Securing California’s Water Supplies with WaterFix
The other week, I wrote about how the system responsible for delivering water from Northern California to two thirds of the state’s population is broken. It causes reverse flows and traps endangered fish. The outdated infrastructure also puts our clean water supplies at risk from salt water intrusion from earthquakes and rising sea levels due to climate change.
Of course, the state has come up with a solution to modernize the system in an effort to protect water supplies and increase reliability all while reducing negative impacts to the ecosystem. California WaterFix would update the state’s plumbing. If you’re into visuals and want a quick explanation of the project, check out this video.
WaterFix is part of the state’s Water Action Plan which calls for increased conservation, improvements to efficiency, upgrades to outdated systems and more. The state is also working on California EcoRestore, a massive habitat restoration effort covering 30,000 acres in the Delta.
Efforts to change how we move water across the state have been underway since the system was first created. When the State Water Project was built in the 1960s, planners intended to construct a peripheral canal to carry water directly from the Sacramento River alongside the Delta to the state and federal pumping plants in the south Delta. The canal was intended to protect water quality and avoid significant damage to Delta fisheries.
Similar efforts have been made during the last 50 years. In 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature enacted the Delta Reform Act “to achieve the coequal goals of providing a more reliable water supply to California and restoring and enhancing the Delta ecosystem.” WaterFix accomplishes these goals and more.
There are three main components of WaterFix: new intakes, underground piplines and an expansion of the existing Clifton Court Forebay.
The three new proposed water intakes are near the town of Hood, about 35 miles north of the current intakes in the south Delta. Water at this part of the system is higher quality because it is farther removed from salty tides. The new intakes will be away from endangered Delta smelt habitat and will be updated with state-of-the-art fish screens to protect even young and small fish.
Those intakes will connect to two, 35 mile long gravity-fed pipelines. Why two? Redundancy is good engineering. At 150 feet below ground, the new infrastructure is designed to protect water supplies from sea level rise, earthquakes, floods and levee failures. Currently, the system depends upon levees vulnerable to quakes and sea-level rise. If levees fail, salt water will rush in and clean water supplies for the state will spill out.
Using the natural force of gravity to move water also means less pumping in the south Delta which causes reverse flows. Reinstating a more natural direction of river flows is of critical importance to migrating fish.
To protect endangered fish, the state and federal governments restrict how much water we can take using the existing system. The best time to export water from the Delta is when storms and snowmelt fill rivers, but that’s also when exports are minimized because of risks to fish. Under WaterFix the existing south Delta pumps would still be operational but used less frequently.
If WaterFix had been in place between January and March of this year, we would have been able to capture enough water to supply 3.5 million Californians with water for a year. That’d be an increase of more than 50 percent from last year in just three months. This is water that was above and beyond what was needed to maintain water quality and meet requirements under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Water from the new intakes will end up in a new compartment of Clifton Court Forebay to keep it separate from water that still needs to be screened for fish, until the existing state and federal pumps lift the water into canals that flow as far south as Los Angeles. This water serves 25 million Californians from the Bay Area as far south as San Diego and three million acres of farmland.
WaterFix financing has been based on the principle of ‘beneficiary pays,’ meaning those who receive the benefits of the project will shoulder the cost. It is not funded by taxpayers.
I’ll give you my biased opinion of WaterFix; we need it and we need it now. WaterFix is an upgrade that offers tremendous improvements to water users and the environment including:
Reduction of Reverse Flows: Using gravity instead of pumps to move water will fix our trouble with reverse flows, restoring more natural flows.
Protection of Endangered Fish: Advanced fish screens and the new location away from key fish habitats will protect endangered species.
Improved Water Quality: The new intakes are farther north closer to the original Sierra Nevada mountain source where quality is higher.
Safeguarding Our Water Supply: The system will be 150 feet below ground, protected from levee failures caused by climate change and earthquakes.
For decades the state has researched how to capture, move and store water. Yet again, we’ve returned to the idea of revamping the Delta pumping system. WaterFix reflects all that we’ve learned in the last fifty years. It’s even more apparent now that we’re in desperate need of this upgrade to meet the water demands of a growing population and deteriorating Delta ecosystem.
I plan to use this blog as a place to explore California water and WaterFix, the state’s plan to upgrade outdated infrastructure in the Delta. Hopefully, it will be a resource and start a discussion around how to better manage California’s water.
