<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:18pt"><div class="" style=""><a href="http://www.vcstar.com/news/2014/jun/10/report-california-must-make-better-use-of-water/" class="" style="">http://www.vcstar.com/news/2014/jun/10/report-california-must-make-better-use-of-water/</a><br class="" style=""></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 24px; font-family: HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; " class=""><span class="" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; border-collapse: separate; font-size: 16px; "><div id="header" style="width: 540px; height: 70px; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 20px; " class=""><img
src="http://media.vcstar.com/corp_assets/asphalt/_sites/vcs/img/header_print.gif" alt="Ventura County Star - Printer-friendly story" class="" style=""></div><div id="story_meta" class="" style=""><h1 style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 30px; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); " class="">Report says California must make better use of current water resources</h1><div id="bylines" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); " class="">By Timm Herdt</div><div id="dates" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); " class="">Tuesday, June 10, 2014</div></div><div id="story_content" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; " class=""><div class="" style="">As water policy experts around California confront the effects of a three-year drought, a report released Tuesday
by two environmental groups asserts they must also confront a more permanent problem: Californians are already using more water than Mother Nature provides.</div><div class="" style="">“We’ve hit the wall in California,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute. “We’re past the point of peak water. Even in a normal year or wet year, we’re overextended. We take too much water out of the system.”</div><div class="" style="">The report produced by the institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council concludes that there is a 6 million acre-foot per year gap between the amount of water California uses and the amount that can safely be taken from rivers and pumped from aquifers.</div><div class="" style="">The good news, the report concludes, is that there is more than enough water available to close that gap through increased agricultural and urban efficiency, water recycling, and harvesting rainwater that runs
off urban streets and parking lots into drainage pipes that take it to the sea. Fully exploiting those four options, it says, could produce up to 14 million acre-feet per year, or enough water to meet the needs of every city in California.</div><div class="" style="">“Our current approach to water use is unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough water to meet our needs,” said Kate Poole, an NRDC senior attorney and co-author of the report.</div><div class="" style="">The report comes at a time when the state Department of Water Resources is circulating a draft environmental impact report on a massive Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which includes construction of two tunnels to divert water from the Sacramento River; the Legislature is considering a water bond to place before voters in November that might include money for the construction of additional water storage facilities; and farming interests in Congress are calling for a
relaxation of environmental regulations to allow additional water to be taken from the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.</div><div class="" style="">The authors assert that there may be smarter — and perhaps less costly — ways to address the state’s water needs without creating problems that could create long-term, adverse consequences.</div><div class="" style="">“Rivers and groundwater basins — we need to take care of these resources if we want to rely upon them in the future,” said Poole.</div><div class="" style="">UC Santa Barbara Professor Bob Wilkinson called the measures recommended in the report “cost-effective, readily available and off-the-shelf techniques.”</div><div class="" style="">Wilkinson said that although California farmers “have made significant advances” in more efficiently using water for crop irrigation, there remains the potential for an additional 17 percent savings that would free from 5.6 million to 6.6
million acre-feet per year for other uses. Those savings could be accomplished, he asserted, without fallowing any cropland or changing the mix of crops being grown.</div><div class="" style="">Improved urban efficiency, he said, could produce from 2.9 million to 5.2 million acre-feet per year through such measures as leak repair, more efficient toilets and washing machines, and greater use of what he called “climate-appropriate landscaping.”</div><div class="" style="">Existing wastewater-reclamation projects produce about 670,000 acre-feet per year, and Wilkinson said he believes there is the potential for another 1.2 million to 1.8 million acre-feet per year.</div><div class="" style="">The study also estimates that the capture of rainwater from urban roofs and paved surfaces in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area could produce from 420,000 to 630,000 acre-feet per year.</div><div class="" style="">Gleick said he hopes the report
will give policymakers the opportunity to consider investments that may be smarter than falling back on traditional approaches to increasing water supplies through the construction of dams and other major infrastructure projects.</div><div class="" style="">“We do not say that capturing all this will be easy or fast. We do say that these are the smartest and fastest things we can do,” he said. “We’ve identified opportunities that maybe we’re overlooking.”</div></div><div id="footer" style="width: 540px; margin-top: 40px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 40px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 10px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; " class=""><img src="http://media.vcstar.com/corp_assets/asphalt/img/sing_logo.gif" alt="Scripps Lighthouse" width="53" height="53" style="float: left; " class=""></div><div class="" style=""><br class="" style=""></div></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
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