California needs to invest in water storage, right now
On Saturday, the Department of Water Resources released a video on its Twitter account that showed water being released from Lake Oroville to the Feather River at the rate of 35,000 cubic feet per second.
The footage was breathtaking. Shot from a drone or helicopter, the video showed crystal clear fresh water gushing down the spillway, exploding into massive clouds of water that surged over the landscape toward the ocean, racing behind a delicate rainbow in the mist.
For Californians who have lived for years with state and local water officials practically stepping into the shower with them to lecture about conserving every drop, it was a nauseating sight.
California has more than 1,400 reservoirs. Lake Oroville is the largest of 17 aboveground water storage facilities managed by the DWR, and it also plays a role in preventing floods. So when the level gets too high, federal and state authorities study weather forecasts, calculate precipitation and snowmelt and release enough water from the reservoir to make room for incoming water.
California's climate has naturally occurring dry years and wet years. Earlier generations built reservoirs and water-conveyance infrastructure to store water in between the time and place it fell from the sky and the time and place it was needed for agriculture, civilization and human survival generally.
However, sometime around the 1990s, agriculture, civilization and general human survival fell out of favor. Small fish lawyered up, and the man-made water infrastructure was throttled down. Environmental activists denounced new water infrastructure and even called for tearing down dams to restore their vision of nature.
Because some people have a rival vision of abundant and affordable water, voters in 2014 approved $2.7 billion to build new water storage projects. This was part of a larger water bond, $7.5 billion in all. Although the water storage component was opposed by many in the Legislature, it was the price of getting the votes that were needed to put it on the ballot.
To date, not one water storage project funded by Proposition 1, nine years ago, has been built.
The problem is in the language of the bond measure itself. Only projects that provide public benefits could be approved for funding. Specifically, project developers seeking the money would have to show that their project restored habitats, improved water quality, reduced damage from flooding, improved emergency response or enhanced recreational opportunities.
Guess what was not considered a “public benefit.” Water storage.
As a result, the projects that receive money from the $2.7 billion in Prop. 1 funding must get about half their funding somewhere else. The summary of Prop. 1 in the 2014 voter guide stated, “Local governments and other entities that rely on the water storage project would be responsible for paying the remaining project costs,” because these costs “would generally be associated with private benefits” (such as water provided to their customers).
Here's the problem with that. Nothing ever gets built. By the time the project proponents convince state water regulators that they've met the standard for bird hospitality and jet-ski friendliness, and the prospective partner entities go through their own hoops to get approval for funding, nine years have gone by and all we've got to show for the effort is a lot of reports on environmental documentation and permitting requirements.
Maybe those mountains of paper could soak up some of the rain and hold it for us until summer.
This is not how you build water storage if you want water storage built. This is how you build it if you're grumpy that you had to include it in the bond at all.
To give you a sense of how much water was released just from Lake Oroville over the weekend, 35,000 cubic feet per second is nearly 2,900 acre-feet per hour, about 943 million gallons. Every hour, water officials dumped enough water from Lake Oroville to supply roughly 3,000 to 6,000 California households with water, indoors and outdoors, for an entire year. Every eight hours, a year's worth of water for 24,000 to 48,000 households was sentenced to sleep with the fishes.
The voters have been swindled again. Whatever state bond you see on your 2024 ballot, vote no.