On October 17, 1972, the Edmonston Pumping Plant south of Bakersfield began lifting water drawn from the Delta up and over the Tehachapi Mountains toward southern California cities. That moment created a statewide water network stretching from the Trinity Alps to the Mexican border. It also made the Southland’s great umbrella water agency, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, an intimate partner and massive player in northern California water affairs.
Since that day, many in the north have seen “the Met” as a kind of colonial power, both far away and threateningly present. It pays a large share of the cost of the State Water Project. It owns lands in the Delta. It underwrites research. It often seems to determine the course of government policy. Few outside its sprawling boundaries (and maybe not so many inside them) really know much about it.
On June 9, the district’s 38-member board selected a new General Manager not of the traditional mold: Adel Hagekhalil. Hagekhalil is of course an engineer—that’s a given. He is also an immigrant who arrived from Lebanon in 1984 with, he says, two bags to his name. His skills and passion led him through a series of jobs under five LA mayors that would not, ordinarily, seem to groom him for the Met. He served a stint as director of StreetsLA; he spent almost a decade as assistant director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. In that role he headed up the City’s effort to plan for “One Water,” the trending (and inevitable) idea that all waters—local or imported, hidden underground or flashing in the sun, roaring in flood or trickling in drought, flushed down toilets or pulled from mountain streams, irrigating farms or supporting fish—must be thought of and managed as aspects of one precious resource.
JH: As a northern Californian, I’m used to talking to people who look at the Met, and at Southern California in general, as it were, through the wrong end of a telescope. I rather frequently find myself in the position of saying no, no, they’re doing better than we are in this or that aspect.
AH: The folks in Southern California make me proud in terms of the amount of work they’ve done in conservation. People should know that we are using the same amount of water we were using 30 years ago with 5 million more people in our service area. 20 years ago, when Met projected how much water we have to import into our region, it was 3.2 million acre feet of water per year. Right now, we’re at about 1.5 million acre feet per year. Imagine today, if we had to import 3.2 million acre feet of water, there’s no way that we’d have it. Lake Mead doesn’t have it and Northern California doesn’t have it.
JH: Explain your metaphor of “the fourth aqueduct.”
AH: What let us grow in Southern California is that we have been able to bring water from three different locations via the LA Aqueduct (owned by the LA Department of Water and Power), the California Aqueduct, and the Colorado River Aqueduct. Today, we have a responsibility to build the fourth aqueduct, which is a not a pipeline. It’s a mixture of conservation, recycling, reuse, and all that coming together, resiliency, storage, all this that we need to invest in.
JH: Can you give us an example of an obvious next step in water conservation?
AH: Getting rid of the non-functional turf. And maybe I believe we can really ban it completely from the future here. If nobody is touching it, no human being and no animal is touching that turf, it shouldn’t be there, and we should put something more sustainable in its place.
JH: Why is interconnecting local water systems important?
AH: We have parts of our region that are still dependent 100% on the State Water Project. And that’s not acceptable. We are working hard to replumb our system to ensure that we can move water to where the demand is. During the One Water LA, we worked on moving wastewater from parts of the San Fernando Valley, on the east side to the west side, so we can treat it and recharge it in the San Fernando aquifers.
JH: That’s indirect recycling, in which the treated water spends time in the aquifer and is treated again on withdrawal. Do you see direct potable reuse—putting highly purified wastewater right back into the system—as having a role in the future?
AH: I believe it’s time. The largest cost for recycled water and reuse is conveyance. And if there’s a way we can defuse that, and maybe directly connect our systems, without having to travel long distance to infiltrate into the ground, it will change the game and make it a lot more resilient. We have technology now to do direct potable reuse, we have technology to do the monitoring we need to do. We need to have 21st century thinking—that includes direct potable.
JH: How do these strategies affect disadvantaged communities?
AH: About half of the people that we serve are part of underserved communities. Some of the communities in South and East LA have their own groundwater basins. And if those groundwater basins become fouled, they have to go on imported water. So it defeats the purpose of reducing dependence on imported water. It makes the cost of water to these underserved communities higher because they’re going to get imported water instead of cheaper groundwater. So I have an interest—the state has an interest—everyone has an interest to ensure that people who are getting groundwater can keep on doing so. We have to keep the groundwater basins clean, keep them operating, and recharge them when we can.
JH: You suggest that the State, and even other Colorado River Basin states, benefit by helping to fund One Water strategies in southern California.
AH: My message is ‘we are one’ We need to work together, to help each other. So help me with my recycled water program, help me with my storage, help me with resolving the issue around conservation, especially for underserved communities. Because investing in Southern California is investing in the entire state, in the entire Southwest. Helping us build local supplies and water efficiency will reduce our demands on imported water from the Colorado River and northern Sierra. Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Central Arizona Project are partnering with us now on our Regional Recycled Water Program because they see a benefit to the region as a whole.
Hagekhalil visits Oroville Dam in Butte County. Photo: MET
JH: The question of Delta conveyance is due to revive next year, with a new proposal for a tunnel to supplement or replace the current method of moving Sacramento River water to the pumps.
AH: I did a trip to the Northern California, visited Lake Oroville, visited the different areas around the State Water Project, visited the Bay-Delta. What really opened my eyes is how vulnerable the delta is. To earthquake, to sea water intrusion, to many things. We need to do something to move water around the Delta, in my view. Not more water, but adequate supplies. We need to figure that out together. It’s going to probably take a long time to even get to an agreed alternative and agreed project. But we’re investing in the planning effort and the discussion around it.
But, as we’re moving that in that direction, I don’t want to put my eggs all in one basket. I’m going in here and developing a local water supply. A portion of my service area is 100% dependent on the State Water Project right now. And that is not acceptable.
Is there something we can do in the interim, can we build storage right now upstream of the Delta and downstream of the Delta? That could be a good thing for the environment. Environmental storage of water to keep water cooled and discharged into the delta is critical. And also the same thing south of the Delta, can we create storage systems, whether underground or above ground, so we can have more water that we can use during conditions of drought?
I’m doing a trip in January to meet with the stakeholders along the Bay Delta, especially the environmental community, the tribes and the community who live in the Delta,and others, to understand their perspectives. I’m trying to meet as many people as I can, I’m talking to folks in San Joaquin Valley, I’m talking to my partners in the State Water Project and others. I need to really, hopefully, bring my openness and willingness to collaborate with people—and I will ask people this, you know, let’s try to figure out how we can work together and trust each other. We cannot keep fighting. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
JH: You put a lot of emphasis on defusing conflict.
AH: I’m challenging everyone—which is the environmental community, the ag community, the state, everyone—to come together, and let’s work in collaboration, we can’t keep fighting, let’s agree on how to manage the future of water together. So the first thing I did here, as you know, we settled the lawsuit with Imperial Irrigation District. And I’m working on settling a lawsuit right now with the San Diego County Water Authority, which I’m hoping to get done soon.
JH: Resolving some of these old debates seems a tall order.
AH: You know, I ran the LA Marathon. I committed myself in 2005 for March 2006. When I signed up, I couldn’t run a mile or half a mile. And over a year, I ran the marathon in March 2006. I was 100 pounds lighter, fitter, I trained, worked hard, enrolled people around me to run with me. And it’s, it’s like committing to the future, right? We all have to commit to something that may seem impossible. But you believe in it, and you set a goal. So I believe in that analogy, because I don’t believe in litigation. I don’t believe in us fighting. I don’t believe in things that do not move us forward.
John Hart is an environmental journalist and author of sixteen books and several hundred other published works. He is also the winner of the James D. Phelan Award, the Commonwealth Club Medal in Californiana, and the David R. Brower Award for Service in the Field of Conservation. For ESTUARY, he writes on groundwater, infrastructure, and California water politics and history.
Our magazine’s media motto for many years has been “Where there’s an estuary, there’s a crowd.” The San Francisco Estuary is a place where people, wildlife, and commerce congregate, and where watersheds, rivers and the ocean meet and mix, creating a place of unusual diversity. In choosing to tell the...
Ever since the state and federal water projects were built in the 1930s and 1940s, California has captured snowmelt in foothill reservoirs, and moved the fresh water from dam releases and river outflows to parched parts of the state via aqueducts hundreds of miles long. A convoluted system of ancient...
Though the Clean Water Act did an amazing job of reducing wastewater and stormwater pollution of the San Francisco Estuary, some contaminants remain thorny problems. Legacy pollutants like mercury washed into the watershed from upstream gold mining, PCBs from old industrial sites, and selenium from agricultural drainage in the San...
Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.