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NZ Herald
30-06-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
How Los Angeles learned from its megadroughts to save more water. It needs to conserve a lot more
In 1990, when its population was 3.4 million people, LA's annual consumption was 680,000 acre-feet of water, according to the city's water authority. (The industry metric, an acre-foot, is about half an Olympic swimming pool.) With a population of 3.9 million, the city today consumes 454,000 acre-feet per year. So how did this happen? The shift has involved some simple, practical, boring fixes, like better plumbing, alongside larger transformations in social norms, policies and politics. Call it generational evolution, a slow but inexorable force. With Los Angeles, it began after a series of dry spells. A couple of megadroughts — one during the mid-1970s, another that lasted from 1987 to 1992 — shook California. 'Conservation' became part of the popular lexicon. State legislators passed laws commanding agencies and municipalities to save more water. Politicians, public service announcements and schoolteachers all urged Californians to water their lawns less and to take shorter showers. In time, Los Angeles became more than just mindful. It became an unlikely paragon of urban water conservation. Its shift still hasn't solved the city's water problems, obviously. A recent report commissioned by Governor Gavin Newsom estimates that, with more severe droughts predicted, the state could lose up to 10% of its water supply by 2040. California's farms, many of them in the state's Central Valley, help feed the US by growing food for livestock, like alfalfa, and other crops, like almonds. These thirsty plants gulp four times more water than all of the state's cities combined. The region is at a critical juncture. Conservation has been a huge step, but more practical fixes and gradual cultural shifts may not be enough to bring about water security. There are basically two paths forward. One would draw yet more water to the south from Northern California, while the other would build on conservation efforts and create even greater self-reliance in the region. Both would require large-scale infrastructure that is very, very expensive. Los Angeles now relies for three-quarters of its water on far-flung sources like the Owens and Colorado rivers, which are drying up, and an even more distant tributary of the Sacramento River in Northern California. For generations, Californians have been debating a megaproject called the Delta Conveyance to hasten supplies south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That project, which would shore up infrastructure that is ageing and vulnerable, is opposed by many residents in the delta and by some farmers, and it won't specifically help Los Angeles. Recent cost estimates top US$20 billion. More desalination plants (there's one in San Diego County) could tap into the Pacific Ocean. The latest plants have become less abusive to sea life and coasts, but they're energy-intensive and much costlier for consumers than existing water supplies. The second option is for Los Angeles to recycle more water. Environmentalists all agree it's the best choice. But recycling facilities could end up costing taxpayers as much as the Delta Conveyance, if not more. Building Toward a Better Future In 1913, a self-taught engineer named William Mulholland oversaw the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and transformed the concept of a modern city. Before then, Angelenos banked on the Los Angeles River, a fugitive watercourse prone to catastrophic floods, thwarting downtown development. City authorities decided to send Mulholland north to devise a route by which a river that snaked through the Owens Valley could be diverted to Los Angeles. The city acquired properties from unsuspecting farmers in the valley. Mulholland hired labourers to dig tunnels and erect hydroelectric plants powered by the water that gravity pushed through the aqueduct. The city expanded so rapidly that it almost immediately had to look for more water. Over the following decades, Angelenos extended Mulholland's aqueduct northward and southeast, hoarding water from the Colorado River. Eventually, the city began to import from the State Water Project, which taps into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. For decades, the Los Angeles aqueduct allowed millions of Angelenos with green lawns to weather droughts and live another smoggy day in paradise without having to think too hard about where their water came from — or whether it might someday run out. Until nature started declining to be conquered. Angelenos had to start thinking harder, spark a coming together of politics, ingenuity and resources around a still young century's growing water problem. Something like this happened after the megadroughts during the 1970s and into the early 1990s moved millions of Californians to reconsider their relationship to the environment. In Los Angeles, a culture of conservation was promoted by fledgling environmentalists and community groups, and city authorities began to restore urban wetlands that had suffered from decades of abuse and neglect. Machado Lake, for example, in the shadow of an oil refinery, had become a toxic cesspool. It was given a costly makeover, completed in 2017, that produced a leafy park. 'Places like Machado,' said Mark Gold, the director of water scarcity solutions for the Natural Resources Defence Council who served on the California Coastal Commission, 'helped convince residents that water matters'. 'It didn't increase the drinking water supply. But for Angelenos to care about conservation, they first needed to think of water as not just something that somehow gets piped from wherever into their faucets and shower heads. They needed to see it as a part of what they love and want to preserve about the city.' More prosaically, public officials enticed residents to save water by offering rebates to homeowners who replaced lawns with more drought-tolerant plants. The City of Los Angeles has so far swapped out some 53 million square feet (5 million sqm) of lawn, exceeding goals set by Governor Jerry Brown for the entire state in 2015. By 2018, this ethos of conservation had come to be so thoroughly ingrained that a two-thirds majority of voters in Los Angeles County approved a measure to, in essence, tax themselves if they owned properties with impermeable driveways or other hard surfaces that prevent rain from replenishing groundwater basins. Measure W, as it's called, raises some US$280 million a year. But to be truly self-reliant, the city will still probably need to construct recycling plants, two of which are on the drawing boards. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the government agency that delivers much of the region's water via the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is hoping to complete one of them; the City of Los Angeles is planning another. The current goal for Los Angeles County is that by 2045, 80% of its water will come from recycling, increased stormwater capture, and conservation. Studies suggest that if Angelenos just stopped watering their lawns, reducing per-person consumption to the same amount of water that Western Europeans average, the city would solve many of its water problems. Nearly half of residential water use in greater Los Angeles goes to outdoor landscaping. 'We are going to have less water by 2040; that's the reality,' Gold said. 'We've made gains with conservation. But the clock is ticking.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Michael Kimmelman Photographs by: Adali Schell ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Hill
24-06-2025
- Climate
- The Hill
Newsom warns that California's water system may be ill-prepared to cope with hotter, drier future
California's existing groundwater infrastructure may fail to quench the state's thirst in an increasingly arid future, even as officials celebrate widespread conservation achievements, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) warned on Tuesday. 'The data doesn't lie, and it is telling us that our water system is unprepared for California's hotter and drier climate,' Newsom said in a statement. The governor was referring to data published in a semi-annual report by the California Department of Water Resources that morning. The report, which indicated that California is now collecting more groundwater data than ever before, showed a 2.2 million acre-foot increase in storage last year. Nonetheless, the governor's office stressed that the Golden State still lacks adequate water infrastructure to provide Californians with the resources they will need in future projected climate conditions. The 2.2 million-acre-foot surge in storage reflects the implementation of proactive conservation measures, such as capturing and recharging flows during winter storms, expanding recharge basins, improving monitoring and reducing groundwater pumping across agencies. For reference, the average U.S. household consumes about half an acre-foot of water annually. The 2024 'water year' — October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024 — featured average rainfall in comparison to that of the past 50 years, according to the report. These circumstances helped sustain recharging efforts that occurred after an 'exceptionally wet' 2023, the authors explained. However, the first five months of the 2025 water year have been 'notably dry across much of the state,' the report acknowledged. That extreme aridity has applied in particular to the Central Valley, where much of the state's agriculture occurs, as well as in southern areas — where some spots have endured their driest 10th percentile on record, the data showed. Although groundwater levels in most of California's wells have stabilized over the past year, 49 percent of them have undergone a decline over the past two decades, according to the report. Newsom on Tuesday cited the report's findings in a renewed pushed for the construction of the Delta Conveyance Project — a controversial, $20 billion plan to tunnel more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region to southern portions of the state. The governor has long been seeking to fast-track the Delta Conveyance proposal and thereby achieve vast improvements to the State Water Project, a storage system that serves about 27 million residents and 750,000 acres of farmland. 'We literally cannot afford to wait to complete this vital project,' Newsom said on Tuesday. 'Californians are sick and tired of the self-imposed roadblocks standing in the way of our state's continued progress.'
CBS News
15-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Small California community worried construction of delta tunnel project would tear town apart
In his budget proposal released on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom included funding for the $20 billion water tunnel known as the Delta Conveyance Project. No place will be more impacted by the project than the tiny town of Hood, in Sacramento County. It will be ground-zero in the effort to build the tunnel, and with fewer than 300 people, they don't have a lot of political clout. But the feeling in town about the project is pretty much unanimous. "Typical small town. Everybody knows everybody," said Mayor Mario Moreno, as he stood on the street corner that makes up the entire downtown. He presides over the 271 residents of Hood. The sign says, "Population 313," but it's a little out of date and some people have left. But those who remain have a pretty universal feeling about the plan to place the Delta Conveyance tunnel project there. "I don't really know anybody who's for the proposed project," Moreno said. Hood will be in the center of the project with huge intakes just above and just below the town. The plan is to drill a 36-foot-wide tunnel 100 feet below ground to funnel water from the Sacramento River, 45 miles to a pumping station to be sent to Central Valley farms and Southern California cities. In his budget briefing on Wednesday, Newsom talked about how vital he thinks it will be for the state's water infrastructure. "One of the most important projects in the United States of America," he told reporters. "One of the most important climate adaptation projects in this country. We have got to move that project forward and learn the lessons from high-speed rail." It's interesting that he mentioned the lessons of the high-speed rail because, in Hood, they point to the stalled rail line as a reason to be worried about how long the tunnel boring operation could affect the little town's future. "They said 10 years, eight years, 10 years," Moreno said. "But we know by state government stuff that they've built, that are major infrastructure projects, whether it's the proposed high-speed rail or the East Bay span, rebuilding takes way longer than they anticipated." But beyond the construction headaches, Hood residents fear a loss of their way of life. "Having these giant tunnels right in our backyard is going to take the landscape away," said Shawn Morales. "I mean, who wants that? This is not a city. This is the country and country should remain how it is, you know?" "It just takes something away from you that's real, real big. That's pretty mighty," said Charles Rice, pointing to the river flowing across the street. "It is. It's pretty majestic for all of us. When it rains, it talks. When it thunders, it talks. When the water gets high, we kind of enjoy a little bit of how it all works out here. And so they're going to come along and put some screws to it, you know?" Newsom summed up his feelings in a press release announcing that he is fast-tracking the project. "We're done with barriers. Let's get this built," it said in bold letters. To do that, he said he intends to simplify permitting, limit protests and legal challenges, and increase the state's authority to acquire land for the project. That bothered Aaron Pruitt and his son Mason, who operate a thrift store and antique warehouse in the town. "Now, if they're going to put their big thumb on it and say, this is the deal and you have to accept it. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth," Aaron said. "All this will be destroyed by the hands of those who want to destroy the laws that bind and protect us in our Delta," said Mason. "It's truly sad because a lot of people from my generation that are going to feel the effects." The truth is, no one really knows what to expect when construction begins. They only know that whatever is built there will not be done with the town in mind. "Do we get a benefit out of it? Oh no," said Moreno. "Somebody is but it's all going down south." And they know that having the governor describe their efforts to protect the area as "barriers" lets them know where they stand when the state starts taking water from their river.
