Water Officials Have Eyes On The Future

By Tony Hicks – East Bay Municipal Utility District officials have seen droughts come and go. But they seem to be coming more frequently this century.

Climate change is stoking devastating wildfire seasons year after year, drying the state out and just making it more flammable the following year. State water officials say that means less water in the Mokelumne River Watershed, the main source for EBMUD and its 1.4 million customers.

Last winter was the state’s driest since 1977, prompting the district to officially declare a stage one drought on April 27 and ask customers to cut ten percent of their water use. What can the East Bay expect moving forward?

EBMUD’s director of water and natural resources, Mike Tognolini, appeared earlier this month during on online chat hosted by Local News Matters. He said the district plans at least a year ahead, in case droughts continue. And climate change is now a constant factor, “whether we are considering infrastructure, water supply, or anything else.”

“We approach this issue from two angles,” Tognolini said. “First, how will the changing climate impact our ability to serve our customers? We consider things like changing weather conditions, extreme events, increased temperatures leading to increased water use, changes to habitat on our watershed, wildfire risk, etc.”

“Second, we evaluate climate change of what can we do as a utility to reduce the impacts of climate change,” he said. “For EBMUD this means finding ways to reduce our energy consumption and use green alternatives when we must use power. Our EBMUD Board has established the most aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goal for a water utility that we know of in the nation – to have net zero carbon emission for our water utility by 2030.”

Water experts are frequently asked why California doesn’t build more reservoirs to catch all that fresh water headed out to the Pacific during good years.

“The age of building new on-stream dams is generally behind us,” Tognolini said. “On-stream reservoirs can cause harm to habitat for many species and specifically migrating fish like salmon. That is not to say there will not be any new dams. The focus is on enlarging existing dams, where practical, or building off-stream dams that don’t block major rivers or utilizing underground storage.”

Storage facility expansion is already underway in a couple Bay Area locations.

“Under Proposition 1, the state is providing significant funding to promote a number of new storage facilities,” Tognolini said. “There are two proposed in the Bay Area: Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County and Pacheco Reservoir in Santa Clara County.”

“EBMUD has prepared a draft Urban Water Management Plan this year that considers what our water supply portfolio may look like in 30 years,” Tognolini said. “We try to create a diverse set of supply sources to be more resilient to future drought.”

California water districts must think outside the box. Wastewater recycling for non-drinking purposes has been in play at EBMUD for decades. “We can recycle 9 million gallons per day for industrial and irrigation use, and our plan is to double that to 20 million gallons per day by 2040,” Tognolini said.

How about desalinating some of that endless sea water off our coast?

“Desalination is an option that is considered by many water utilities and the largest seawater desalination project in the state is in Southern California,” Tognolini said. “There are also local projects that desalinate salty groundwater or wastewater for use. EBMUD does not currently desalinate water, and while it is on the list of possible long term future projects, it does have some drawbacks compared to other alternatives like high energy use – potential high cost and carbon emissions- and brine disposal.”

Even while we send water hundreds of miles south to Los Angeles, our neighbors to the north rarely have water supply issues. Why not get some from them?

“This idea and similar ideas have been evaluated and considered in the past,” Tognolini said. “The infrastructure and energy costs would be massive. So far, nothing has made sense financially. Also, we would have to have an agreement from other states to sell us their water – probably not an easy issue to resolve.”

The good news is that Californians are used to droughts and reservoirs were mostly full before the last rainy season began.

“EBMUD customers did an outstanding job responding to water conservation messages during the last drought,” said Andrew Lee, the district’s head of customer service. “EBMUD customers used 24 percent less water in 2015 as compared to 2013, at the beginning of the last drought. Since then, EBMUD customers continued conserving water and are using 13 percent less water in 2020 compared to 2013.”