Anonymous
The Foster reservoir is one of several that serve the Willamette River Basin (Photo: US Army Corps of Engineers)
By Harrison Tasoff, UC Santa Barbara
Water. It’s perhaps the biggest issue in the American West. It has inflamed passions and driven ambitious projects for the past century. Now an economist at UC Santa Barbara has investigated how we might be able to mitigate the stress of droughts by changing the incentives for water storage and use. The results appear in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Humans use water for a variety of different ends, but rivers also need water flowing through them to ensure the survival of fish and other wildlife. In fact, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires a minimum stream flow in certain rivers to protect threatened fish. In Oregon’s Willamette River this is also tied to the fishing industry. No water means no salmon, and no salmon means no fishing.
Andrew Plantinga, an environmental economist at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, teamed up with colleagues at institutions in the Pacific Northwest to investigate water use dynamics in the Willamette River Basin. The goal was to figure out how to meet human demands on water while fulfilling the minimum flow requirements during severe droughts.
The team set up a spatial model to simulate human and natural factors. The model comprises 160,000 individual cells spanning the basin with rules that governed how the system changed over time. They selected a particular year in the simulation where the basin suffered a severe drought, and homed in on short-term interventions that might allow the region to meet both human demand and ESA requirements.
Changing Demand
The team targeted three major aspects of the basin’s water economy: urban use, agricultural use and reservoir supply. By raising the price of water in cities, they could drive down urban use. Agriculture uses more water than cities do in this region, but this is not simply penny wise, pound foolish, according to Plantinga. Changing urban pricing regimes is a legitimate strategy. It was part of the response California took to the drought after 2014, he said. In the Willamette Basin simulation, these interventions saved between 32 billion and 84 billion liters of water depending on the magnitude of the change.
Because the agricultural sector accounts for more water use than urban areas, it afforded a larger potential for conservation. Unlike in cities, agriculture in the Willamette River Basin falls under the prior appropriations doctrine, which establishes volumetric limits and a seniority system for farmers. So the team simulated how a per-acre irrigation fee would influence agricultural water use.
“Western Oregon is not like California’s Central Valley, where you can’t grow crops if you don’t irrigate,” Plantinga explained. “In the Willamette Basin you can grow crops without irrigation. So it was really the change in incentive as to whether you’d be an irrigator or not.”
Changing fees reduced the amount of water diverted for irrigation by 18 billion to 309 billion liters. The large spread stems from the scale of the intervention.
The Willamette River Basin covers around 12% of Oregon’s land area and is home to over 70% of the state’s population. (Photo Credit: ANDREW PLANTINGA/ USGS)
Affecting Supply
Changing the rule governing reservoirs provided a way to affect the supply side of this issue. Reservoirs serve two functions in the Pacific Northwest. They store water for later use, but also prevent floods by absorbing flows from heavy late-season storms. Unfortunately, these roles are at odds with each other because a full reservoir can’t accept excess rain. Officials need to balance these two missions, meaning they don’t completely fill reservoirs during the wet winters.
“So now think about the problem,” Plantinga said. “You’ve got a warm winter, but you don’t know what March is going to be like. You can’t just capture all that water in your reservoir because you might suddenly get a huge storm that requires that you have capacity to mitigate against flooding.” However, if a spring storm never arrives, you missed out on water you could have saved.
Plantinga and his colleagues decided to test what would happen if they changed the rules reservoirs operate under. The team allowed them to begin filling earlier in drought years, and allowed them to continue discharging water into rivers even when water levels dropped into the buffer zone, when reservoirs typically save their remaining stores for human use. They found that these changes in protocol could increase stored water availability by between 34 billion and 87 billion liters in their simulation.
Ultimately, policies that took more risks had greater potential, Plantinga acknowledged. If you begin filling reservoirs early, you risk not having the capacity to absorb the flows from large spring storms, but you’re able to store much more water in a dry winter. If you continue letting out water when the reservoirs are low you run the risk of not having enough for human demand, but you’re better able to meet ESA flow requirements.
So Close
Unfortunately, even the most progressive interventions were only partially successful in meeting ESA regulations. The efforts were able to conserve enough water to close 81% of the gap between the minimum flow requirements and the status quo, however there were still periods when flows fell short.
So why did these efforts fail?
Stated simply, not all the conserved water could go toward meeting the ESA requirements. Meeting water demands during a drought is all about timing and location. “For instance, you can’t meet a minimum flow requirement at Salem by conserving water downstream in Portland,” Plantinga said. “Similarly, if you’re not meeting the flow requirement in May, it doesn’t really do you a lot of good to conserve a bunch of water in August.”
“Water conservation can be very effective, but it also has to get water to the right place at the right time,” he added. So, while these initiatives can greatly impact water conservation, they also illustrate the challenge of meeting ecological requirements and human demand during severe drought years.
A Mismatched Climate
Although the Pacific Northwest is more temperate than California, it shares the same Mediterranean rainfall pattern: Most precipitation arrives in winter, and the region relies on a robust snowpack to store water and release it slowly throughout the spring and summer.
“However, in these kinds of Mediterranean systems, we have this misalignment between when you get the precipitation and when you need the water,” Plantinga explained. Although the rain arrives in winter, most demand comes in summer. For instance, farmers require large volumes of water to irrigate crops during the dry summer growing season.
Climate change exacerbates this challenge in two ways: Precipitation becomes more variable both in time and amount, and more arrives as rain rather than snow, according to Plantinga. Drought will likely become an increasing issue across the world, especially in the American West. In fact, the Willamette River Basin actually experienced a severe drought in 2015 not unlike the one the team simulated in this study.
In this vein, Plantinga plans to shift his focus toward groundwater management, especially in California. In 2014, the Golden State passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which sets sustainable yield goals for groundwater extraction. However, the law does not dictate how to reach these targets, so Plantinga plans to look at different approaches to meeting these goals.
The City of Santa Barbara has vast experience dealing with water shortages and/or extended droughts. The citizens of SB cut back on water usage, remove our lawns, collect shower water, remove our water-guzzling plants and turn our gardens into desert scapes, and so on. Water rates go up because we are using less water and the city is collecting less $$ due to our efforts. Here’s our payback: more multiple-unit housing, more public housing, come one and come all to SBCC, come one come all to UCSB, transients…please stay, undocumented….please come and we will house you, …. Not enough people care. Our local government officials want hire more consultants and create new positions so the people at “the top” use as scapegoats when things continue to go downhill. What is their focus: plastic straws, drink stirrers, plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, and opening weed shops.
Every farmer in CA knows that “groundwater management” and “sustainable yields” is thinly veiled code for restrictions on well pumping. So what are farmers doing today? Yep, they’re pumping their wells today as hard and deep as they can to achieve high “historical usage values”. When the inevitable restrictions come they’ll do fine with the restriction because it will be a percentage of the (abnormally high) historical usage. They’ll be able to pump all they wanted anyway. You may not appreciate it, but farmers aren’t stupid and the law of unintended consequences is a well known irony within the Ag community.
Go take a drive on 217 going toward the Airport / Look on your right . Another huge development . So many Townhouses, Condos, whatever you want to call them . What’s going to happen in a drought is we all are going to suffer because of over building . Building is out of control in, Goleta and traffic is a nightmare . No forward thinking about water, traffic, pollution, infastructure when the building department issues countless building permits for massive scale housing . We are fast becoming, North Los Angeles .
11:58, I have re read the last paragraph and fail to grasp your point. So Plantinga is to “shift his focus”to groundwater. What is needed is action, not a shift in focus so that several years from now we can argue over what the depletion of the aquifer means, having allowed the theft of the community resource for another decade or so by greedy Big Ag folks. Time to act.
So people think the comment of 11:37 is sick? God forbid that we should suggest that starving Irish eat their babies.
@RHS. You really re-read it? Platinga is the economist who studied the Willamette valley in this report, and will now study California. Sign. Never mind…
The great state of California is mandating that the cities and counties allow building to absorb the population without any apparent thought to where the water will come from. Their philosophy seems to be that if you can build out, build up! We can thank ourlegislature and governor for this madness!
Building isn’t the problem. Look instead at insufficient human morbidity relative to spawning activities.
Pluto is a planet.
People need to decide if they want affordable housing in SB, and allow more and larger multifamily buildings, or to conserve more water and keep our small town feel. Too many voters in this state/city think they are different then the rest of the world and can somehow have their cake and eat it too.
You may be right, but groundwater depletion has been increasing for decades, not just since regulations have been implemented/in the works. The solution is not to continue to allow “pump as you please” – restrictions NEED to happen soon before our aquifers are beyond recovery. If that means farmers pump more in the meantime, so be it.
Occupant turnover – few want to leave which is why there will always be long waiting lists. Has nothing to do with “affordablity”; just lack of current and sufficient inventory turnover. We can’t grow much beyond 90,000. Period. Passed that threshold, so costs for any available inventory will of course go up. In fact public budgets depend on higher and higher property tax rates. Facts of life here.
Water is a very tricky subject in this county. My family has a ranch in the valley and there are a few catch basins that have been made over the years to catch any rainfall(whenever we get it) to let the water slowly percolate into the ground and refill the aquifer. Good idea in theory as far as being environmentally conscious, the unintended consequence(after a recent CDFW tour) was that this area is now subject to further studies and potential massive setbacks since it could/maybe/possibly someday be a CTS(california tiger salamander) breeding ground. Try to conserve water in a drought and the reward is acres of land that cannot be used, lol.
The developer, lender, construction industry cabal has convinced US to conserve till it hurts and then another x% more. Weed farms are put ahead of people’s needs, cause we f’d our government finances. The term “sustainability” is tossed about in an attempt further abuse our water resources. Many of us tried to pay it forward and have been conserving water since the 70s. Hasn’t made a damn bit of difference. There’s less water and more people than ever. Using false promises of affordable housing, development continues unabated with ZERO regard for quality of life of residents, while maximizing developer’s profits, all the while crying crocodile tears as they complain about fees and bureaucratic red tape. It’s the overpopulation stupid, and the Ponzi scheme of a “capitalist” economy that relies on growth and future generations to foot the bill for our lack of fortitude to make the decisions that would safeguard our grandchildren’s future.
Our mastermind politicians think a mass building spree will somehow bring the prices of real estate down. So far, no good. The only thing it does around here is suck Cachuma dry faster.
Gee, I dunno Professor, all that new student and faculty housing on Storke Road couldn’t be the problem could it?
US life expectancy has declined for the past 3 years. A good sign.
Why has this study about the Willamette Valley engendered all these comments about SB water issues? These are apples and oranges as, as is noted in the study, the Oregon basin has a reliable alternative in rain and runoff unlike the desert CA we live in. So, importantly, in Oregon the agriculture use can be curtailed by small cost incentives. In CA Big Ag has fought with huge money to stop any restriction on their waste and to make the rest of us pay for monstrous projects to satisfy their greed. 80%+ of water in CA is used by agriculture and much of it is wasted with flood irrigation and such. If they save but 10% they would free as much water as urban users require alone. Instead we are exporting our water in the form of cheap alfalfa and nuts to China and other places.
You’re sick @ 11:37. Get help…asap.
Re-read the last paragraph: “Plantinga plans to [now] shift his focus toward groundwater management, especially in California…”
It isn’t overpopulation, folks. This is a regional distribution problem. We can all agree that many people want to live on the coast in locations where there are plentiful jobs. But there are places in the country that are virtually barren, with negative growth. They’re nice and have excess water, cheap homes, etc. But not many people desire to live there. I don’t want to hijack the thread, but we could also get into the negative native population growth of the USA, with only immigrants causing USA population growth (same story in the EU). Or how even the UN predicts that global population growth will peak in 2050. Or how we had better look to Japan for what happens when your population declines rapidly. Sigh…
Way over 90,000 now . SB City was 70k in 1970 & now about 94k. Don’t even get me started on Goleta. lol
Dredge Cachuma now!!!!!
Not again. Dredging Cachuma is a complete economic waste. The cost and pollution to increase the holding capacity this way is way over what it would cost to simply raise the dam. BUT the important thing is that the reservoir is mainly a holding facility for State Water Project imported water and there is no need to increase capacity as this water comes in regularly. When was the last time Cachuma overflowed?
For those of you so unhappy with the suggestion about the Irish eating their babies, please consider: https://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html. This is a copy of Jonathan Swift’s satire on the lack of humane response to the plight of the Irish during the famine years. He recommends this sort of solution. His recommendation is satire, an attempt to so exaggerate a course of action as to make it clear how absurd it is. In this case his target was the English suggestion that the problem in Ireland was the problem of the Irish and theirs to solve. Maybe the negative votes should step back and consider the idea of sarcasm, satire and ridicule in bringing a point to the attention of the public (but only if it is not taken literally).