It’s a dilemma that faces many water purveyors: how to
balance urban and agricultural water needs, while protecting and maintaining
environmentally delicate water sources.
One need only
look to northern California’s Sacramento Delta for a real-world example
of just how difficult it is to manage competing demands while protecting a
finite resource.
In California, there has long been tension between the
relatively water-rich north and the arid south. Surrounded by desert and charged
with supplying water to dense urban areas, southern California depends on remote
water sources to meet demand. In fact, almost 20 million state residents get at
least some of their water from the Sacramento Delta—a small patch of land in the
north where the ocean and rivers meet. But the Delta provides more than just
drinking water; its resources support a large chunk of California’s
agribusiness, and it just happens be the home of the endangered Delta Smelt.
Unfortunately, the Delta is under siege—not just from urban and rural consumers,
but also from rising sea levels and never-ending drought.
And while climate change, species protection, and ears that
every predicted earthquake catastrophe known as “the big one” hold some sway,
it’s clear that California’s big water players, known as “water buffalos,” will
not sit idly by as decisions are made about the water they depend on for
survival. These water buffalos—comprised of agribusiness as well as large urban
centers and commercial interests—are focused on keeping the water flowing, and
their needs sometimes trump future planning.
It’s a precarious situation, and the Delta’s survival depends
upon how the parties involved will manage competing demands and interests.
Recently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration came up with the
Deltavision Blue Ribbon Task Force in an attempt to develop a workable plan to
protect the Delta and maintain the state’s water supply. The current Task Force
suggestions include using recycled water for irrigation and industry, the
construction of additional desalination plants, and new infrastructure in the
form of reservoirs and peripheral canals. The Task Force also calls for stricter
oversight of water rights permits to insure that the agricultural industry is
not using more than its allocated water share.
What do you
think? Can the situation in California be used as a test case for other
communities similarly stuck between urban, rural, and environmental interests?
And can an entity like the Delatavision Task Force really make a
difference?