Climate Change: What it means for California's water

Appeared in the Good Times Newsweekly

January 31, 2008

by John Laird

The summer before last, my partner and I were in Canada at the Columbia Icefields. We stood at a marker representing where the tip of a glacier there was in the 1800s. We looked across a rocky valley for a few miles to see where the tip of the same glacier is now.

A lot has been written about California’s AB 32, which we passed in 2006 to control greenhouse gas emission in this state. But much less has been written about what California must do to deal with the impacts of climate change—even if we and the countries of the world are successful in slowing or stopping the level of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere.

There are many impacts that we should be talking about, but one in particular should be of concern to every Californian—our ability to have reliable, safe drinking water. A second impact—sea level rise—plays a real role in our ability to deal with the first.

In 2002, I was named chair of an Assembly select committee on California Water Needs and Climate Change. At the core of that Committee’s work was the fact that while we might not have melting glaciers in California, more than 65 percent of all Californians get their water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta—and the health of the Delta is directly related to the amount of snow that melts into the rivers that flow through it.

From a hearing of that committee emerged startling statistics about the projected change in the Sierra snowpack over the next 100 years. In 30 years, the snowpack would be 95 percent of what it is now. In 60 years, it would be 64 percent of what it is now. By the end of the century, it would be 48 percent of what it is now.

And it’s not just that two-thirds of Californians get their water through the Delta—a Delta that depends on the Sierra snowpack—but California is expected to grow by 10 million more people in the next few decades.

The impact of sea level rise—estimated to be three feet in the next 100 years—is usually viewed in terms of the impact on coastal communities. But a real concern is the impact on the Delta. As farming increased in the Delta in the last century, levees around Delta “islands” did not call much attention to the fact that those “islands” were sinking more and more below sea level. Some are already as much as 25 feet below sea level, even before the sea level rises over the next century.

With a major earthquake, or just through a mix of sea level rise and levee failure, there is a likelihood that 100 years from now the Delta area will be one large inland lake. Given the tidal push from the San Francisco Bay, it is also a probability that this will be an inland body of water with a high salinity content. That scenario completely upends the current water system.

Last year the governor called the legislature into a special session on water issues. The driving force was the Delta, where a federal judge has taken jurisdiction over water exports. Yet the fight over non-Delta dams and their high cost at the time of a budget shortfall derailed any final action.

That might have been a good thing, as it allows us to go back to the drawing board and craft a water future that decentralizes from transfers through the Delta, provides short-term and long-term fixes for the future of the Delta, and channels some state resources to the cheaper, more environmentally sound alternatives of conservation, recycling and reclamation.

If we are to accommodate additional growth in California, protect our current system and try to provide enough water for all Californians, we are going to have to have policy changes that match the ever-changing climate. Even if we are successful in global efforts to stem greenhouse gas emissions, we will have to plan for some changes. In California, how we provide water is at the top of the list.