News of the Arroyo
Title: | Experts: Expect drought to linger |
Subtitle: | More water shortages seen for Southland |
Date: | 2008-02-02 |
Summary: | February 2, 2008 - The prescription for future water challenges is conservation, groundwater, recycling, and local resources according to several groups of scientists who have studied Southern California's water horizon. |
Author: | Elise Kleeman, Staff Writer |
Publication: | Pasadena Star-News |
Content: | Southern California\'s current drought is just the beginning. Models of the West\'s future and studies of its past, including one announced Thursday in the prestigious journal \"Science,\" forecast a coming crisis in water supply. With so much at stake, scientists - including a panel recruited by Southern California\'s powerful Metropolitan Water District - are warning policy makers that an entirely new approach to water management is needed. \"There is a sense of urgency here, this is not something we can wait 10 years to address,\" said Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. \"There\'s no shortage of potential solutions and ideas, somebody just has to take the reins and do it.\" Barnett and his colleagues set out to identify what caused the West\'s changing climate during the last 50 years. By comparing climate models with historical records of snow and river conditions, the team estimated that as much as 60 percent of shifts in water supply were brought about by human pollution. \"The answer came out quite clearly that it\'s us,\" he said. The climate models also predict a coming \"train wreck\" of water shortages and steep drops in electricity production as dams empty, Barnett said. In addition to climate change, California\'s swelling population, environmental battles and fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee system combine to make the state\'s water delivery system far more susceptible Advertisement to shortage than once thought. \"One of the things that sticks out like a sore thumb is we have to be more reliant on local sources, our groundwater,\" said Bill Patzert, a JPL climatologist and member of MWD\'s seven-member science panel. \"The good news is that we have great aquifers.\" But groundwater is not an unlimited resource, and in some places - such as much of San Diego County - it\'s not available at all. \"It\'s a big mess, and there are many solutions, but the obvious one is conservation,\" Patzert said. \"Building a conservation program, as soon as possible, will benefit all of California.\" The panel\'s report also calls for more water recycling and reclamation efforts, greater collaboration with scientists and a broader awareness of the historical, social and environmental factors that make California\'s water resources much less reliable than once thought. \"It\'s a clarion call that we need to do more,\" said Tim Brick, MWD\'s chairman. The scientists\' report, he said, is part of a larger effort by the agency to incorporate more research into its long-term planning. MWD, a consortium of Southern California cities and water agencies, distributes water to 18 million people. \"What the science panel did is in many ways set the tone and provide some guidelines\" for MWD\'s water management plan, now in the midst of a large-scale revision, Brick said. It is expected to be completed next year. One thing the scientists agree on is that water districts\' use of only the last 100-or-so years of data to prepare for natural fluctuations - a policy known as stationarity - is no longer adequate. \"Stationarity is dead,\" asserted the headline of a second article published in Thursday\'s issue of Science. Even ignoring the effects of human-induced global warming, geologists have found reason for concern about our water supply just by looking futher back in natural records of river flow. Studies have shown the Colorado River has seen multiple droughts lasting as much as 50 or 100 years - \"droughts that are much deeper than any droughts that we\'ve seen in the last 100 years, including the Dust Bowl droughts,\" said Johnnie Moore, a geologist on the MWD panel. \"The concern that many of us have is that water management is based on this concept that is on very poor ground now,\" said Moore, of the University of Montana. Add to this human effects that cause much more variability in supplies, and providing enough water to satisfy the millions living in the West \"is really going to take a major effort at the policy level,\" he said. \"This is not going to be easy.\" elise.kleeman@sgvn.com (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4451 |
Url: |