improving Delta ecosystems downstream — the SFPUC has engaged in multiple lawsuits to resist any changes in its current practices.
“Water is power in California,” he said. “And the SFPUC, as the manager of this water, is just resting on the laurels of a very sweet water deal that The City got many decades ago.”
That said, the SFPUC has also conceded that it needs to diversify its supplies, and fast. The utility is currently constructing its Westside Enhanced Recycled Water Facility near Ocean Beach, which will recycle water to irrigate Golden Gate Park. It’s also expanding water recycling partnerships with Daly City and Pacifica to increase irrigation capacity for cemeteries and golf courses, and exploring the possibility of purified water with the cities of San Jose and Santa Clara.
But as it stands, none of these larger-scale projects add to drinking water supplies — at least for now. In 2020, the SFPUC also launched a small research project, called PureWaterSF, to evaluate whether it could reuse wastewater and blend it back into The City’s drinking water reservoirs.
Running out of cheap water
Even with the current projects, the SFPUC predicts that it will not be able to meet the region’s estimated water demand by 2045. “Staff continue to identify and are beginning to evaluate new projects that can provide additional water supply benefits. These opportunities are limited and will rely on a combination of purified water, desalination, and storage,” a recent report said.
As water becomes harder to find, its cost is poised to rise. “The price of water in San Jose and San Francisco has about doubled over the last 10 years and it’s becoming increasingly unaffordable,” said Covert. “Our traditional way of funding water infrastructure entirely on the backs of ratepayers is unsustainable.”
Despite rising costs, Rosenfield is dubious that Bay Area residents will ever see their taps run dry, especially if water agencies implemented stricter conservation measures and got serious about recycling.
“There is plenty of water in California — even during a drought. I think that’s what people think when they hear about water scarcity is like, we’re going to run out of water. There’s no way that we’re going to run out of water. What we’re running out of is cheap water,” said Rosenfield. “But if we got serious about reforming how we use water, there’s more than enough.”
