Anyone wanting to take a crack at solving the state’s water supply woes can give it a try on the just-launched California Water Challenge website. The online simulation tool lets users pick from assorted water-saving and water-development options to meet California demands. Water is a hot topic during this third year of drought. The challenge attempts to demonstrate how tricky – and expensive – it can be to find enough water to meet everyone’s needs. By 2030, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates California will have an unmet water demand of almost 4.9 million acre-feet during average years and more than 6 million acre-feet during droughts. One acre-foot of water is about as much as a four-member family uses in a year. But it’s not just people who need water: Agriculture currently uses most of California’s developed supply. The California Water Challenge was designed by a group called Next 10, which describes itself as being nonprofit and nonpartisan. “In many regions across California, long-term water demands may go unmet unless we take action,” said F. Noel Perry, Next 10’s founder. “We all have a stake in figuring out how to conserve, recycle or produce more of one of our most precious natural resources.” Some of the challenge’s proposed options for saving water may not be popular with farmers. Among the ideas is to “reduce demand by funding the retirement of irrigated farmland in the San Joaquin Valley that has been identified as either currently having or potentially having drainage problems.” That option purportedly would cost California taxpayers $630 million per year to cover the cost of the state purchasing approximately 600,000 acres. The proposal would be for the government to pay “fair market prices” for that land, and then permanently stop irrigating it “thus freeing up the water” for use elsewhere.
Other agriculture-oriented options offered in the challenge are “irrigation efficiency improvements” and the promotion of “alternative irrigation practices.”
Building more reservoirs to store water also is one of the options.
Some new methods for boosting the state’s water supply are included, like building 17 seawater desalination plants along the coast, filling giant bags of water in Washington and hauling them by tugboat to California, and installing 1,000 “dewvaporators” to process brackish water.
Urban initiatives are offered as options, too, including raising residential water rates by an average of 20 percent and offering rebates to people who install things like highly efficient toilets, shower heads and clothes washers. Plugging leaks, recycling wastewater and recovering stormwater runoff also are choices.
If every option is taken, California would have more than enough water to meet its needs, along with $4.2 billion in extra costs every year.
Those taking the challenge are told how much water each option provides and at what cost, so they can attempt to strike a balance. Additional background information about each option also is offered.
An opinion poll on controversial water topics – like groundwater management, the water bond on November’s ballot and the Bay Delta Plan to transport water around the state – is included.
Find the challenge at www.cawaterchallenge.org.