Re: David Czamanske, "Watered-Down Response," Pasadena Weekly, Oct. 23, 2008. Link here:
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/a_watered_down_response/6512/
REBUTTAL
Czamanske is all wet.
This is to rebut Sierra Club activist David Czamanske’s “A Watered Down Response,” Pasadena Weekly, Oct. 23, 2008, which calls for the City of Pasadena to adopt a rash system of tiered water rates depending on usage in order to accomplish water conservation now that the State has reduced Southern California’s allotment of water from the California Aqueduct by 85%.
Imagine if Southern California were a large island with some underground water but bounded by an ocean, and a huge wetland and a river both 300 miles away in different directions. The island would be in a permanent net drought condition but with water all around it. That’s what Pasadena is.
The Southern California region has water all around it, albeit at some distance, but is suffering from a “perfect storm” of a physical and a political drought.
Water activist Dorothy Green recently stated that there is no real water crisis in Southern California .
Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters also recently wrote:
“…the water conflict isn't really about water. As important as it may be, water is merely the battleground for the larger debate over how California should develop, especially housing, as its population grows.”
Why should Pasadenans be subject to either higher water prices or involuntary conservation policies given that:
1. The water crisis is largely political but masquerades as environmental.
2. Pasadena apparently is not counting water conserved from its $234 million replacement of all the water distribution pipelines in the City by 2020 at a cost of $6,240 per water service connection. Why doesn’t this count toward conservation in the City’s Urban Water Management Plan if we’re paying for it?
3. Tim Brick, Pasadena ’s representative and current Chairman of the regional Metropolitan Water District, was the spearhead in getting voters to shoot down the proposed Sacramento Delta Peripheral Canal in 1982 for environmental reasons. “What goes around comes around.”
4. The California Sierra Club has unreasonably opposed any solutions for responsible use of water in the Sacramento Delta.
5. Pumps on California Aqueduct have been curtailed, due to an environmental lawsuit, purportedly to protect the Delta smelt fish, while fish downstream that flourish in the Aqueduct have been deprived of water and habitat. The Delta smelt has likely vanished due to water quality improvements in the Delta advocated by environmentalists.
6. Tiered water rates based on usage are unlikely to achieve much given that base water rates are so low in the first place.
7. Water conservation won’t work for those properties that have already planted drought-tolerant landscaping and now must cut water usage even more.
8. Use of 6,000 acre feet (enough for 12,000 households per year) of recycled water from Glendale would entail costly nitrate removal which may make it economically infeasible.
9. Most of Pasadena ’s water shortfall comes from shutting down 8 city water wells for high perchlorate levels; but PWP is buying replacement wholesale water from MWD with nearly the same level of perchlorate for many times the price! There is no health benefit from removing such low levels of perchlorate from drinking water.
10. New anti-sprawl legislation (SB 375) will divert new housing development from inland California Republican strongholds where groundwater resources are more abundant (e.g., San Bernardino) to high-density housing projects along light rail routes in Democratic strongholds (e.g., Pasadena Gold Line) where potable groundwater supply is shrinking, all under the euphemistic banner of “Smart Growth.” Both State Senator Jack Scott and Assemblyman Anthony Portantino voted YES on this absurd legislation.
11. The 61% reduced average landscape water usage by Irvine Ranch Water District cited by Czamanske doesn’t compare with Pasadena because Irvine is a master-planned community with residential subdivisions managed by homeowner associations and contract landscaping companies with centrally planning watering systems and xeriscaping.
12. Shifting to drip irrigation systems on timers can achieve water savings but is mostly shifting the problem out of sight and thus out of mind. Charging premiums for highly visible water uses (hosing, irrigation runoff, etc.) is apparently mostly for show.
13. Conservation may make matters worse for, like farmers, if you show you can get along with less, you will lose your allocation (“use it or lose it”).
14. The Sacramento Delta has become a political interchange, not just a gigantic regional wetland, through which environmental symbolism flows. This is critical given that Southern California has shifted from two-thirds dependence on imported water from the Colorado River to two-thirds reliance from the Sacramento Delta in the past five years, effectively making the MWD a sub-bureau of the State legislature.
15. The Diamond Valley Reservoir, built in 1994 in Riverside County , is only half full at this time and if it gets depleted it will then become notoriously apparent that this water storage facility was built without firm water supplies.
16. Arguably, the only increase in regional water supplies in the last decade has come from the market, not government, with the maverick actions of the Texas Bass Brothers to buy up agricultural water rights in Imperial County and ultimately to sell them to San Diego.
17. There is some surplus groundwater in the region but monopoly MWD forbids direct water sales. Nearby San Gabriel Water District could have a surplus if its polluted aquifer is cleaned up. This potential surplus could be sold to Pasadena through MWD’s Foothill Feeder pipeline. Perhaps, Pasadena should co-invest in a groundwater treatment plant with the San Gabriel Water District, since treated water might be less than MWD imported water (say $500 per acre foot) and would certainly be less than the $2,000 per acre foot cost of desalting ocean water.
18. If the State of California follows through with its pronouncement of cutting water deliveries to Southern California by 85%, the fixed costs of operating regional water agencies may not be able to be covered necessitating an increase in water rates. Pasadena is already illegally overcharging for water and should apply the over charges to any such rate increases.
Needless to say, the public isn’t being responsibly served by all of the above.
Given the self-defeating history of water policies in Pasadena , Phyllis Currie is doing an admirable job as PWP Manager and juggler in the three ring political circus of Pasadena . The Sierra Club should get out of her way and give her time to come back to the community with a conservation program to muddle through the maze of obstacles it and the city elites have handed her. They can start doing this by ceasing to write misleading articles in the newspaper.
