Every five years, most water agencies are required to update their water sustainability plans to show their customers how they will meet the demands for water in the future. The City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) recently released their draft 2020 Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP), which examines water supply reliability for the next 25 years. The draft UWMP shows great progress in water conservation to date and discusses efforts to recycle wastewater, to capture storm water, and more in order to develop local water supplies. LA will start cleaning up the groundwater in the San Fernando Valley this year and then will be able recharge that aquifer and use it to augment overall supply. Average daily consumption has decreased at an impressive rate to 106 gallons per day per person ahead of its goals and will continue to decline. In 2018 California passed two bills (AB1668 and SB606) that set the goal for water consumption to 55 gallons/person/day. If the City can cut its consumption in half, it stands to save even more water above what the plan outlines.
However, according the draft 2020 UWMP, none of the savings from all of the City’s tremendous efforts to live sustainably off of local water supplies will be passed on to the Eastern Sierra. Instead, the savings will reduce the amount of water the City buys from the Metropolitan Water District (MWD). Those monetary savings might be passed on to the rate payers or be used to finance the local infrastructure improvement projects. The plan says water exports coming from the Los Angeles Aqueduct (LAA) will not be reduced in the 25 year planning horizon. The 30-year average exported from the Eastern Sierra from 1992-2020 is 192,000 acre-feet (af). The plan projects decreases of 300-400 af each year to account for the reduction in Sierra run-off due to climate change.
That projection tells us two things: 1) LADWP seems to believe climate change will have a small impact on the total quantity of water available in the Eastern Sierra and 2) the ecosystems of the Eastern Sierra will continue to be stressed. While climate change may affect the form of precipitation--rain, snow, rain on snow, atmospheric rivers, melt-out of glaciers--LADWP is not anticipating a significant reduction overall. That doesn't mean climate change won't impact the Eastern Sierra. More rain on snow events, less snow at lower elevations, flooding, streams drying up mid-summer, warmer streams, higher temperatures, longer summers, longer and more frequent droughts, etc., all will wreak havoc on the vegetation and wildlife here.
Adding to that, LADWP often increases groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley during droughts, putting further stress on a region where the water table is too deep for groundwater-dependent vegetation, springs have dried up, and meadows have converted to shrubs and weeds. The Owens Valley vegetation has yet to recover from the excessive groundwater pumping of the 1970-1990s. Pumping since 1990 has fluctuated between 50,000-100,000 af per year. USGS modeling shows that pumping at 70,000 af may sustain vegetation conditions at 1980s levels, but the modeling assumes pumping is relatively evenly distributed throughout the valley, which is not the case. Calling 70,000 af a sustainable pumping level is a very low bar. It sustains degraded vegetation and dry springs that led to the LADWP/Inyo water agreement and mitigation.
The 2020 UWMP tells us there will be no relief coming and that LADWP will look to take every drop. But it also indicates MWD could supply water in quantities that would negate reliance on the LAA. Obviously, LADWP wants to avoid paying for MWD water, but as Teri Red Owl, Executive Director of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission noted at a recent LADWP Standing Committee meeting, "Owens Valley has paid, and continues to pay, a high price in terms of environmental degradation initiated more than a century ago, so a modest increase in consumer bills is a small price to pay to help restore parts of the Owens Valley."
Public comments on the LA UWMP can be submitted until April 13 via email to uwmp@ladwp.com or by U.S. mail to:
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Attn: Benjamin Wong
111 N. Hope Street, Room 308
Los Angeles, CA 90012