The Great Drought: Rest in Peace?
March 01, 2017
by Craig Kessler, Director of Government Affair, SCGA
Dams are bursting. Rivers are overflowing. Precipitation records are falling. Does this mean that the Governor and his State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) will soon be calling off the “drought emergency?”
Maybe. But even if the SWRCB calls off the emergency it won’t call off efforts to enshrine certain aspects of the emergency into permanent law and regulation, nor will the agency shrink from effectuating the five initiatives contained in its recent “Resolution on Climate Change.” The State Department of Water Resources won’t call off efforts to strengthen the state’s Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. And the state legislature won’t desist from efforts to continue doing for outdoor irrigation what California accomplished so magnificently for indoor irrigation in a previous era.
No matter this one year’s precipitation, there are just certain facts about California’s water situation that are, well, facts. Under the best of circumstances and the wettest of years, there are more water rights in the state than there is water to fill them. Groundwater basins in the Central Valley, Central Coast, Ventura County, and Anza Borrego Desert remain severely depleted; one year of rain does not replenish aquifers. Current surface storage capacity (aka dams) is maxed out; there is little point to adding to California’s stock of dams if there is rarely enough rain and snow melt to fill them. The state’s climate is measurably warmer, presaging earlier and less efficient snow melts as well as higher evapotranspiration rates. And the population is going nowhere but up.
Those “facts” require not just that we continue to ramp up conservation efforts in general, but greater outdoor irrigation efficiency in particular. They also require that the state begin to look beyond traditional dams if we want to increase storage capacity – things such as storm water capture, groundwater replenishment, and increased recycling capacity. These things cost money to build and maintain, costs that can be larded onto ratepayers or spread more evenly through a combination of taxes and bonded indebtedness. Guess which avenue suits the industry’s interest.
Yes; the great drought is over. Yes; that means that we are relieved of mandatory cutbacks for the moment. Yes; that means we aren’t facing even more draconian cutbacks, something that was very much in the cards had we not been deluged this year. And yes; that means the industry gets a breather to deal with some of the issues it put off to deal with the drought.
But no; that hardly means that the industry can desist from its 20-year plus effort to keep reducing its water footprint. Indeed, the time to ratchet up that effort is now. Just as the deluge has given the golf industry respite to deal with some of its other pressing issues, it gives the conservation and policy managers of the state’s public utilities respite to deal with us. The time to rework ordinances and policies, incorporate lessons learned, and develop closer working relationships with regulators is precisely when the snowpack is rich and the dams are filled.
The late great political writer for the Los Angeles News Group, Rick Orlov, had a saying that applies: “It’s never over” – Three simple words that ring especially true when the subject is the relationship between golf and water.