It’s a matter of semantics as to whether the Bay Area ever really left the drought of 2014-2017 before staring down another, more severe one beginning last year. But a huge lesson for our entire state from that “first” water shortage still being learned today is that more attention must be paid to groundwater. That’s true even in the urban East Bay, where the East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD) and the City of Hayward are developing a plan to ensure continued sustainable use of freshwater sitting beneath the East Bay flats from Richmond to Hayward.
In September 2014, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law three bills known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Among other things, the Act requires local water agencies overlying certain groundwater basins to develop plans to make these basins sustainable within 20 years of implementation.
Unlike in the Central Valley and some other parts of the state, groundwater use in the East Bay Subbasin is limited and already considered sustainable, says EBMUD senior civil engineer Brad Ledesma, who is leading the effort. But the district is still working to improve groundwater monitoring and develop for the first time a formal Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) that will guide management of the subbasin for decades to come.
“Right now, pumping is way, way below our estimate of causing any issues,” Ledesma says. “There’s not enough pumping in the basin to cause undesirable results.”
Existing Wells in East Bay Subbasin. Source: Groundwater Sustainability Plan, LSCE Team
The vast majority of individual water users sitting atop the subbasin get their H2O from EBMUD or Hayward supply sources originating in the Sierra Nevada and local reservoirs. But some do tap into groundwater for irrigation of golf courses, cemeteries, and private residences, he notes, mostly via shallow wells around 20 feet in depth drilled during the 1960s and ‘70s — though use of the aquifer for drinking water dates to the early 1900s. The relatively few remaining groundwater users are scattered throughout the East Bay Subbasin, but concentrated more heavily in its lower half from southern Oakland to Hayward.
Collectively, all current users of the subbasin extract approximately 3,600 acre-feet of water from the ground each year, or about 1.2 billion gallons. That number is far smaller than the 1960s peak of more than 20,000 acre-feet per year, and easily offset by natural recharge through runoff and rainfall, as well as managed injection during wet years at EBMUD’s Bayside Groundwater Facility in San Lorenzo, Ledesma says. Constructed in 2009, the Bayside facility is capable of pumping potable water, primarily sourced from local reservoirs, into the deep aquifer of the East Bay Subbasin, which at that location spans from about 400 to 1,000 feet in depth.
“Sustainable” is a notoriously slippery term in our current era, subject to greenwashing and varied interpretations. For the purposes of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the East Bay Subbasin, it refers to the avoidance of six sorts of “undesirable results”: chronic lowering of groundwater levels, reduction of groundwater storage, seawater intrusion, degraded water quality, land subsidence, and surface water impacts.
Though none of these are currently an issue, many threats lie ahead, most associated with our changing climate. Extended drought could lead to increased pumping from the subbasin, especially if it also reduces storage of surface water in the reservoirs on which EBMUD and its customers now rely. Additionally, sea-level rise could increase the risk of saltwater intrusion into the shallowest part of the subbasin, which reaches from about 200 feet to just 10 feet below the ground surface.
Ledesma acknowledges that while EBMUD currently does not make use of groundwater to service its 1.4 million customers, that could change in the future. “As a district, we’re always looking to help diversify our water portfolios, to help harden us against climate change and regulatory changes, and groundwater will potentially be a piece of that,” he says.
A draft of the East Bay Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Plan was released for public review on September 17. Comments are due by November 1, and a final version will be submitted to the California Department of Water Resources by January 1 of 2022.
Nate Seltenrich is a freelance science and environmental journalist who covers infrastructure, restoration, and related topics for Estuary. He also contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Sonoma and Marin magazines, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, and other local and national publications, on subjects ranging from public lands and renewable energy to the human health impacts of climate change. He lives in Petaluma with his wife, two boys, and four ducks. www.nate-reports.com
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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.