Water shortages:
President Obama backs research into new remedies rather than building projects.
WASHINGTON — Spurning dams for research in water technology, President Obama laid out a striking contrast Tuesday to the strategies adopted by California lawmakers in both parties on how to remedy Western water shortages.
In a final budget plan that was dead even before its arrival on Capitol Hill, the administration’s vision of investing $ 269 million in research on water desalination, recycling and efficiency will find little traction in the Republican- controlled Congress. But it does lay out an alternative to the dams, water tunnels and other giant building projects that Gov. Jerry Brown, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Central Valley House Republicans have embraced to varying degrees.
Building on the model the administration used to boost solar and wind power early in Obama’s presidency, the budget calls for “an aggressive two- part water innovation strategy.” The first step would be to wring more water out of the existing system by increasing efficiency, reuse and conservation. The second is to invest in research to reduce the cost of desalination and recycling until they reach “pipe parity” with water drawn from rivers.
The plan grows from a water initiative announced at the White House in December immediately following the Paris climate talks, where Obama’s science adviser John Holdren and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said water shortages are among the most serious consequences of global warming.
The funds proposed are tiny by federal standards, but the budget marks the first time that any administration has made a specific commitment to water research. The government spends about 50 times as much money on research and development of renewable energy, according to administration officials.
Jeffery Mount, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California, described the investments as generally good ideas, including an Energy- Water Desalination Hub aimed at finding ways to reduce the cost of desalting ocean or brackish inland water. The research hub idea “is actually pretty smart,” Mount said.
The institute recently released a report suggesting numerous ways the federal government could improve its drought response, including modernizing its antiquated water data collection and monitoring system, which has been starved by Congress. The U. S. Geological Service publishes detailed water use data only every five years.
Obama’s budget proposal calls for a $ 4 million increase in water use monitoring to enable “real- time assessments.” Mount called the investment “tiny” considering the huge return on investment from better drought monitoring. The plan also calls for such things as building soil health to help farmers retain soil moisture.
The White House will host a water summit March 22 to push the same theme of how to stretch shrinking water supplies even as rising population and development increase demand.