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As the old saying goes, “Someone with one watch knows what time it is, someone with two watches is never sure.” Water accounting is fundamental to water management, but is not easy.  But any accounting is more difficult and expensive if it is less organized.  To illustrate this point, let’s look at estimates of one of the largest, most important, and “easiest” to measure flows in California: the annual pumped quantity of California’s State Water Project (SWP) Banks Pumping Plant (Banks) in the Delta for the years 2006 through 2010.

State Water Board staff recently released a draft proposal to update minimum flow standards for the Lower San Joaquin River to the Delta. This is only one part of the information needed. To provide a complete picture of the needs in the Delta, I urge the board to move quickly to complete the remainder of their analysis on the Sacramento River basin.Delay may be too costly. The need to improve our aquatic ecosystems is urgent. Many communities are paralyzed and fearful of a lengthy and unpredictable regulatory process.

California’s Santa Monica is home to more than three miles of beaches and fresh breeze from the Pacific, and is one of National Geographic’s top 10 beach cities in the world. Santa Monica Beachboasts more than 300 days of sunshine a year, but it has a striking shortage of a critical resource: drinking water. Now in its fifth year of drought, California has made water conservation a state policy and priority, and its governor is issuing executive orders to continue saving water, with droughts expected to be more frequent and persistent due to climate change.

In bone-dry California we are counting the days until October when the rainy season should begin. When wells run dry in the Central Valley, fires rage in Big Sur and pine forests in the Sierra Nevada die off, you can’t help but wonder where all the water has gone. But what if we asked a slightly different question: where should the water be?  To answer this it helps to know that soil hydrologists classify fresh water as either blue or green. According to Henry Lin, Professor of Hydropedology / Soil Hydrology at Penn State University,

California’s goal of ensuring universal access to safe drinking water, as mandated in the 2012 Human Right to Water Bill, will come a step closer to being met if Gov. Jerry Brown signs a new measure into law that halts the creation of new small, unsustainable ­– and in many cases dangerous – water districts in the state.

The bill, SB1263, passed through the state assembly and senate in August. It aims to guarantee the safety and reliability of drinking water statewide by encouraging new developments to tie into existing water districts rather than create their own.