Oroville Dam’s battered flood-control spillways have been largely rebuilt, but the cost of last February’s near-disaster keeps rising. On Friday, state officials put the total price tag at $870 million. The latest figure from the California Department of Water Resources represents a 32 percent increase from DWR’s estimate in October, when the cost was pegged at approximately $660 million.
Los Angeles is a grand American urban experiment. It brings emerging ideas into the mainstream, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. In the early 20th century, it seemed fanciful to build a metropolis in a region receiving limited seasonal rainfall. But L.A. adopted the ideas of the time at grand scales. It built pipelines over hundreds of miles of rugged terrain to import water from the Owens Valley (1913), Colorado River (1939) and Northern California (1972). In a quest for growth, L.A. has always adopted new ideas to keep ahead.
The San Diego County Water Authority is seeking approximately 20 commercial-scale landscapes for participation in a program that has demonstrated significant outdoor water-use reductions through a combination of training, hardware upgrades and technical assistance valued at more than $15,000 per site.
Applicants have until March 31 to file statements of interest in the WaterSmart Landscape Efficiency Program, using the form at watersmartsd.org. An interest meeting is scheduled from 2-4 p.m. on Feb. 15 at San Diego Gas & Electric’s Energy Innovation Center, 4760 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
In two earlier iterations of the landscape efficiency program, water savings topped 30 percent, exceeding the target of 20 percent. Participating sites have included parks, apartments, schools and homeowner association common areas. Project sites are typically about four irrigated acres (though they are often part of a larger property), and they must be on dedicated potable water meters.
“We are looking for places to showcase significant water savings without compromising landscape quality by employing best practices for irrigation management and top-tier technology,” said Carlos Michelon, principal water resources specialist at the Water Authority. “This program is one of many ways the Water Authority continues to promote long-term water-use efficiency.”
The WaterSmart Landscape Efficiency Program requires joint participation by property owners and landscape maintenance contractors at each site. Landscape contractors receive training, assistance, and performance-based financial incentives for documented water savings. Site owners receive water-saving devices and the long-term benefits of lower water use. The program is funded mainly through a Proposition 84 Integrated Regional Water Management grant from the California Department of Water Resources.
Program benefits include leak detection and repair, irrigation system pressure regulation, improvements in distribution uniformity of irrigation water, and the installation of flow sensors and weather-based irrigation controllers. Each site is provided with a water management target that will be tracked for a year. Participants are responsible for hardware installation, landscape maintenance and other contract conditions.
From the pool of interested parties, the Water Authority will select those that best fit the program’s technical requirements and are most likely to meet the program’s demanding implementation schedule. Promising sites that aren’t selected for the program’s current round may be eligible for future rounds, depending on funding.
In addition to the WaterSmart Landscape Efficiency Program, the Water Authority offers free training to landscape professionals through the Qualified Water Efficient Landscaper program. That program, known as QWEL, provides 20 hours of training on the latest water-efficiency principles and the opportunity to earn a QWEL certificate. Information about QWEL is at qwel.watersmartsd.org.
A statement of interest must be filed by March 31 for sites to be considered for the program. Details and the interest form are at watersmartsd.org/watersmart-landscape-efficiency-program.
Already facing a lawsuit claiming decades of state mismanagement of the Oroville dam and a “culture of corruption” that fostered harassment, the California Department of Water Resources drew a new legal challenge from Sacramento County—one that accuses its employees of improper communications around the twin tunnels project.The latest DWR drama was triggered January 15, when attorneys for Sacramento and San Joaquin counties, and the city of Antioch, filed a motion demanding that the State Water Resources Control Board halt the phase-two public hearings for WaterFix, better known as “the twin tunnels” project.
Months of behind the scenes talks have failed to drum up enough money to pay the full costs of replumbing the center of California’s sprawling waterworks with two giant water tunnels. That has left the state with little choice but to scale down a roughly $17-billion water delivery project to fit a funding pot of less than $10 billion. State officials are expected to soon announce exactly what form a revised California WaterFix would take.
Two noteworthy items related to the Salton Sea were unveiled at the recent Southern California Energy Water Summit. First, the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership released a report entitled “Revitalized Salton Sea-Analysis of Potential Economic Benefits-December 2017.” The report basically says that the Coachella Valley will benefit (avoided loss of visitors) economically if the Salton Sea is revitalized at cost of $1.1 billion. Is this report getting valley residents and businesses primed for picking up the tab? I hope not.
The Bureau of Reclamation came to Chico Thursday to take input on a proposal to maximize water deliveries from the Central Valley Project, and for two hours a succession of speakers told them it was a bad idea. The meeting was nominally to get comments just on what the environmental studies for the proposal should look at, but most of the speakers objected to the basic idea of taking more water from the north to deliver to the San Joaquin Valley for what more than one speaker called “desert agriculture.”
The state Department of Water Resources now says there were “many redundant systems” to ensure the Oroville Dam spillway radial gates had power during February’s crisis. This comes after environmental groups voiced concern in an article published in this newspaper Wednesday about, seemingly, a lack of backup generators that would allow the department to control the gates even if crucial power lines went down. Radial gates at the top of the spillway allow for water releases.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s $17 billion plan for two massive tunnels to move water under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could be on the rocks. The governor’s office is reportedly holding talks with water contractors around the state to gauge support for downsizing the project to one tunnel at a cost of about $10 billion. But whether the smaller project would accomplish its goals or justify its cost remains unclear.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
