Playing catch-up: Shameless self-promotion edition

This blogging business sometimes seems like you are having a conversation with 3 or 4 other people who share your interests. That makes it especially nice when, as a water-wonkish type, I have the chance to reach a wider audience with something I say or write. Two specific instances occurred for me recently. I had the privilege of writing a short piece for the current issue of Southwest Hydrology, on a topic that always sparks my interest - property rights in groundwater. My article was a brief discussion of a recent Arizona Supreme Court case that I discussed on the blog previously (here), involving an attempt to separate rights to pump groundwater from ownership of the land itself.

The second opportunity came as a result of various on-line discussions I have had with John Fleck, over at his Inkstain blog. John's day job is as a reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, where he writes on science in general, and frequently water, specifically. He had an article (may require viewing an ad to get to article) last month on the connection between solar power plans and water use, for which he interviewed and quoted yours truly. The article discussed the often overlooked fact that most utility-scale solar projects currently proposed or under construction in the West are of the Concentrating Solar Thermal variety. What that means is that the plants collect the sun's heat and use it to produce a hot liquid (typically some type of oil or molten salt) that is used to boil water and generate electricity with a standard steam turbine - just like traditional coal or natural gas power plants. The big difference between this type of plant and a photovoltaic solar plant is that CST plants use a lot of water (as do most power plants, for cooling purposes) while PV solar requires no water for operation. Unfortunately, these plants have to be built in places where the sun shines a lot and those places are often where water supplies are limited. It doesn't mean you shouldn't build the plant, but you have take water supplies into consideration when deciding where to site the plant to make the most effective use of water for it's operation.

Playing catch-up; City/County Water Study; my new job

I have been a bit lax in posting lately for a number of reasons. Number one of which is the fact that I recently took a job working for the Tohono O'Odham Nation, a local Native American Tribe in Southern Arizona. My official title is "hydrologist" but I will likely be engaged in work that I like to refer to as "water resource specialist." The job involves a little bit of everything that might fall under the rubric of hydrology - surface water, groundwater, water rights, and water quality. With the commute out to the seat of tribal government in Sells I have pretty long days, which cuts into some of my extra-curricular activities.

Fortunately I plan to maintain some of my local activities related to water, including attending the monthly City of Tucson/Pima County Joint Water/Wastewater Study meetings. This is the program I have been reporting on intermittently since last summer, now just past the halfway point in Phase II of the study. I now have an obligation to attend the meetings because I have been asked to replace one of the members who had to relocate out of state. This is a very exciting appointment for me because the issues being discussed by the committee are in large measure the focus of my decision to move away from hydrology, attend law school, and refocus my career on water policy (my current employment situation notwithstanding). My membership on the committee is an outgrowth of my being a member of another committee here in Tucson, the Citizens Water Advisory Committee, which advises the mayor and council on budgets and other operational matters of the City water utility (Tucson Water).

The next meeting of the city/county study committee is taking place tomorrow night, July 16, at the Tucson Association of Realtors offices on Tucson Blvd. just north of Grant, beginning at 5:00 PM. Sorry for the late notice, but as I mentioned above I've been pretty busy. This meeting is really the focal point of this phase of the study. They will be discussing ways to link growth decisions (rezonings, development agreements, comprehensive plan updates) with some form of examination of available water resources (preferably renewable water). The website for the study has a report posted discussing this issue that I am currently working through. I will try to post another update within the coming week with my impressions of the meeting and the report.

The Virtues of Conservation - Is Lawn Watering a Wast of Water or a Useful Recharge Tool?

There has been a rather spirited discussion occurring on John Fleck's blog that I was sucked into. I just can't stand by and watch people use bad science to try to influence policy-makers.

The whole thing was prompted by a comment at a Pasadena (California) city council meeting where they were discussing the implementation of new conservation measures to deal with expected cut-backs in water deliveries from the Metropolitan Water District of So. Cal. (MWD - the main water wholesaler in the LA-San Diego region). A retired engineer made the point that convincing people to stop watering their landscaping could have unintended consequences - a loss of recharge to the aquifer that results from infiltration of over-applied water. This concept was leapt on by a local blogger in Pasadena who made it his mission to stop water conservation measures aimed at outdoor water use because it was necessary to save their local groundwater resources.

The point I sought to make is that if water is being pumped from the aquifer (Pasadena typically gets about 40% of their water supplies from wells, the remainder from MWD), pumping more water so people could continue watering their lawns would not help the aquifer - it would further deplete it. Now if imported water is used for outdoor irrigation there is a benefit to the aquifer from over-watering to the extent that some of the irrigation water will in fact recharge the aquifer, but if the goal is to recharge the aquifer there are far more efficient ways to do it than by having residents over-water their grass. And because the city probably cannot determine whether a given resident is watering with imported water or groundwater, banning or limiting outdoor watering probably has more benefit to the aquifer than encouraging wasteful watering practices.

Fortunately Pasadena appears to be listening more to people who actually understand these issues than to rebel bloggers and will be imposing watering restrictions in order to compensate for cutbacks in MWD water deliveries.

The Really Big News from the Prescott/Big Chino water hearing

This was another article that came out last week, discussing the conclusion of the hearings discussed below - this time from the Verde Valley paper. Sandy Fabritz-Whitney is the assistant director of ADWR, who testified at the hearing about the agency's role in the process and admitted that the state has been looking into the possibility of creating an Active Management Area (AMA) that would include the Big Chino area. This would be the first AMA created by the State since the Santa Cruz AMA was authorized to form by splitting from the Tucson AMA in 1994. All original AMAs were created by the Groundwater Management Act in 1980.

This might just be a way for the state to encourage local stakeholders to get their act together in this area or there may be genuine local interest in having the state manage the aquifer. Either way I suspect the announcement sent some shockwaves through that part of the state if they were as unaware of this development as I was. I can't wait to hear more on this.

Prescott/Chino Valley water hearing wraps up (with some testimony that really bothers me)

The administrative hearing on Prescott's application to pump nearly 9,000 ac-ft of water from the Big Chino aquifer wrapped up last week, according to the local paper. If you're hearing about this issue for the first time check out my previous posts: here, here, and here.

Now it's a matter of waiting for the administrative law judge to review the testimony and filings of the parties before issuing his opinion, which the article indicates may come in the fall. That opinion then goes to the head of the Department of Water Resources (ADWR) who can then affirm or change his initial ruling. Then one of the parties can move the case into the regular court system by filing an appeal in Superior Court. In other words, this won't be resolved this year.

The day prior to that article, there was another article in the Prescott paper talking about the final day of testimony in the case that I would like to comment on because it really raised my hackles. This was a discussion of testimony by two experts on the validity of the studies conducted to estimate the effect of pumping from the Big Chino aquifer on flows in the upper Verde River. (Everyone acknowledges that the springs that are the source of the Upper Verde are outlets from the Big Chino aquifer, but there is dispute over the contribution of that aquifer to the flow from those springs and hence the degree of impact the pumping will have on those springs.) A USGS scientist, Laurie Wirt, published studies on her work looking at the geochemistry of the aquifer, the springs, and the upper river, where she concluded that the aquifer provided 80% of the flow in the springs. Unfortunately, Ms. Wirt died recently in a kayaking accident so she wasn't available to defend her work in the hearing. But two former USGS employees presented differing views on the robustness of her results. Ed McGavock, currently with the consulting firm E.L. Montgomery & Assoc., argued that Ms. Wirt was biased because of her personal beliefs in support of the river, leading to unreliable results. Hjalmar "Win" Hjalmarson, a retired USGS engineer, who assisted Ms. Wirt on her studies defended her results and her integrity.

Here's what the article says about McGavock's testimony:

McGavock kicked off the debate Monday by testifying that he believed Wirt, who died in a kayaking accident in 2006, rigged her studies to come up with results consistent with her passionate views about protecting the environment.
"Laurie had a different mindset than most of us in the USGS," McGavock said. "We had a long tradition of objectivity."
In contrast, "Laurie cared deeply about what was going on in the environment," McGavock said, adding that Wirt "became very impatient with Survey procedures. No one in the USGS ever accused Laurie of being objective."

Now I have no problem with another scientist getting up to challenge the results of someone else's studies, but to do so by attacking the integrity of another scientist who cannot defend herself because of her untimely demise really bothers me. I hope McGavock also discussed what was wrong with Ms. Wirt's methodology and the reporter just didn't discuss that part. Because to challenge someone's results by attacking them personally goes against most everything that I believe science should stand for.

Then if you go to the bottom of the story the reporter includes this:

Even so, McGavock allowed that he and most hydrologists agree that the Big Chino is the "primary source" of water for the Upper Verde. After the hearing, he estimated the Big Chino contribution at "somewhere between 60 (percent) and 80 percent."

So her results were biased, but not that far off from your own estimates and possibly irrelevant to the real point of the case? Must have been a pretty good cross-examination. This is the kind of work that consultants covet because they charge their highest rates for expert testimony. But at what cost? This sort of behavior can be incredibly damaging to the credibility of the profession. It's an unfortunate trade-off we have to make.

Article touting the growing popularity of rain barrels

I came across this on Aquafornia yesterday. The article discusses use of rain barrels for rainwater harvesting in places like Illinois and Minnesota, but what about in California, Arizona, and New Mexico where they should be standard equipment on all homes? I'm a big fan of making better use of free resources whenever possible and collection of rainwater provides so many benefits in places where lots of potable-quality water is typically used for outdoor irrigation. Installing water storage can be costly, but if water were priced to discourage its use outdoors, it would become very economical to capture rainwater. And there are a lot of benefits to be derived from just doing some landscape modification to slow runoff from your property and direct it to trees and shrubs, which doesn't cost very much at all.

If you have an interest in learning more about rainwater harvesting there are some great resources on the web, here are a few:

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/
http://www.harvesth2o.com/

And a local non-profit in Tucson that works with neighborhoods and other organizations on rainwater harvesting projects is Watershed Management Group, found here.

More poorly managed groundwater resources

John Fleck posted this link about a week ago. It's got all the familiar themes for us in the West: drying rivers, dropping water tables, unregulated groundwater pumping, and large irrigated lawns. But it's not in the West, it's in Massachusetts!

Pretty amazing to think of people in Mass., where it rains 48 inches a year, watering their lawns. Do they just really enjoy cutting the grass? The article cites some per capita water use numbers showing that some communities use more water than people do in Tucson - where it rains 12 inches in a good year. The state is stepping in to mandate that average water use for residential customers get down to 65 gallons/capita/day - easily enough water for average indoor needs. Which should deal with the people who don't have the ability to sink a well on their property. But unless they also intend to regulate well drilling on residential lots that might not solve the problem entirely. At the very least they should get people to meter their private wells and pay an extraction fee for pumpage above some limit.