Update on the "Chu Effect"

I just hope Chu doesn’t start talking about the Chu Chu Trains of Death. That would really be biting off more than he could Chu. He’d probably get Chu-ed out for that one.

California’s water information (current and historical) can be found at
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/snow/misc/water_cond.html
The earlier comments on water supply and population are good ones. California has had some success with water conservation efforts, but those cannot postpone forever the fact that a growing population and economy must have growing fresh water supplies.
As to recyling from toilet to tap, I prefer the colorful quote from the late great billionaire Howard Hughes, when Las Vegas was pondering the same subject:
” I refuse to drink water that has only recently had the turds strained from it.”
San Diego recently pushed a recycling initiative with the Toilet to Tap label; it was soundly defeated.
And yes, I fully recognize what is in river water, especially if that river has passed any towns or cities. That is why I fully support a law that requires any town/city that takes water from a river, and discharges treated waste water into the river, to be required to discharge a mile or two upstream of the taking point.

Dear John Egan,
“Dear Water Nerd –
Ever heard of spring runoff ??”
Why yes, I have. Which is why I kept referring in my post to snowpack melt, and to the need for reserve storage capacity to control spring snowpack melt.
“There are two measures –
Percent of normal and percent of capacity.”
Why yes, there are. Which is why I listed “percent of capacity” and “percent of average” in my post,as taken directly from the state web site.
“Even in good water years reservoirs are held at 70% to prepare for spring runoff if there is a normal snow pack – which, it seems, there is this year.”
Yes, at 70% of capacity – or thereabouts, depending on the management strategy for each reservoir. Where we would like the reservoirs to be this time of year is around 70% – 80% of capacity, which would be somewhat over 100% of normal. Normal is also impacted by dry years during which pools were below ideal managed level for this date, so average storage for this date is actually somewhat below the management targets. We are far, far from that, across the state.
“The two largest California reservoirs – Shasta and Oroville – also saw dramatic increases in storage during the past 30 days. Shasta has gone from 1,444,000 acre-feet to 2,414,000 af – that’s a MILLION acre-feet of additional storage. Oroville has gone from 1,037,000 af to 1,659,000 af – that’s a 65% increase in one month.”
Yes – February helped a lot. But that percent increase is from a very low initial condition n January. 1.5 million AF between Shasta and Oroville marks a huge improvement from January – and they are still far below capacity, and substantially below managed ideal levels for this date, and still leave us far from adequate storage for this date.
“Shasta and Oroville remain below average, but the overall water storage situation combined with the near-normal snow pack hardly make this water year a catastrophe – at least from the perspective of available water.”
Which is precisely what i said – there will still be an impact, with substantial costs for agriculture, but not a catastrophe. February helped a lot, likely moved is from catastrophe status to substantial problem status, and we still have inadequate water stores in those reservoirs.
—-
BTW, for those calling for more dams in California, I would ask – where? What un-captured water are you planning to capture, and where are you planning to store it, and what will be the cost per acre foot ( in dollars and in stream flow impacts) for that storage? If you have good answers for this, I know the state DWR would love to hear it, because this has been a topic of conversation and much study there since at least the early 1960s – and the available answers ain’t all that good.
For example there are 12 potential storage sites north of the Delta that are currently considered potentially feasible, organized into 4 potential projects. The best of these, Dippingvat-Schoenfield (also known as Red Bank Project), would create at most about 380,000 AF of storage. This was extensively studied in the late 1980s, and at that time the cost per acre foot was projected to be an order of magnitude, at least, higher than any other water storage in the state. In short, the project was discontinued because the storage capacity was too small to make a significant impact, and the cost was prohibitive.
Thomes-Newville, Colusa,and Sites projects, the only other potentially feasible storage projects north of the delta, were even worse.

OT but hilarious. From Obama’s website:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/fiscal/
Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan
Restore Fiscal Discipline to Washington
* Reinstate PAYGO Rules: Obama and Biden believe that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue.
* Cut Pork Barrel Spending: Obama introduced and passed bipartisan legislation that would require more disclosure and transparency for special-interest earmarks. Obama and Biden believe that spending that cannot withstand public scrutiny cannot be justified. Obama and Biden will slash earmarks to no greater than year 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public.

water nerd “BTW, for those calling for more dams in California, I would ask – where?”
Good question. But why hasn’t anyone done anything for 30 years?
And why are dishonest opportunists trying to blame “global warming”?

The reason why there haven’t been any new big dams built in California is the lack of sites.
Basically, they have already used the best ones. Auburn Dam was scrapped due to a massive fissure found on the north side of the keyway. Hell Hole reservoir failed catastrophically in 1963 and nearly took out Folsom Dam.
I can tell you what it looked like then, as sandbags were piled on top of Folsom. The water stopped 1.5′ shy of the top. If you want to build more dams or raise the existing ones, fine. Just don’t say nobody warned you about what happens when one fails. That’s the flip side to droughts. As for CA’s rain/snowpack, 100 years does not tell the story, and if you go down that road, consider your data cherry picked. 1022 AD would have taken every Earth-fill dam in the state out, and maybe a few other deluge years.
2008/9 a drought?
I don’t think so.
Hysteria and polyscience. For every dry spell or drought, there is a corresponding wet spell or deluge.
And finally, it never rains in California, it pours.

California, were it not for suburb spread, may have dodged a bullet by not having good places to put more dams. Dams may decrease water tables. When you solve one problem, you sometimes create another. There are studies underway that would allow a created flood to periodically flow over flat ground that used to be flooded regularly by the local river. It is thought that with planned floods, literally pumping water out of the dam onto flat ground, the water table can be restored to pre-dam levels. Ending forest fires and banning public land grazing are other examples where solving one problem created another. Often, the original fix was because of humans not wanting to live around the problem by adapting to it. They wanted the problem to go away. Climate change could end up like that. Instead of adapting to it, someone will try to fix it and end up creating another problem down the road that our great-grandkids will have to fix.

The Beautiful Female Poodle told the Chihuahua, German Shepherd and Pit Bull that she would go with Whomever made the Best Sentence with Cheese and Liver. She Asked the German Shepherd to make a Sentence with Cheese and Liver and the German Shepherd said I Like Cheese and Liver and the Female Poodle says Nope, not creative enough. Then she asks the Pit bull and the Pit Bull Says i Hate Cheese and Liver so the Female turns to the Chihuahua and the Chihuahua turns to the German Shepherd and Pit Bull And gives them a Mean Stare and tells them…. Cheez Mine So Leever Alone.
who did che chu-z?

” Clive (18:44:58) : Wells are great, but over time aquifers get depleted if water is removed faster than recharged. And they often are unable to supply massive flows on demand.”
I knew someone would say this.
I didn’t mean all people. A percentage of people could have wells. This would solve the whole problem of overuse.

Bigbub,
Auburn dam was never a water storage project – it was a proposed flood control structure. Auburn was to be immediately above Folsom, and Folsom Dam already functions as water storage on the American. The increased water yield from the American River watershed if Auburn were built, above what is already available from Folsom, would have been less than 100,000 AF annually.
Auburn would be a 2 million AF pond – but its management would be coupled to that of Folsom, immediately downstream, and there is only so much water to store from the American River system.
The reason Auburn was abandoned is nearly purely economics. Originally, Auburn was going to be a concrete arch dam, 800 feet high (!!), nearly 3/4 of a mile in crest length, containing over 6 million yards of concrete – the largest arch dam in the world. It was justified purely as a flood control structure, because of the potential for a major American River flood to overtop Folsom and threaten Sacramento. That’s a lot of dam for 100,000 AF of annual water storage yield.
During construction substantial faulting at the dam site was discovered, with the potential for fault slippage of over 12 inches across the dam foundation, and the arch dam design had to be abandoned because it would not withstand dam-site fault slippage – and a potential failure of 2 million acre feet of impoundment immediately upstream of Folsom, causing it to fail, and dumping all together nearly 4 million acre feet of water into downtown Sacramento, was not acceptable .
Auburn Dam was redesigned as a gravity dam – but the cost of the redesigned gravity dam was prohibitive, several times again as expensive as the original arch dam design.
Currently plans are in place to raise Folsom by 7-8 feet, and improve the outlet works to allow greater drawdown to prepare for flood season and greater bypass during peak floods to reduce the risk of overtopping. This will cost much, much less than Auburn Dam would have – probably by tens of billions of dollars – and will actually create as much increased water storage yield, perhaps more, than Auburn would have. Still the increase in yield will only be on the order of 100,000 AF – negligible in the overall picture of CA water storage.

Roger Sowell
“California needs to admit it is no longer prudent nor possible to rely on rain or snow, and to convince the federal government to devote money to the National Excess Water Transport Aqueduct Project, NEWTAP. This would use wind-power to pump river water from the Missouri and Mississippi uphill into the Colorado river in New Mexico.”
That wouldn’t do Los Angeles, the San Joaquin valley and points north any good at all. The Colorado River Aqueduct and All American Canal, which feed from the Colorado River, supply water to Southern California south of Los Angeles, not LA or the San Joaquin. The biggest user of water by far in CA is agriculture in the San Joaquin, where the cheap water supply has allowed it to become the most important agricultural region in the country. Agriculture is the real reason behind California’s prosperity. If the water in Northern California dries up, so does the San Joaquin and so does California’s prosperity.
My suggestion would be to pump down Lake Tahoe water. We can live without ski bunnies, but can’t live without food.

Roger Sowell,
The Colorado River doesn’t run through New Mexico. Water is currently pumped the other direction, from west to east, across the Continental Divide to supply the Front Range.
So what you are suggesting as a solution for California would probably become the basis of a water war with the Rocky Mountain states.