California at a Crossroads, Faces Biggest Drought Year Yet

By Doug Obegi, Huffington Post. Posted January 30, 2009.

We're already seeing important steps forward to get the water flowing from these environmentally friendly alternative sources:

• Orange County built a water recycling plant that is generating enough drinking water each year for more than 500,000 people, while at the same time cleaning up coastal water quality and reducing electricity use, all at a cost that is comparable to water from the Delta.
• The Governor last year called for a 20 percent reduction in per capita water use by 2020, and the State Water Resources Control Board and other agencies are working on implementation plans. Assemblymen Mike Feuer and Jared Huffman have introduced AB 49, an NRDC sponsored bill, to achieve this goal. State agencies, local governments, and water districts (such as the Metropolitan Water District) are providing money to increase water conservation, such as funding homeowners to replace old toilets and showerheads with high efficiency models, and providing tips and advice on how to use water more efficiently.
• The omnibus public lands bill (S.22) passed by the U.S. Senate last month authorizes the federal Bureau of Reclamation to fund, design and construct groundwater banks and water recycling projects in California in conjunction with local governments and to restore flows and fish to the San Joaquin River. Like Orange County's plant, these recycling projects could create new water supply while reducing water pollution. The groundwater bank could help reduce water supply impacts in dry years by banking water in wet years to be utilized during dry years. This bill offers a glimpse of a 21st Century policy for the Bureau of Reclamation: smarter, more cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways of providing water for public use, while helping to restore our rivers and wildlife.

These are the solutions we need to implement today to meet our water needs tomorrow.

It's still relatively early in the water year, and we're all hoping for rain. But hoping for rain isn't a strategy for meeting our water needs today, let alone in the future when climate change makes our existing water supply system ever more tenuous. If we utilize our fish-friendly water solutions, we can meet the needs of Californians -- at their faucets and in the fields -- as well as our wildlife for generations to come. And we can become the national model for smart-water solutions for the 21st century.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's blog.

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Doug Obegi is a staff attorney with the Western Water Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Doug’s work at NRDC primarily focuses on efforts to protect and restore California’s Bay-Delta estuary and its imperiled wildlife.

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