Even as California at long last eased up on drought restrictions, Gov. Brown helped ensure that policies remaining in place will continue indefinitely. 

“In a major shift, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown announced [last week] plans to drop all statewide mandatory water conservation targets it had imposed on urban areas last June,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “The new rules, which are expected to be approved May 18 by the State Water Resources Control Board, would instead allow more than 400 cities, water districts and private companies to each set their own water conservation targets, as long as they report them to state officials.”

But, by executive order, Gov. Brown also made clear that the pre-drought days of profligate water use were not about to return. “Brown’s order requires that cities submit monthly water use, conservation and enforcement reports to state officials,” Wired noted. “The order also promises updates to both urban and rural drought preparedness guidelines, and bans wasteful things like washing your car without a shut-off nozzle, or hosing down sidewalks.”

Strict regulations

Specifically, Californians did not regain the option of watering their lawns “within 48 hours of rain” or “using ornamental fountains unless the water is recirculated,” the Mercury News explained. Not just constraints on private individuals were left in place. The rules, first instituted in July 2014, also “ban cities and local governments from irrigating ornamental turf on public street medians,” the paper added. 

In a statement, Brown put the matter bluntly. “Now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life,” he said. “To ensure compliance with these new targets and water management plan requirements, DWR, the State Water Board and the California Public Utilities Commission will work together to develop methods which could include technical and financial assistance, regulatory oversight and enforcement mechanisms,” the statement added. 

Itching for normal

The moves quickly triggered a similar response from some water districts. “The metropolitan water district of southern California says it will ease up on some water restrictions, but the state is doubling down on others,” as NPR observed. Although the state’s situation has improved thanks to a significant rainy season, the future remains unclear. “Thanks to El Niño, parts of Northern California saw above average rains and some reservoirs refilled to historical average,” Southern California Public Radio recalled. “Even the snowpack was close to average.”

But the rebound, suggested Discovery News, was limited: “In most of the state it’s half of what’s normal — or less, especially in the southern part of the state, according to California’s Department of Water Resources.” Mark Cowin, the agency’s director, sought to limit expectations. “We are trying to recognize that conditions have changed this year and while we are in a statewide drought, conditions have eased for some parts of the state,” he said, according to the Mercury News. 96 percent of the state has remained drier than average, the National Weather Service’s Mark Jackson told SCPR. 

Rebellion brewing

Not all Californians have embraced the prospect of indefinite water strictures. Homeowners associations have labored to endure yard and neighborhood conditions that would never have been tolerated before water rationing and regulation began in earnest.

The wealthy East Bay community of Blackhawk, for instance, raised eyebrows last month by threatening to fine residents who failed to keep their lawns green. “Starting on June 1, any of Blackhawk’s 2,000 homeowners who fail to maintain green lawns or install drought-tolerant landscaping will now risk fines or litigation, the Los Angeles Times reported. “Though local water officials say Blackhawk’s move is premature, and possibly violates a governor-backed emergency declaration to not penalize residents for failing to maintain a lush, green lawn, it is nonetheless something officials anticipated would eventually happen.”

The board will take up possible changes in state rules affecting Diablo Canyon’s cooling water intake structure, a common feature of power plants build next to large bodies of water that are crucial to reducing excess heat during power production but that also can hurt nearby ecosystems. Diablo’s two nuclear generators, which produce more than 2,200 megawatts total, are located on the Pacific Ocean 13 miles south of San Luis Obispo.

It’s considered highly unlikely that the state water board would do anything dramatic. Federal law leaves the most important decisions on nuclear plants to federal authorities. But greens believe that their years of raising questions about the San Onofre nuclear power plant helped clear the way to the decision to shutter the north San Diego County facility in 2011 after it had severe problems with defective steam generators at both its towers.

The owner of the Diablo Canyon plant, Pacific Gas & Electric, has quietly made major progress toward keeping the plant in operation through 2045. This is from a July 13 greentechmedia account:

The license renewal process for Diablo Canyon, California’s last remaining operational nuclear power plant, has just been restarted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

 

Diablo Canyon’s reactors became operable in 1985 and 1986 and their licenses expire in 2024 and 2025. … PG&E started applying to the NRC for a 20-year license extension in 2009, but Japan’s Fukushima incident put the extension on hold until new seismic studies for Diablo Canyon were completed and submitted to the NRC and California Public Utilities Commission.

 

In September of last year, the seismic study conducted by PG&E to determine the safety of the Diablo Canyon plant found that the facility was “designed to withstand and perform [its] safety functions during and after a major seismic event.”

Seismic study sure to face questions

This study is sure to face sharp criticism at the state water board meeting next week. A preview of the criticisms can be seen in a San Francisco Chronicle story on the seismic report earlier this month.

Activists who never wanted Diablo in the first place have been pushing hard to close it, particularly after California’s only other commercial nuclear plant — San Onofre, north of San Diego — shut down in 2012.

 

They argue that PG&E has consistently underestimated earthquake threats to the plant, and that PG&E has a long record of snafus at Diablo, such as replacing the steam generators and vessel heads without first conducting a necessary seismic test. PG&E, in contrast, says the plant boasts a solid safety record.

 

“Our point is, this is a pattern with them,” said Jane Swanson, with Mothers for Peace. “They keep screwing up — and this is a nuclear plant.”

A different dimension to this energy fight

But this battle has different overtones than many fights over energy sources, which often involve declarations that fossil fuels should be scrapped entirely as soon as possible because of their role in generating the greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming. Some defenders of Diablo Canyon say it’s their side that has the moral high ground because the plant is a crucial component of an intelligent policy to address climate change. This is from the Chronicle:

California law forbids building more nuclear plants in the state until the federal government comes up with a long-term solution for dealing with the radioactive waste. And with San Onofre closed, nuclear advocates say the state needs Diablo Canyon in order to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear plants generate electricity without pumping carbon dioxide into the air, and unlike solar power plants and wind farms, their output doesn’t vary from one hour to the next.

 

“We really need to have a low-carbon, base load source of electricity,” said Jessica Lovering, a senior analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland think tank focused on energy and the environment. “Taking offline the last nuclear plant would be pretty detrimental to carbon emission reduction goals.”

The California Coastal Commission at some point is also likely to have some regulatory say over any relicensing of Diablo Canyon.

PG&E is believed to consider the plant to be a cornerstone of supply generation for decades to come. But as the greentechmedia account noted, the giant utility “has not yet made a decision about whether to move forward with the relicensing process” — despite building a case for an extended permit for nearly a decade.