Shadow of Drought: Southern California's Looming Water Crisis

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so disturbing news for california the entire state is in a drought the most populous state in the nation is in crisis we've looked the other way on this looming crisis for decades we've run out of time california is a kind of marvel of water engineering you've got places that shouldn't exist where they exist is california as a project sustainable los angeles another beautiful day in sunny san diego and it's raining season and it is important we know that we're in a bad drought and yet the public has been pretty slow to respond about every 10 years we have some dry years this time a lot of things have caught up we just finished the april 1 measurement we're going to end this year way below normal so far this year california is experiencing some of the driest winter weather on record the first half of 2014 was the hottest on record in california now take a look at how dry things are reservoir levels are at record lows the state in its worst drought since 1977. california is living through some of its driest years in a century there has to be a sense of urgency about this we have exceptional drought conditions especially for the central and southern sections of california 5 000 people have no water running in their homes governor jerry brown is ordering mandatory water use reductions for the first time in california history we're in an historic drought and that demands unprecedented action it's for that reason that i'm issuing an executive order mandating substantial water reduction across our state the governor says water use must be slashed by 25 percent daily fines of up to 500 dollars many local authorities are encouraging citizens to report their neighbors i mean we talk about oil all the time i think fresh water is going to be the next battle what if this is the new normal and it's going to keep getting worse thank you all for coming this morning this is a time for public comments you need to fix this problem we need more water not making us suffer we're in the situation we're in we're asking for residential customers because that's what the governor said he wants brown lawns the governor is not a dictator because he says jump we do not have to say how high i'm not gonna let my garden die we don't need to cut back we have plenty of water it's mind-boggling that somebody would think that we don't have to do anything unfortunately we're in a society where we always believe there's an unlimited resource of everything and really don't pay attention to what's coming down the road i think a lot of people want to do the right thing and if they see other people doing that they'll follow along i'm installing these low flow shower heads and each one can save up to 2 900 gallons of water a year the arnold it takes too long to water the lawn but dear steve try this [Music] keep doing your part to save water and energy conservation can feel oh so right shut off the faucet while soaking those in dirty hands be california friendly go to beewaterwise.com for tips and rebates and don't waste another minute wasting water so are you doing your part to conserve water oh yeah absolutely yeah yeah we don't really water anything in our yard anymore and simple things like turning off the water when you're doing your dishes and scrubbing the drought just pretty much made me more water conscious basically shorter showers shorter showers shorter showers shorter showers shorter showers maybe we don't showers often but so far you can't smell me from here i guess but the drought was an opportunity to raise awareness about the strategies to save water and to use it more carefully and more efficiently the 25 reduction in urban water use that we achieved remarkably easily it was a wake-up call for people we're beginning to do things differently that we should have been doing differently for a long time but it's entirely possible that many of the lessons that we've learned during the drought will start to ignore again or will start to forget when the rains return it is official the california drought emergency is over all thanks to one of the wettest winters in years [Music] our drought is over [Music] now that california's mandatory water conservation rules have been lifted we're using more water [Music] one of the challenges with getting an extremely wet year is that people think the crisis is over we've all talked about the hydrological cycle but there's the hydro illogical cycle where you have drought and then there's awareness and then there's fear and then there's action then there's rain and then there's apathy so this isn't something new to this drought it's something that's been going on for quite some time one of the most important things to understand about california's water system is that a single wet year in fact a series of wet years isn't enough to solve our water problems in california water is available in the winter and we use most of it in the summer geographically we tend to have a lot more water in the north than in the south we tend to have a lot more people in the south than the north i think most northern californians would rather keep the people in the south and one of the ways you do that is by letting them pay you to have some of the water and so we have to move water in time and in space much more than other places california has a long history of moving water around it's mostly come from less populated areas into more populated areas or into agriculture early on the focus of development and where cities were located they were really taking advantage of surface supplies and as growth started to occur you started to see more development of imported supply systems to help augment those local supplies an example is the los angeles aqueducts in the early 1900s to serve the la area and then ultimately metropolitan was brought into being to develop what's known as the colorado river aqueduct that brings supplies in from the colorado river it starts at lake havasu on the california arizona border then that water is lifted a number of times through the desert and up over the mountains and that brings it into southern riverside county and really since the early 50s colorado river water has been the main source of supply for san diego and it's really fueled the economy and the growth that we've seen here in the last 50 years and then when the state water project got built in the 1960s and 70s you started getting water from northern california and that water goes through the delta a place where people fight about water issues the main trend in california was build stuff and so the goal was to build as many dams as possible canals pipelines the state water plant was pretty simple dam everything up and send the water to cities and agriculture you know over the last 10 to 15 years it's been roughly 55 45 split between supplies that are imported and local supplies you know we have tens of millions of people here we have a lot of agricultural production that feeds our region and parts of the world and country and so we're so dependent on these sources that we're not really dependable in the long term the climate of the planet is under enormous threat we know the climate's changing we know the impacts are going to be bad especially on water resources and especially for california southern california has grown tremendously we aren't going to tell people you can't live here anymore because we don't have enough water we're going to have longer and more frequent droughts we're going to have a lot less water supply so climate change is really changing the game here and people who are not getting on board and not understanding what might be happening here are putting us all at risk climate change is not science it's religion climate change is overdone i think it's a political issue now and i keep hearing about global warming now they'll say he doesn't understand oh no i don't understand the earth warms and cools over great lengths of time we're just gauging it on a short period i believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity's impacting the climate is subject to more debate i don't care what you believe you believe whatever you want the problem comes about is if you are in denial of an emergent scientific truth and you wield power they present unfortunately merely ideology in the scientific community it's a subtle question 97 97 97 97 of climate scientists agree that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible every professional scientific organization in the world agrees that climate change is real and human-caused and bad that reality hasn't prevented the trump administration from putting in place the few remaining climate deniers and positions of power the united states will withdraw from the paris climate accord regarding the question as to climate change i think the president was fairly straightforward we're not spending money on that anymore we consider that to be a waste of your money that political reality is different from the scientific reality and that's going to make dealing with the climate challenge increasingly difficult it's going to make the climate threat worse than it would otherwise be we're seeing an unprecedented warming of the planet in just the last four decades or so there's a broad fingerprint of changes that are anticipated as the climate warms because of increased loading of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it's really unmistakable that we're in the midst of a very rapid transition it's not a positive outlook and we're really going to need to change the way we're doing things if we consider the drought the new normal which we should the colorado river system is a critical piece of california's water infrastructure even without climate change the colorado is a system under enormous stress and with climate change those stresses are going to get worse and worse i think what we've seen in the last few years especially on the colorado river is that it's not as plentiful as when they divided it up among the seven basin states in mexico so that source is going to be challenged because you've got increasing needs and a decrease in supply the colorado system is the most arid of the large watersheds in the western united states many experiments have indicated that the colorado system is probably the most vulnerable to climate warming because of effects on water demand by natural processes [Music] if water levels on those large reservoirs decline below a certain mark then we're likely to be flirting with a new form of regulation on the colorado system which will affect all of the parties in the southern part of the basin it's going to get worse and worse as other states demand their share of the colorado there's going to be more and more political pressure to renegotiate those political agreements and california is potentially at risk of losing some of that water in the coming years it's increasingly going to be an unreliable component of our water supply when you look at the colorado it's not this endless source it's the most endangered river in the united states and it's that way for a reason we've overused over allocated and we're paying the price now another one of the severe consequences of the recent drought and the high temperatures from climate change has been devastation to the forests up in the sierra nevada a drought a heat wave and strong winds are the elements for the disaster in california now you can add a legion of seemingly unstoppable beetles to the list of threats facing the state's forest this is the result of bark beetles ravaging the drought weakened pine trees california has lost 100 million trees from the drought these trees are very very dry it's adding to the fuel for the fire to burn creating what's called mega fires burning faster hotter and more explosive than ever before fire is good in the environment what we're talking about is these high intensity fires that burn the soil down six inches where it's going to take a long time hundreds of years for nature to restore itself wildfires can have a significant impact on the hydrology of a watershed the soil tends to change in a way that will generate more runoff two to five times the amount of erosion comes out when you have these high intensity fires all the erosion the sediment is going down filling up the streams warming the water it's not good for the habitat when it gets down to the reservoirs it fills up your storage we need to look up into the watersheds where this water is coming from and see if we can manage them to improve their health and improve the water supply we have forests that have grown back from fires that are so thick they consume huge amounts of water it's generally recognized that if those forests were thinner the forest would be healthier and the water supply would improve right now there's a lot of good intentions but the funding is not there that money is being used for fire suppression rather than for fire prevention that's one of the big problems that we're trying to work on through federal legislation but it's a slow process because we have a lot of u.s forest service land that feeds the water for everyone in california one of the worst consequences of climate change for california that we've known about now for three decades or longer is impacts on snowfall and snow melt we know the temperature is going up that means the snow that we get is increasingly not snow but rain and the snow that we get as snow is increasingly melting faster and running off earlier the impact of having less snow and more rain is going to be enormous snow is great because it melts slowly it comes into the reservoirs in a nice steady way doesn't cause floods by and large and then you can meter the water out in the summer and use it the way you want if we shift to more of a rainfall situation we're going to have water coming in enormous amounts into these reservoirs and the reservoirs are going to have to release that water as quickly as they can to prevent the reservoir from being overtopped and having a flood downstream frankly we've seen some of that already with this wet winter of 2016-2017 and the risks to oroville dam california's second largest reservoir is threatening to overflow for the first time ever state water officials ordered the immediate evacuation of 188 thousand people their homes will be in the path of potentially catastrophic flooding they're having to release water for flood prevention we finally got a little water we've got to let it go we need more storage obviously and this is why they need to build more reservoirs more dams more storage more storage more dams build more reservoirs we need to get these projects done and we need to get them done as soon as possible we've always had a debate in california about infrastructure in the 20th century we built hundreds of big dams to deal with the problems that we faced we have more than 1 400 dams throughout the state of california and building more of them just gets increasingly cost prohibitive and then there's the environmental destruction and impacts on recreation on top of that we may build one or two more big dams in california that debate is continuing but even if we do california's water problems are going to look the same at the end of the day big dams will not get us out of our water problems in the 21st century it's time to look to other kinds of solutions what do you think is going to solve our water crisis i think desalination deceleration desalination desalination desalination desalinization desalination we have this beautiful body of water right behind us it's just got a little bit of salt in it we are now getting water from the most advanced saltwater desalination plant in the world carlsbad we're using the reverse osmosis system for desalination it takes out all of the salt as well as any other viruses bacteria or any other impurities that may be in the seawater so you're left with a very pure fresh water this is the first local drought proof water supply here in san diego county california has a thousand miles of coastline so i think desalination is something that certainly should be considered but it's just incredibly expensive and it should be the last resort both intake and discharge from desalination plants is harmful to the marine environment so for most of us in the environmental community we see it as sort of a last resort san diego has shown you can build one of these plants and operate them but it's hard to find a place on the coast where people oh yeah build some big industrial plant in our beach that's not accepted by a lot of communities in the long run i think there's a role for desalination but only for the highest value highest quality uses we don't have that much money let's spend the money in the right places at the right time a more productive way to really use what we have today is to recycle the waste water that we throw out into the ocean every day in southern california one of the success stories in california is the work that's been done in orange county for a long time taking waste water treating it to a very high standard then reintroducing it into the hydrologic system potable reuse is where you take recycled water gets pumped into a groundwater basin referred to as an environmental buffer and then into the potable distribution system we went online here at the orange county water district in january 2008 since then we've expanded from 70 million gallons a day to 100 million gallons per day it's the purest water that we have in southern california they use very much the same technology both desalination and wastewater recycling but wastewater recycling is much cheaper because it doesn't take the amount of energy it does to pull salt out of water frankly we have to stop calling it waste water we have to start calling it water recovery systems it's an incredible valuable resource the political problem is convincing people that waste water isn't a bad thing it's a good thing critic says it called it toilet to tap water toilet to tap and you know where it's recycled from the toilet i think that's just about the dumbest thing i've ever heard it sounds nasty that's disgusting it's interesting but really weird maybe let somebody else drink it see what happens you're not gonna catch me drinking out of my toilet oh man it tastes like water because it is water if you were convinced the recycled wastewater was clean would you drink it well if it's clean yeah i can drink it that's fine if it's being like treated and stuff like that then i trust the science well the astronauts have been doing it for years i think it's brilliant it's it's silly to take water and just pump it out to the sea especially when the technology exists to be able to clean it we're moving away from the old debates about the uk factor and we're beginning to communicate that this is a resource that's too valuable to waste and it's a quality that is often far superior some of the other sources of water that we have available to us it's actually cleaner than the water we get from the colorado or from northern california in fact you even need to add some minerals to it because it's so pure the colorado river goes through people's kidneys many times before it gets to the point where it's diverted to southern california so everybody in southern california today drinks recycled sewer water [Music] we treat statewide about 13 percent of our waste water now we could treat 100 of it and put it to use and every gallon of wastewater that's treated to a high standard and put to use is a gallon of water that southern california doesn't have to get from somewhere else and in recent years southern california has made great strides to reducing that vulnerability [Music] [Music] the truth is though we no longer have enough water to waste i think we need to understand the difference between conservation and deficiency conservation may be taking a shorter shower it may be letting your lawn go brown the kinds of things that we ask our communities to do during a drought those savings may disappear during a wet year but efficiency improvements are permanent they let us do what we want with less water one of the good things that came out of the severe drought in california was a realization that half of our urban water use goes to outdoor landscaping and almost all of that goes to green lawns part of the strategy during the drought was policies put in place to pay people to actually remove lawns and put in place modern landscaping that uses much less water and produces beautiful landscaping local water agencies are offering homeowners rebates up to three dollars a square foot the landscaping business is booming as property owners are literally tearing up their lawns and not only do those rebates make it free for homeowners to do this each year they'll save about twenty five hundred dollars because they won't have to water those lawns so did you remove your lawn because of the rebates absolutely we liked our lawn but it takes up so much water this is so much less maintenance than mowing all the time and my water bill is cut in half it wasn't for the drought i wouldn't have done this but i'm really happy i did there's no reason why we can't have a little patch of green lawn for the kids to play on but we don't need acres and acres of this green lawn that is using up chemicals using up water and not really producing any natural benefits we still have too many lawns in southern california in part because water's too cheap in part because people didn't entirely get the message but i think we're beginning to see a future in which we have beautiful outdoor landscapings but less and less lawn [Music] the good news is that there are enormous opportunities to use water more efficiently in our cities but the urban sector and the agricultural sector can both be much more efficient than they are california's agricultural industry is a big deal we provide a lot of the food that's grown for the united states and for many other parts of the world eighty percent of the water that humans use in california goes to the agricultural sector as a result a big part of california's water challenges and debate has been agricultural use of water farmers in the central valley they're making up for the shortfall in supply by drilling deep wells and in some areas the ground is sinking as a result experts say at this rate there will be no underground water in 10 years farming revenue and the number of farm related jobs has actually increased since the drought began the reason farmers have shifted to growing more high value crops like almonds and wine grapes the epic drought has pitted city versus country give me water or get me death this is the bread basket of the world this region provides the lettuce the tomatoes everything you can possibly think of just one ounce of beef requires 106 gallons of water to produce with figures like one gallon of water needed for every nut it's getting nutty we could do without the almonds i can't do without a glass of water so we win they lose well they have to just stop growing them stop growing i don't think the state needs to impose itself on agricultural production and tell farmers what to grow the market kind of tells farmers what to grow i think the state needs to say here's the kind of sustainable water supply that we can provide to you so farmers deal with that and figure out how you can maximize the economic value of that water that we're going to provide to you farmers are already moving in the right direction in california they're already growing more food with less water but california agriculture could be even more efficient than it already is with existing technology with existing strategies without changing the kinds of crops we grow without changing the acreage of crops that we irrigate we could cut water use 15 percent in the agricultural sector saving millions of acre feet of water producing more revenue for farmers producing even more food but there are disincentives that make it difficult for farmers to invest in smart irrigation technology part of that is economic they need economic help to do that part of it is political and the way our water rights system is set up we've allocated it a hundred years ago on the basis of first in time first and right that may have made sense 100 years ago it doesn't make sense today but changing the water rights regime in california is going to be very difficult the politics of water in california are kind of unfortunate you know the mark twain adage whiskey's for drinking and waters for fighting over there's tremendous resistance of the senior water rights holders to changing the system they have a great water right and they don't want to give it up i won't lie to people and tell them that we can have everything just the way it was because our forefathers provided us water cheap and abundant i don't think we can but if we use water wisely i think we can have a pretty good society here in southern california california has to acknowledge that we're going to have extended long dry periods and we're going to have wet periods but it's going to get worse so we have to be able to plan to meet the needs of people of california in the inevitable drought droughts are very useful historically in getting people to make some of those big changes that maybe you should have made a few years ago but now you understand the importance of making them for the future you know this is not about today we need to look about what's going to happen seven generations out and i think if we can keep this momentum and we can continue to work together we can make it happen i mean we have no choice we could utilize this drought it could be a positive thing in the end if it's a catalyst that brings us to a new water conservation ethic a new way of life in southern california reusing and drastically conserving what we have already it's really depend on every one of us to take responsibility for this and do our part we will never have as much water as we would like in california but we'll have as much water as we need there is no future without the environment and without water there really is no future at all so we have to be very conscious about how we address personally that issue that affects you affects my kids my grandkids it affects everybody water is a precious and a sacred natural resource that supports all of us it's our lifeblood and it's there for our enjoyment and our betterment and it's a necessity for life [Music] it's important for people to visit the water wherever they live as we visit those places more and more we become aware of the abundance and the shortages on a very personal level water's a human right water is critical for our natural ecosystems water is fundamental for the economic system that we rely on and balancing the human right to water and economic value of water and the ecological values of water is part of the 21st century to moving toward a more sustainable water system and the good news is that california can be and is a leader in moving toward more sustainable water management than use the question really is are we going to move along that path fast enough to prevent some of the serious severe consequences of sticking in this old way of doing things [Music] [Music] it's all been done before you think of something new but that's been done too maybe we'll find a way to make a sweetest guy [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] we won't have to run away [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Palomar Films

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Id: Df281Y6hhfI

Length: 41min 32sec (2492 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021