Download: Estuary News, October 2013 PDF
Civil engineer Steve Moore served on the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board from 2008 to 2012 and was appointed to the State Water Resources Control Board by Governor Jerry Brown in May 2012. Moore is also a member of the Estuary News editorial board and a valued source on water issues. We asked Moore to reflect on how the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan may have changed the State Board’s philosophy and practice. Moore’s statements do not represent opinions of the other State Board members nor the Brown administration.
Q: How has the State Water Board’s institutional culture evolved over the past 20 years? Was it influenced by the CCMP?
A: The CCMP goals revolved a lot around restoration of various functions—habitat, hydrology – and around pollution prevention. Those concepts in the early 90s weren’t central to State Board operations, which were more concerned with water rights and transfers. Water quality was left more to the Regional Boards and their Basin Plans. Today, I think the State Board is more active in terms of the CCMP goals, and more engaged with issues of regional importance that have statewide applications, than it was 20 years ago. For example, these days the State Board coordinates more closely with the Regional Boards on issues of statewide concern, such as stormwater permits. This year’s Phase 2 General Permit touches on every region, for instance addressing statewide minimum requirements for design of urban drainage to prevent stormwater pollution. In terms of the Board’s culture, we’ve shifted to more engagement with the Regional Boards and to strengthening their effectiveness. So the CCMP’s restoration and pollution prevention goals are more aligned with what the State Board does today. There’s an ownership of that role. We’re careful to emphasize that we want to empower Regional Boards and stakeholders to tailor the statewide programs to their regions because of the natural and hydrologic variability. There has to be a different approach to how you manage these issues in Eureka, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tahoe. Another change I’ve seen is how we’ve become more sophisticated, collectively over the last 20 years, in how we measure whether our water quality standards [have resulted in] environmental improvements.
In hindsight, you might say there was an awakening in California’s consciousness, and that the State Board was part of that trend, as was the CCMP. Since then there have been various decisions around the state that recognize that water isn’t just for agricultural and municipal use, it’s also for ecosystem use. The CCMP was, and still is, a credible, collaborative articulation within the whole dialogue of the decisions California makes on where water is directed and how it’s used. We’ve modified the water system so profoundly that when we seek to restore ecosystem function it requires many organizations, institutions, and people working together to manage this modified system. I think we need to embrace a more holistic picture of water resource use — not just delivering water to cities and farms — to create a more sustainable California. The decision the State Board made in Mono Lake in 1994 offers an example of this kind of holistic view. We’ve also made smaller decisions around groundwater basins—not as landmark as Mono Lake, but still more holistic. Sometimes just proposing these kinds of environmental resource protection decisions provokes action. In 1995, on the Carmel River, the Board issued a decision that wells in the alluvial plain were dewatering the river. The Board put California-American Water Company and various cities on notice that their diversions exceeded the legal water requirement, which resulted in the integration of ecosystem water needs with ongoing water supply planning around the Monterey peninsula.
Q. Is Board action helping Bay-Delta Planning be more holistic?
A. In the Bay-Delta, the holistic approach is happening in fits and starts. The 2006 Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan upheld the 1995 structure of state objectives. But this is under revision right now, spurred on by the Delta Reform Act of 2009 and the establishment of the co-equal goals of water supply reliability and Delta ecosystem protection, looking at Delta flow and tributary flow requirements. A Substitute Environmental Document, the functional equivalent of an EIR, on San Joaquin River flows and South Delta salinity requirements has been drafted and received extensive comments, and will be revised and re-noticed early 2014. That process is ongoing. It continues the state’s effort to balance environmental resource protection goals with agricultural and municipal water use goals.
Q: How is climate change, including the prospect of increased water scarcity, affecting the State Board’s role?
A: Climate change is a catalyst for creativity in terms of water supplies, and for integrating water resource [management] across different disciplines and program areas. Climate change needs to be addressed to create resiliency in human and natural systems, and integrated water management will better provide for multiple benefit outcomes that will help us adapt to climate change. Generally in the 20th century, issues of water supply, flood control, water quality, stormwater drainage, groundwater recharge, and fish and wildlife, evolved separately, with separate infrastructure. Going forward, we’ll have to manage water in a more integrated fashion, and the State Board is trying to do its part. It’s bigger than any one person or agency. Perhaps it’s helpful to frame it this way: In the 20th century model, we managed challenges as they arose, as floods challenged our homes or as sewage compromised clean water, for example. Moving forward in the 21st century, with climate change, population increase, and infrastructure decay all staring us down, we have to rethink how we manage water in terms of the built environment and such fragmented governance. The Integrated Regional Water Management legislation in 2002 happened at a symbolic time—right at the turn of the century. It tried to protect the environment and create better water use efficiency by providing funding for disparate management agencies to get together and collectively prioritize their expenditures. The CCMP was part of that shift—putting a really cogent vision together on what it would take to have both sustainability and water resource protection. If you look at different agency mission statements, it’s interesting to compare mission statements in the 70s and now. The Kings River Conservation District’s mission statement, for example, now looks a lot like the State Board’s mission statement. They recognize a broader array of water resource outcomes in their goals and objectives. EBMUD and many others are also embracing a broader statement of objectives. Mission statements set the tone for institutions, and broader missions will result in more balanced, sustainable water resources management. I think it’s a natural evolution. Knowledge and integration empower us to enact institutional change.
Interview by Joe Eaton.
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.