Even though I had been writing about California since 1987 and had a general idea of state water policy, until I worked for Susan I had no idea how complex, developed and even rational water policy is.

In California, water rights and use mostly are “adjudicted.” The rights are mostly private, as are the lawyers involved; but the state courts system referees disputes. Other than the courts, the state is involved only if the state itself has water rights. Even the federal government, because of federal law, follows state adjudication decisions. The ultimate adjudicator is the California Supreme Court.

The adjudications sometimes can take decades. Yet somehow, it works. Along with federal bankruptcy court, California water adjudication is one of the few areas of government that actually works fairly well.

This system, which is more than 100 years old, now is endangered because state legislators are using the drought as an excuse to increase their control over private water. The Los Angeles Times reported:

California continues to endure a calamitous lack of water from the sky, the state could, for the first time, start to regulate water drawn from the ground.

Groundwater regulation has been politically poisonous since the state’s founding. But lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration are hoping to capitalize on the current parched conditions, and cautious cooperation from once-resistant interest groups, to pass a plan for a groundwater management system by the end of the month.

“This falls under the category of: Never let a crisis go to waste,” said Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento), an author of the legislation.

That last quote was a paraphrase of Rahm Emanuel when he was President Clinton’s first chief of staff, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Perspective

My colleague Wayne Lusvardi has been writing about this here on CalWatchDog.com. From my political perspective, here are a couple of things:

1. Given that the current system is old, well established and works fairly well, anything else will be more expensive. That means we’ll all end up paying more for water.

2. Much of the higher water expense will go to lawyers. Usually when government uses eminent domain to grab property, it goes after Jose’s Muffler Shop or Anita’s small home. This time they would be going up against some of the sharpest lawyers in the state.

3. The U.S. Supreme Court strongly has established “takings” law, in which any property taken from citizens through eminent domain must be compensated. Here’s a summary from Public CEO of the Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District decision just last year:

In a potentially groundbreaking land-use decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in a sharply divided decision that the denial of a permit to develop wetlands property in Florida could be a taking of property under the Fifth Amendment. What this decision means to local government agencies that issue development permits remains to be sorted out. The justices who dissented warned that the majority opinion places a dark cloud of uncertainty over land use permit fees relied upon by local governments throughout the United States. The majority opinion, on the other hand, suggests that the dissent’s fears are exaggerated, if not entirely off the mark. In California, it would not be surprising if some developers attempt to use the decision to challenge land use decisions and permit fees. But existing California law already lines up to some extent with the decision rendered by the nation’s highest court.

You can bet the Koontz  decision would be cited in any lawsuits against the state insisting that any state legislation taking groundwater, or reducing groundwater rights, be compensated out of the state treasury. That could cost billions.

And where is the Legislature going to get those billions? The only way would be to add a fee to your water bill.

]]> https://calwatchdog.com/2014/08/11/groundwater-takeover-would-prove-costly/feed/ 8 66736 https://calwatchdog.com/2014/03/14/gov-brown-legislature-push-groundwater-regulation/ https://calwatchdog.com/2014/03/14/gov-brown-legislature-push-groundwater-regulation/#comments Fri, 14 Mar 2014 23:53:18 +0000 http://calwatchdog.com/?p=60679 This is Part 1 of a two-part series.

Due to the current compound drought and water storage shortage, California legislators are considering enacting groundwater regulation over the entire Central Valley aquifer. Some recent developments:

• State Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, chairperson of the Water Committee of the California Senate, is considering legislation to do so. Pavley has been floating bills to regulate groundwater since 2009.
• Water expert Peter Gleick has been saying for some time that there is a looming groundwater catastrophe in California.
• In his 2014 State of the State Address, Gov. Jerry Brown called for “serious groundwater management” to crack down on overdrafting.
• The California Legislative Analyst Office on March 11 released a new study, “Improving Management of the State’s Groundwater Resources.” It reported the governor’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014-15, which begins on July 1, includes $1.9 million for 10 positions to establish a new groundwater policing and regulatory bureaucracy that would begin superseding longstanding state groundwater and property rights laws. 

However, as of 2000, the aquifer had 390 years of remaining water storage left and is depleting at a rate of only 0.25 percent per year, according to a 2012 study conducted under the sponsorship of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the study concluded that nearly the entire threat of depletion is isolated in the Tulare Basin.

The study was headed by  researcher Bridgett R. Scanlon, of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas, Austin. The title of the study: “Groundwater Depletion and Sustainability of Irrigation in the U.S. High Plains and Central Valley.”

According to the California Department of Water Resources Groundwater Bulletin No. 118 in 2003, California depends on groundwater to meet about 30 percent of its needs in average years, about 60 percent in wet years.

Adjudicated groundwater

Currently, the California government effectively does not regulate groundwater, leaving regulation to a longstanding adjudication process in state courts. Such adjudicated groundwater basins are examples of self-regulated groundwater management, with the courts acting only as referees. It is unnecessary to regulate or adjudicate many agricultural water basins because farmers have agreed not to draw down underground water levels below a certain pre-agreed depth to avoid depletion that would ruin their farms.

If groundwater basins are not drawn down below their annual safe yield, they will recharge. If they are lowered below the safe yield, they will deplete.  According to Scanlon’s study, California’s Central Valley aquifer is depleting, but at a very slow rate. However, the unintended consequences of diversions of water for fish under pressure from environmental lobbies are resulting in a secondary groundwater depletion crisis.

Scanlon’s study and the State Department of Water Resources estimate the annual overdraft is about 1 million acre-feet of water per year. However, the primary source of recharge of water basins (60 percent) is agricultural irrigation.

But in recent years, the greater percentages of system water being flushed through rivers to the ocean for fish runs means the newest source of groundwater depletion is environmental diversions of water. In 2012 alone, 800,000 acre-feet of Central Valley water was flushed to the sea for fish runs. In 2013, upstream from the Central Valley, 453,000 acre-feet of water was diverted from Trinity Lake for fish flows.

If Brown’s new state regulatory program is instituted, ironically farmers would end up being policed for overdrafting, when actually they are the primary source of recharging basins.

Media misunderstanding of how groundwater works also often portrays farmers as criminals. The Modesto Bee recently reported that the expansion of almond orchards totaling 4 million trees in Stanislaus County would consume enough water for 480,000 people. That would be enough water for the entire City of Fresno for one year.

But the groundwater in Eastern Stanislaus County is not available to be put into the San Joaquin River for statewide municipal use or for fish runs.  Moreover, the California Area of Origin Law would prohibit grabbing water in Stanislaus County for use elsewhere. And shifting orchards to where groundwater is abundant liberates water in the State and Federal water systems for cities and fish.

Groundwater managed, not regulated

Up to now, groundwater has not been regulated, but managed in California. After the passage of Assembly Bill 3030 in 1992 (Water Code Section 10750 et seq.), local agencies were authorized to manage groundwater.  More than 200 agencies adopted groundwater management plans.

The major difference between voluntary local government groundwater management and state regulation is that the state has the power to issue shut-down notices and compel compliance with law enforcement.  A local groundwater management agency is able to monitor wells and issue surcharges on pumping too much water, but it can’t stop a landowner with water rights from pumping water.

And there still are some areas of the state that have not adopted such management plans.  Liability issues, the high cost of adjudicating water basins, the ability of farmers to self-manage groundwater levels, the complexities of existing water rights, and the lack of legal conflicts over local groundwater usage have made groundwater regulation unnecessary in many areas. Groundwater is not generally monitored in some 200 water basins where the population is sparse and groundwater withdrawals are typically low.

The DWR reports that groundwater is already monitored in 10,000 active water wells where the water is mostly used.

DWR recently implemented a new groundwater surveillance mechanism, the California Statewide Groundwater Elevation Monitoring in 2012, in accordance with State Senate Bill SB-X7-6 of 2009.  This report is provided every 5 years to the legislature.

(In Part 2 of this series, the hydrological flaws and consequences of a potential new green groundwater regulatory plan will be discussed.)

By Wayne Lusvardi

A North/South California water war has been waging since William Mulholland took a civilian militia of shotgun-wielding soldiers to Owens Valley in 1927 to guard the Los Angeles Aqueduct from further bombings by local farmers.  At the time, national press called it California’s “little civil war.”  The fictional movie “Chinatown,” starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, was based on the war.

Eighty-six years later the Northern counties in California are close to winning the battle, but it isn’t over till it’s over. Southern California still could win the perpetual North/South water war.

Northern California apparently has won by attrition and adjudication.  As a consequence, California is about to fund without voter approval a massive, redundant $14 billion Delta Twin Tunnels Project.  The tunnels would convey tributary river water under the Delta. This would allow fresh water to flow over the surface to restore  salmon runs between mountain fresh water lakes and the ocean outlet of the San Francisco Bay.

The 19 million water customers of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will have to fund most of the cost of the tunnels.  A “No Project” alternative of continuing to rely on the existing Delta pumping facility and California Aqueduct would add no new cost and would deliver the same or less amount of water.  But the existing Aqueduct system cannot do one thing: overcome the massive environmental regulatory burden and constant lawsuits mainly from Northern California organizations that have historically embargoed Northern California water from being shipped southward.

Same organizations that hiked costs now oppose high costs

The California Environmental Quality Act and the Federal Endangered Species Act of the 1970s have made it possible to “game” the legal system to curtail water deliveries to Central Valley farmers and Southern counties by way of bogus lawsuits to protect the Delta Smelt fish.  But there are no laws preventing frivolous environmental lawsuits or imposing penalties on the governmental agencies that fight California’s water war.  To the contrary, an “independent” panel of scientists cleared those who gave false testimony in the Consolidated Delta Smelt Cases.

Ironically, the Northern California organizations that have brought about the need for a redundant Twin Tunnels project are the same organizations that now say the project is too costly and does not meet any cost/benefit tests.  If it were not for having to incur the massive cost of burrowing the tunnels to avoid damaging Delta farmers and protect bogus Delta Smelt habitat, perhaps the project would be more cost effective.  Proponents of the Tunnels say it would achieve a $5 billion benefit based on measuring project benefits over 50 years.

Northern California opposition to the Twin Tunnels is seemingly eating its cake and having it too. Northern California has created the reasons the Tunnels are so expensive and now is opposing the project because it is too costly.

One of the major contentions of the Northern California lobby in opposition to the Tunnels is that there will be cost overruns that will likely double the $14 billion estimated cost.  But it is Northern California that has created the situation of a totally unnecessary Tunnel project that will be a 100 percent jobs program and redundant water project.  In 1982, Southern California proposed a cheaper alternative than the tunnels called the Peripheral Canal that would have routed water around the edge of the Delta.  But the proposed Peripheral Canal was shot down at the ballot box.

There is a likelihood of large cost overruns to building the Delta tunnels.  But this is because the project has not been socially defined as a real public works project.  Instead it has unofficially been defined as a jobs program that will deliver no more water than the existing aqueduct system.  If the Tunnels were to be structured along the lines of the original State Water Project, cost inflation would be much less likely.

State Water Project had NO cost overruns

According to the Department of Water Resources Financial Statements for 2012, of the $1.75 billion of general obligation bonding originally authorized for the State Water Project, only $1.58 billion was issued up to 2012.  Only $362 million remained unpaid as of the end of the 2012 fiscal year.  The original State Water Project built the California Aqueduct, five dams and the Edmonston Pumping Plant at a cost of $1.75 billion.  Adjusted for money inflation, that would be $13.595 billion today. So at $14 billion in the current estimate, the Twin Tunnels would cost about as much as the existing State Water Project.

Despite the current public outcry that a doubling of costs is inevitable for the new Bay Delta Plan, there were no cost overruns in the initial State Water Project.  This is because the State Water Project was socially designed around cost controls to maintain political legitimacy.  Conversely, the Delta Tunnels project has weak political legitimacy. This is because the North doesn’t want the project and has inflated its cost and the South is realizing it would be compelled to pay for a redundant tunnel system.

Water doesn’t run uphill towards money and votes

It is often said that California’s water system “produces water that runs uphill toward money.”  But money and a supermajority of Southern California voters haven’t been able to make the Twin Tunnels politically legitimate. Northern California has been able to capture the legitimate moral high ground on water based on environmental protection, albeit based on junk science. The courts having found the case for preserving the Delta Smelt fish had “no scientific merit.” A major problem of the Bay Delta Plan is that it has vainly sought legitimacy by regulation, junk science, legislation and judicial authority with no statewide vote.

You can step in same river twice

An ancient proverb said, “You can’t step into the same river twice.”  But Southern California is about to have to pay twice for the same man-made river. The wasteful cost of the Delta Tunnels is ironically being justified on the basis of conservation. Southern California — which has had about 40 percent of its water from the Colorado River cut back and constant water shut downs of the California Aqueduct to protect fish –- doesn’t have much of an alternative but to proceed with the Bay Delta Plan.

Northern California has won the water battle in the courts and has dominated public opinion. But Southern California is proceeding to win the North/South water war.

By Wayne Lusvardi

The Resource Renewal Institute, an environmental activist organization, recently posted online its new California Water Rights Atlas. The atlas alarmingly asserts:

“Currently, water rights holders claim they divert [that is, use] in aggregate approximately 250 million acre feet of water each year. California receives 71 million acre feet of usable water from annual precipitation.” 

The inference is that mainly farmers are over-drafting underground water supplies. But is this accurate? 

First, according to the State Department of Water Resources, the amount of average annual rainfall in California is 194.2 million acre-feet, or 2.7 times the atlas’s number of 71 million.

It is widely reported that California gets about 30 percent of its water from groundwater sources.  The average amount of water supplied for urban, agricultural and environmental uses in a year is 82.5 million acre-feet, again according to the State DWR.  Thirty percent of 82.5 million acre-feet of water amounts to 24.75 million acre-feet, not 71-million acre-feet.

So the Water Rights Atlas understates the amount of average California rainfall by 2.7 times.  And the amount of water supplied from subsurface resources is inflated by 2.8 times. Unfortunately, the media have accepted these mistaken estimates as reliable. And the incorrect estimates ignore that groundwater storage capacity is 10 times that of all the state’s surface reservoirs combined.

Groundwater numbers

It is easy to exaggerate groundwater withdrawals during dry years and ignore  replenishment during wet years. Water activists often don’t see that farm water is not equal to the sum of groundwater pumping.  The consumption of water by crops is much less than the water applied.

The rest of the water recharges the groundwater basin.  Installing meters on farm water wells does not “measure” the farm’s groundwater usage, because as much as 50 percent of that may percolate back into the groundwater table.

Is a catastrophe looming to justify statewide monitoring and regulating of farmers’ legal rights to use uncontaminated water on their own properties? Some analysts, including Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute and Catherine Freeman of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, assert that unregulated water rights holders are hurting the public and the environment.

But the over-drafting of water basins in Southern California ended decades ago due to adjudications and infusions of imported water.  Adjudicated water basins are a model of successful self-regulation.

On the other hand, the Tulare Lake Basin in Central California has overdraft problems during dry years. But this can be addressed locally.  A Stanford study by Rebecca Nelson found that groundwater over-drafting is already being addressed at the local level.

The claims of impending catastrophe ignore that local institutions are already in place to protect groundwater.  There is little to no recognition, for instance, that the California Groundwater Association, a non-profit organization with 40,000 members, has been operating efficiently since 1948.

Is Water Conservation a Solution or Part of the Problem?

Contrary to popular notions, water conservation efforts have resulted in diminished groundwater recharge.  This is because groundwater supplies during dry years rely on irrigation inefficiencies during wet years.

Agricultural conservation leads to what is called the “rebound effect”: the more water that is available due to conservation, the more acres of crops are put into cultivation.   There is little recognition by environmental groundwater crusaders that conservation itself, not use, could be the source of any future crisis that they foresee.

Groundwater Catastrophe is Sociological, Not Hydrological

The report of a looming statewide groundwater catastrophe is not only overblown.  It reflects a misperception of the important role of farmers in California’s economy and ecology.

In fact, if it weren’t for farmers erecting dikes and levees in the Delta, salmon would “drown” and flooding would periodically ruin Delta ecosystems.  Social activism to restore salmon runs — and create new jobs for environmentalists — is now destroying farmers’ jobs in the Central Valley, as I reported earlier this month.

There is a culture water war going on in California over groundwater, green jobs and political power at the expense of agricultural jobs and productivity.   This is not to ignore or diminish real groundwater over-drafting problems that can be solved at the local level.

As Jay Lund, professor at U.C. Davis’s Center for Watershed Sciences, has aptly summed up California’s groundwater situation: “Effective management of overdraft, salinization and contamination also will require a long-term perspective and technical efforts — through the end of the 21st Century and beyond.  This requires an important, if limited, role for the state.”

It does not require a vast expansion of government regulation.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 is here.

Dec. 4, 2012

By Wayne Lusvardi

In Part 1 of this series, I explained how an $8 billion tax storm soon will swamp Los Angeles property owners. The tax storm will be:

* A jobs program disguised as a storm water clean up tax;

* Politically risky use of eminent domain;

* Out-of-control land acquisition costs for new storm water catch basins;

* A possible staggering loss of property tax base;

* Added taxes that will hit public schools, big box retailers and downtown Los Angeles commercial properties the hardest;

* The eclipse of representative government by unelected and self-dealing Storm Water Groups that will capture at least 50 percent of the taxes.

This tax is on a fast track to be enacted in Los Angeles County come hell or high water.  But is there an alternative that local cities could lobby the state legislature for to prevent such a “perfect storm” from happening?

A market alternative for storm water cleanups

Enter stage right into this political theater of tax controversy economist Bowman Cutter of Pomona College, U.C. Riverside professor of environmental policy Kenneth Baerenklau and water resources engineer Joong Gawng Lee.  Their policy paper, “Capturing Urban Stormwater Runoff: A Decentralized Market-Based Alternative,” may offer an option for policy makers to consider.

The conventional method of storm water capture is to route runoff to a large regional detention basin or settling basin to percolate into the groundwater.  Rainwater runoff is diverted into concrete-lined flood control channels located on top of natural river beds that flow to the ocean.

In the dense Los Angeles urban basin, it is difficult and extraordinarily costly to assemble land for new storm water retention basins.  The U.C. Riverside study indicated the following values for land (exclusive of any eminent domain court adjudication costs):

* Commercial land from $2.57 million to $5.44 million per acre;

* Industrial land from $1.13 to $2.00 million per acre;

* Residential land from $2.65 to $7.27 million per acre.

Typical retention basin sizes range from one acre to 25 acres, depending on rainfall, water shed capture area, permeability of soils and other factors.  A one-acre catch basin could cost from $2 million to $7.27 million; a 10-acre catch basin could cost $20 million to $70.27 million, depending on land availability.

Not only would expected land acquisition costs be substantial and the use of eminent domain undesirable and unnecessary.  There also would be a reduction of property tax base. Tax loss would run from $20,000 to $702,700 per year for each new catch basin, depending on size and the value of the land acquired. Construction and maintenance costs also are substantial factors.

Rather than fixed subsidies funded by taxes, Cutter has proposed a landowner competitive bid process for installing onsite storm water capture facilities. Cutter’s analysis indicates that a market competitive method of storm water capture would be 39 percent cheaper than the conventional alternative.  And with the California’s funding formula under AB 2554, the expected costs would be much higher. This is because 50 percent of the tax proceeds would flow to watershed groups for green jobs.

Market example

Cutter provides the following example of how a market-driven system of storm water capture might work:

“For example, a landowner might bid to install 1500 square-feet of porous pavement for a $1000 annual payment over 30 years. Thus the landowner’s decision to participate in the program is similar to the decision to invest in a financial instrument that pays a fixed annual dividend over some known time horizon.”

Cutter’s formula is conservative and does not include the offsetting value of groundwater captured for local water basins. Groundwater typically costs about $120 per-acre foot of rainwater that percolates into underground water basins.  The avoided cost of not having to pay for imported treated water is about $500 per acre-foot.

So the cost savings from a competitive bid process might be as high as 50 percent of a conventional storm water retention basin.  This would depend on how much rainwater could be infiltrated into groundwater basins instead of flowing to the ocean or evaporating at each local watershed.

Cutter’s study indicated that even a low cost competitive bid method would pay for only 38 percent of the typical construction cost of a storm water retention facility.  In other words, storm water capture is uneconomic from a groundwater generation perspective.  And it would possibly be double or triple uneconomic under the State’s green jobs subsidy component under AB 2554.

In an email, Cutter clarified: “The cost of storm water capture is a curve not a number.  Capturing the first, say, 10 percent of yearly rainfall is pretty cheap, the next 10 percent is a lot more expensive and so on.  There are also opportunities for inexpensive capture in the foothills where rainfall and infiltration is high.”

While there may be less costly opportunities to capture water at the base of the foothills, most of the contamination comes from roof and street gutters filled with decaying vegetative material mainly from deciduous city street trees located below the foothills on the alluvial fans and lower land basins.

Least cost alternatives not considered

However, it should be pointed out that there has been no apparent cost-benefit study conducted by the state or county of their specific storm water capture policy.

Nevertheless, Cutter further said, “The point of urban storm water capture is mainly water quality goals, so judging it by its water supply per acre foot cost is the wrong metric.  You have to judge it relative to other measures that achieve the same water quality goals.  That’s the point of the paper. It asks: If you are going to have these water quality goals, what is the most cost-effective way to meet them?”

But water quality goals can lead to out-of-control costs. For example, the Peck Road Park Lake in Arcadia adjacent to the San Gabriel River is cited as negatively impacted by pollution from runoff. The lake is an 80-acre former gravel pit that was converted to a park and lake that is stocked with trout for recreational fishing.  Would it be more cost effective to just close the lake, or turn it into a local catch basin?  There is no way of knowing without a cost-benefit study.

Another example would be the purported polluted “dead zone” at the outlet of the San Gabriel River near Long Beach.  The L.A. County Department of Public Works website states that water pollution causes fish and shellfish to suffocate from oxygen deficiency.

But it isn’t that the ecology is devoid of all fish or marine life.  Even the L.A. County website acknowledges that worms, jellyfish, spot fish and anchovies can live in low-oxygen environments.  There are organisms such as plankton and insects that eat undesirable algae blooms.

The environment can work either way as a low- or high-oxygen ecosystem. The choice of ecosystem has to do with cultural and political values — not science, pollution, “fish kills,” or endangered species only.  Shellfish are pretty and jellyfish can sting.  Cleaning up beaches and man-made inland lakes in former gravel pits will likely lead to a greater number of natural predators for other fish or marine life species.

Politicians only cherry pick beautiful or desirable marine species to justify their preservation policies and green jobs programs. The county’s so-called “Clean Beaches” program under AB 2554 may be effective in protecting shellfish or surfers in Surfside beach, but the environmental tradeoffs and least-costly alternatives are never disclosed.

Moreover, without an impartial cost-benefit study, the public has no idea how cost ineffective it is to clean up the watersheds.  There needs to be a way to determine the least costly alternative, even if storm water cleanups are uneconomic.

Storm water supermajority tax tyranny

As can be seen, AB 2554 is structured as another jobs program and out-of-control wealth transfer tax.

Janet Daley has pointed out a similar trend in Great Britain, where the Eurozone is headed for economic dictatorship.  As she describes it: “Many of the Left will finally have got the economy of their dreams – or rather, the one they have always believed in.  At last, we will be living with that fixed, unchanging pie which must be divided up ‘fairly’ if social justice is to be achieved.  Instead of a dynamic, growing pot of wealth and ever-increasing resources, which can enable larger and larger proportions of the population to become prosperous without taking away anything from any other group, there will indeed be an absolute limit on the amount of capital circulating in society.  The only decisions to be made will involve how that given, unalterable sum is to be shared out — and those judgments will, of course, have to be made by the state since there will be no dynamic economic force outside of government to enter the equation. Wealth distribution will be the principal — virtually the only — significant function of political life.”

California’s version of the taxation “tyranny of the majority” in Los Angeles County under AB 2554 will be cloaked in environmental laws. The laws will replace representative government with tax-sharing programs run by unelected, unaccountable and self-dealing sub-regional councils. It would be the beginning of the end of the California Republic and its replacement by a socialized democracy.  But is this inevitable?

For all of the above-discussed drawbacks to the currently structured storm water cleanup law in Los Angeles County, a market-based system should be considered as an alternative.  Such a market incentive system would avoid the drawbacks of use of eminent domain, lost tax base, and out-of-control costs.

Storm water capture is not economically feasible (costs exceed economic benefits on a water cost basis).  Nevertheless, the land cost advantage of a market bidding system offers substantial advantages over the current policy of storm water pollution clean up at nearly any cost.

Los Angeles County Watersheds

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

The environmental movement is suffering from a cluster of scandals.

First there was Climategate.

Then there was Climategate 2.0.

Now, there’s Climategate 3.0 — also called “Gleickgate.”

Climate activist Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of water policy in Oakland may face criminal charges that he deceptively obtained data from a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, then “doctored” it and disseminated it on the web to libel that organization. Gleick has admitted he is the source of the leaked data but denies he produced the doctored document.

Andrew Revkin, the Dot Earth columnist for the New York Times, says Gleick’s admission that he deceptively obtained emails from the Heartland Institute will destroy his reputation and career.

Centrist professor of foreign affairs at Bard College Walter Russell Mead states on his Via Meadia blog:

“Reckless and sensationalist actions like Gleick’s are a reminder of the wild and loony side of the green movement — no group certain of its own arguments should feel the need to stoop to this level, and it will take a long time for the movement to be trusted again in the eyes of the public.”

The ClimateChangeDispatch.com website is reporting Gleick is likely to face criminal charges which could involve serving jail time for libeling the Heartland Institute.  The Heartland Institute has reportedly called the FBI into the case.

Liberal economist Megan McArdle, writing at The Atlantic magazine online, says she is “very surprised a man of Gleick’s stature would take this sort of risk, on such flimsy evidence.”

What did Gleick do?  Writing in Forbes magazine, James Taylor, a senior environmental policy analyst at the Heartland Institute online, explains it:

“In short, Gleick set up an email account designed to mimic the email account of a Heartland Institute board member. Gleick then sent an email from that account to a Heartland Institute staffer, in which Gleick explicitly claimed to be the Heartland Institute board member. Gleick asked the staffer to email him internal documents relating to a recent board meeting. Soon thereafter, Gleick, while claiming to be a ‘Heartland Insider,’ sent those Heartland Institute documents plus the forged ‘2012 Climate Strategy’ document to sympathetic media and global warming activists.” 

In the liberal magazine The Atlantic, Megan McArdle explains the heart of the ethical problem involved:

“Impersonating an actual person is well over the line that any reputable journalist needs to maintain. I might get a job at Food Lion to expose unsafe food handling.  I would not represent myself as a health inspector, or regional VP.  I don’t do things that are illegal. 

“Nor would I ever, ever claim that a document came from Heartland unless I personally received it from them, gotten them to confirm its provenance, or authenticated it with multiple independent sources. And ethics aside, what Gleick did is insane for someone of his position — so crazy that I confess to wondering whether he doesn’t have some sort of medical condition that requires urgent treatment.  The reason he did it was even crazier…. I would not have risked jail or personal ruin over something so questionable, and which provided evidence of…what? That Heartland exists?  That it has a budget?  That it spends that budget promoting views which Gleick finds reprehensible?” 

According to Mark Gunther ,writing at the EnergyColletive.com Website, Gleick likely sees himself as something of a hero who possibly hopes to use the discovery process in any legal action taken against him to embarrass the Heartland Institute.  But embarrass them with what: That they used donors’ funds to exercise their First Amendment right of free speech?

Ironically, it is reported that Gleick was chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics until he resigned last week.

Dr. Gleick may have perpetrated a fraud and libeled the Heartland Institute. But that is not the only action of Dr. Gleick that has been questionable.

Slick Gleick’s Water Tricks

Here at Calwatchdog.com, we have previously taken Dr. Gleick to task for his misleading op-ed columns in newspapers across the state saying:

1) There “isn’t enough water to satisfy 100 percent of demand” in California;
2) Agriculture consumes 80 percent of all the water in California; and
3) There are eight times as many water rights given away as there is water available in an average year.

All of the above statements by Gleick about California water are partial truths and overblown distortions that are never put in context.  Nor are the assumptions about such statistics disclosed as would be required by any ethical scientist.   Let’s take a quick look at Gleick’s claims.

1.   Gleick: Not Enough Water To Meet 100 Percent of Demands.

According to data from Cal State University at Stanislaus, there is on average 194.2 million acre-feet of precipitation and imported water in California per year (see table below). An acre-foot of water is enough to supply two families per year; or one acre of farmland. Deducting the 39.4 million acre-feet of water that goes to the environment on an average year, that would leave 154.8 million acre-feet of water.  That would equate to enough water for 774 million people per year. (154.8 x 2 x 2.5 persons per household.) Or it would be 154.8 million acres of farmland. So much for Gleick’s claim that there isn’t enough water to supply 100 percent of demand in a year.

Contrary to Gleick’s widely disseminated claims, there is enough potential water.  The problem is not necessarily a shortage of water caused by waste by agriculture or cities but capture, storage, conveyance, and treatment of potential water resources.

2. Gleick: Agriculture Uses 80 Percent of All Water.

According to the California Department of Water Resources official statistics, agriculture uses 42 percent of all “dedicated” water for human use in an average year.  In a wet year, agriculture uses 28 percent of the water and in a dry year, 52 percent.
To claim that agriculture uses 80 percent of the water one would have to assume that every year is a dry year and that the pool of water one is referring to is the total amount of water for “human use.”

A percentage is the ratio between a whole and a part.  If you make the whole smaller, the part appears bigger.

There are three concentric rings of water in California (see table below):

1. The largest amount of water is total precipitation and imported water, which is 194.2 million acre feet per year on average;
2. The next largest is total “available” water, which is about 82.5 million acre-feet on average; and
3. The smallest amount is water for “human use,” which is 43.1 million acre-feet of water on average.  Gleick uses this amount to determine the percentage of agricultural use of water, but only on a dry year.

In other words, one would have to assume the smallest amount of water — water for “human use” — and a continuous drought to say that agriculture uses 80 percent of all water in California.  Failure to disclose these preconditions is misleading.

California depends on “monsoon-like” rains in wet years to fill reservoirs. Cites and farms depend on the water from wet years until the next cyclical wet year.  To accurately report how much water agriculture uses, “average” data must be used, not data from a dry or a wet year.  Gleick uses data from a dry year and the narrow supply of water for “human use” — not total potential water or all available water — to derive his 80 percent figure. He also presumes there is no water storage or groundwater resources available.  Cities and farms often use groundwater during dry years to offset less imported supplies.

To repeat, 42 percent is the official figure the California Department of Water Resources uses for average agricultural water use.  This is about half of what Dr. Gleick claims.

And if we take into consideration all the water supplies from precipitation and imported water in a wet year, then agriculture would only use about 8 percent of total potential water.

It is misleading to not disclose the assumptions on which an estimate is based.  Dr. Gleick never discloses what circumstances would result in agriculture using 80 percent of “dedicated” water supplies. Such circumstances would include:

* Wet or dry year;
* Total potential water;
* Available water;
* Water only for human use;
* Whether all storage reservoirs and groundwater basins are empty.

When assumptions are not disclosed, it is not ethical science that is reported but propaganda.

3. Gleick: Eight Times Water Rights Have Been Contracted.

It is likely true that eight times as much water has technically been contracted as there is water available from various water sources.  But under what conditions is this true?  As Mike Wade of the Agricultural Coalition explains: “The truth is water rights permits are issued for time and place of use, not gross quantity.”

For example, it is typical to grant greater water rights during a wet year. And then by comparing the amount of water in those wet year grants to the water in a dry year, one can fallaciously conclude that the water rights granted are eight times the amount available in a dry year.  But in a dry year, it is typically not permitted to draw water or only draw to less of it.

The exercise of water rights is based on contingencies such as rainfall.  It can also be based on court adjudicated restrictions such as the “safe yield” of a groundwater basin so that the basin is not depleted.

So it is misleading to say the contracted water rights are eight times the capacity. If it were true that water rights granted were eight times the amount of available water, this would have perpetrated a contractual fraud.  And such frauds and disputes have historically been brought before courts of law for adjudication.  One would have to assume there is no court system to adjudicate the claims of those who hold water rights to make the outlandish statement that water rights exceed water supplies.

Many Phish Swim In Unpure Water

We will await the outcome of any future legal actions to report what, if any, alleged crimes Gleick may or may not have committed with Heartland Institute documents.  Gleick’s self-admitted reckless and apparently delusional actions in the Heartland scandal don’t aid in the credibility of his interpretations of the data about agricultural water usage.

What Gleick admittedly did is called “phishing” in Internet language, which is defined as: To request confidential information over the Internet under false pretenses in order to fraudulently obtain credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal data.

There is a saying, “Water that is too pure has no fish.”

So of Gleick’s actions, we could say, “Unpure water has many phish.”

Percentage of Agricultural Water Under Various Scenarios (Million Acre Feet)