|
|
|
|
L.A. floats water conservation plan |
|
|
Thursday, 12 June 2008 |
 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Chief Executive Office and General Manager David Nahai, seen during a February visit to the Lower Owens River, has joined LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in pushing for strict water conservation and recycling measures to meet LA’s growing water needs. Photo by Ken Koerner By Ken Koerner
Register Staff 6-10-2008
The City of Los Angeles is heading toward a “greener” approach to water usage, which may help keep the Eastern Sierra a bit greener in the future, too.
Facing continual population increases and the very real possibility that climate change, coupled with a growing thirst, could create significantly less access to traditional water supplies, City of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has announced a “20-year water strategy for L.A.”
“L.A.’s future depends on our willingness to adopt an ethic of sustainability,” Villaraigosa said recently. “If we don’t commit ourselves to conserving and recycling water, we will tap ourselves out.”
Los Angeles depends on four sources for its water needs. The Los Angeles Aqueduct has been among that list of four since its opening nearly a century ago. In addition, L.A. also imports water from the Sacramento Delta water delivery system and the Colorado River. Both of those sources are managed under the aegis of the Metropolitan Water District. The remaining water is collected from the San Fernando Groundwater Basin aquifer that exists beneath a portion of L.A. and contributes 11 percent of the city’s total water supply.
While there may be good reason to take a measure of comfort in this statement from the highly-regarded top executive at LADWP, the Inyo County Water Department, Board of Supervisors and judicial rulings – past and future – will no doubt remain this area’s primary lines of defense to protect water exports in an era of increasing demand and decreasing supplies.
On the other side of the Sierra, another current circumstance that has played a role in motivating L.A. to seek a “greener” approach to water management is resulting from new restrictions on exports from Sacramento Delta water.
“The Sacramento Delta water supply for L.A. is under new pressures,” Nahai said. “Due to the delta facing environmental impacts on fish populations, a court has recently said L.A. will have to curtail delta water exports by 30 percent.”
Down south, water routed to L.A. from the Colorado River has also grown more constrictive over past years.
“The Colorado River water that has traditionally been supplied to the L.A. area via the Metropolitan Water District is certainly under pressure, too,” said Nahai. “The growing needs of its multiple users is not a trend that will be reversed in future years.”
That fourth source of water for L.A.’s millions of inhabitants comes from a local aquifer, one which Nahai describes as needing to be “recharged and that can only contribute so much to our available water totals.
“With L.A.’s population growing exponentially in the decades ahead, the issue the Mayor (Villaraigosa) and the LADWP must face now, Nahai said, “is how will the city provide for that essential need for increasing water supplies. That is the genesis that resulted in the ‘Securing L.A.’s Water Supply’ plan.
“L.A. is ‘turning inward’ in order to address growing needs,” said Nahai, “which is evident in this new plan’s proposal to meet 100 percent of new water demand by 2030 through employing a six-fold increase in our water recycling and through ramped up enforcement of water restrictions.”
Previous “aggressive conservation efforts,” according to Nahai, have allowed L.A. to experience huge population growth without per capita usage keeping pace. Nahai explained that the new water plan would do even more.
“A few hours ago (afternoon of June 4), the LADWP Water Commissioners adopted a measure to put more effective conservation requirements into place,” said Nahai. “This measure will also come with some escalating fines being possible if end-users fail to comply.”
The L.A. City Council must also now approve this measure, and Villaraigosa must add his approval signature, for the requirements to be formally put in place.
These conservation measures, explained Nahai, “mostly target outdoor uses of water, like watering lawns, hosing down driveways and the like, where L.A. families use 30-40 percent of their water.”
Beyond increased compliance efforts by LADWP, there are also financial incentives, in the form of $250 rebates being provided to customers that upgrade to water-efficient washing machines purchased in LA.
Another strategy included in the “Securing L.A.’s Water Supply” plan is targeted at recycling, which Nahai expects will also communicate to Eastern Sierra residents that “inward options” are being vigorously pursued by L.A.’s water managers.
“The adoption of this water plan and the fact that L.A. intends to treat and subsequently be drinking our own wastewater,” Nahai said, “should reinforce the serious resolve we now have in place, away from increasing water exports from other areas as a key method for meeting our growing demand.”
Using a recycling approach identified as an expansion of the “purple pipes” system, L.A. will be recycling wastewater that previously would have been lost to reuse.
“Using what’s known as ‘tertiary treatment,’ L.A. will employ state-of-the-art cleansing methodologies, such as reverse osmosis, UV radiation and ground-spreading (allowing treated water to percolate back through nature’s cleansing process before being pumped back into the system),” said Nahai, “to enable us to capture what was once wastewater and bring it back into the system as drinking water that is every bit as pure as L.A.’s potable water supply has always been. This will, however, certainly require an educational outreach to the L.A. community to ensure their awareness of the fact that not a drop of water that comes from their home faucet in the future is anything less than pure and healthy.”
Though hardly the recipient of substantial rainfall totals in any given year, L.A.’s new water plan also recognizes the significance of tapping whatever rain water comes its way in order to meet the projected 15 percent increase in municipal water demand by the year 2030.
“There is very little rainfall that is currently captured (in L.A.),” Nahai said, “but we are going to see that change for the better thanks to the directives of the new water plan – taking new approaches to building and development designs, as well as creating the infrastructure to capture as much rainwater as possible, which could then be directed into ground-spreading areas for subsequent use.”
Expanded groundwater storage opportunities are an additional area to be examined along the L.A. Aqueduct and the Central Coast Basin. Groundwater storage can be a cost-effective, environmentally friendly option, according to L.A.’s new water plan, to supply water for use during dry conditions and emergencies.
In a world increasingly attentive to climate-change considerations, the new L.A. water plan was also drafted with an eye to how water issues could be impacted from that potential shift.
Should weather patterns evolve in the direction of less snowfall in mountainous areas and, instead, more rainfall resulting from storms, the resulting diminishment of snowpack would alter the dynamic of watershed data across the entire range of the Sierra. This, too, Nahai explained, factors into L.A.’s increased attention to strict water conservation and recycling.
All of the factors impacting water resources are credited with motivating Villaraigosa, Nahai and other L.A. officials to these forward-looking ideas.
“From L.A.’s point of view, we’ve seen increasing pressure on water availability in all areas. We have to take steps to ensure our community’s viability for a long, long time,” said Nahai. “We’re beginning to see the resources and the resolve coming into a more proactive structure to address these great needs.”
In keeping with L.A.’s enhanced assessment of dwindling water resources and increasing needs, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on June 4 proclaimed a statewide drought exists, warning that California’s water supply is falling dangerously low because of below-average rainfall and court-ordered water restrictions aimed at protecting fish.
“We must recognize the severity of this crisis we face,” Schwarzenegger said during his news conference in Sacramento, “Our drought is an urgent reminder of the immediate need to upgrade California’s water infrastructure. I hope the legislators get the point … let’s fix all of these things that need to be fixed rather than waiting and waiting and waiting.”
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 09 July 2008 )
|
|
|
|
