For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “Amazing…Population Growth in California Has Stalled”
DEMOGRAPHICS
LAWMAKING 101
WATER
- Newsom Orders Water Management “Resilience Portfolio”
- Following Governor’s Lead, DWR Cancels Delta Tunnels for Down-Sizing
- Snowpack Surveyors Report Better-Than-Average Water Supply
- Eyes in Space Measure Water – Snow Joke!
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
Stay current daily! For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING MAY 3, 2019
California Population Growth Slowest in State History
California’s 2018 population growth was the slowest in state history, new demographic data show — underscoring shifting immigration patterns, declining birthrates and economic strains that are making it harder for some to afford living here.
The state added 186,807 residents last year, bringing the estimated total population to 39,927,315 as of Jan. 1, according to estimates released by the state Department of Finance on Wednesday. The overall growth rate slipped to 0.47% last year from 0.78% in 2017, the slowest since data collection started in 1900, department spokesman H.D. Palmer said.
Births in the state were down by more than 18,000 compared with the previous year.
Ethan Sharygin, a demographer with the state, said researchers had expected to find a decline in the birthrate but were surprised to see such a large change. One reason for the shift, he said, is the decline in immigrants from Mexico paired with an increase in Asian immigrants.
“The overall profile of immigrants to California is higher education, which correlates to lower fertility,” he said. “With native-born, we see a long-running trend throughout the U.S where fertility has been trending downward.”
Perhaps the biggest force behind the change is higher education rates among women, Sharygin added. That broader trend historically has been masked by high immigration from Latin America, but that is no longer the case.
“More education of women translates into later marriage, later childbirth and then fewer children,” he said.
Dowell Myers, professor of demography and urban planning at USC, said the slow growth also was due to a lack of housing. A report this year by a public policy think tank found that California’s housing supply law hadn’t triggered enough new home building to meet demand.
Myers said the housing crunch makes it harder for younger residents to lay down roots and have children. That is especially concerning as California’s senior population continues to grow at a fast pace. The state faces numerous budget and policy concerns as those older than 65 make up a larger and larger share of the population.
Costs will rise for programs like Medi-Cal, the state-subsidized healthcare system for the poor that provides long-term services and support, including in-home aides and skilled nursing facilities. Local governments and school districts also will have to cope with the rising number of retired workers drawing pensions.
“Old people are holding in place, but we are losing the younger generation. We are losing potential parents,” Myers said. “It is a slow-moving train wreck here.
“Growth in California has stalled out,” he added. “That is pretty amazing.”
Officials noted last May that California’s population had grown by an average of 333,000 people a year since 2010.
Los Angeles County, still the largest in the state, saw population growth fall to 0% last year, state officials said this week. The number of residents dropped from 10,254,658 to 10,253,716 by the end of 2018. This is the first time since 2010 that the population dropped in the county, officials said.
High immigration rates also previously had masked another trend: Californians moving away.
About 5 million people moved here from other states from 2007 to 2016, while about 6 million left California, according to data from the American Community Survey.
In 2015, California saw a net gain of some 177,000 immigrants moving to the state and 105,000 residents leaving, according to data from the Finance Department. Between July 2017 and July 2018, however, out-migration surged to about 160,000 people.
“We want to see who is moving — whether it’s the case that more families are moving out, whether it’s highly educated workers moving in,” Sharygin said.
Part of the birthrate drop is also economically driven, said William Frey, author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America.”
“Because of the recession and post-recession, people are less apt to be having kids,” Frey said.
Sacramento had the largest percentage gain in population among California’s 10 biggest cities, with 1.49% growth — or 7,400 new residents. Bakersfield grew by 1.1%, while Los Angeles grew by only 0.04%.
California added a net 77,000 completed housing units in 2018, compared with 85,297 units added in 2017 and 89,457 in 2016.
Total housing in the state reached 14.235 million units, a 0.6% increase, according to the Department of Finance. Los Angeles added the most housing units in 2018, with 16,525, while San Diego followed with 4,505 and Irvine came in third with 3,384. Santa Clarita and Sacramento rounded out the top five with 2,486 and 2,353 new units, respectively.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged that 3.5 million new homes will be built in California by 2025, but Myers noted the state is not on track to meet that goal.
“It is impossible,” he said.
A report from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs this year said the state does not have enough land zoned to meet that goal.
A series of deadly wildfires last year also brought drastic demographic changes to some small cities in Northern California, according to the new population estimates.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-population-growth-20190501-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter
State population growth report:
http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Demographics/Estimates/e-1/documents/E-1_2019PressRelease.pdf
California…the New Florida? Population Grays
As the last of the baby boom generation enters the golden years of their California dream, seniors are the state’s fastest-growing age group, far outpacing growth in children or working-age adults.
According to state projections, by 2030 more than 9 million Californians will be over the age of 65, 3 million more than there are today. Within a decade, more than 20% of the state’s residents will be seniors — a higher proportion than currently resides in Florida, a state famous for its large population of snowbird retirees.
“I think we’re looking at something that’s kind of a new experience for California,” said Ethan Sharygin, a demographer with the California Department of Finance. “We have a really large cohort of the baby boom generation living in this state, and they’re healthier than the generation before was at that age.”
California’s impending “silver tsunami” is bound to impact nearly all walks of life, from health care to transportation to housing. Here’s what you need to know about our senior population — who they are, where they live, and what they mean for the future of life in California.
In comparison to other parts of the country, Californians are still pretty young. The statewide median age in 2017 ticked up to just over 36, according to the U.S. Census. That makes California one of the 10 youngest states in the country. By comparison, Florida’s median age is 42.
But the state’s sheer size means California’s senior population is massive. Nearly 6 million Californians are over the age of 65 — that’s more senior citizens than the entire population of Oregon. If Californians over the age of 80 formed their own state — call it Greater Palm Springs — its population would warrant more congressional representatives than Delaware has now.
While California’s senior population is large now, just wait a couple decades.
“The senior population here is growing by an order of magnitude faster than any other age group,” said Sharygin. “None of the other groups are having double-digit growth like they are.”
While California’s working-age population is projected to grow by about 6% by the mid-2030s, California’s 65-plus population will grow by more than 65%. Over the same time period, the number of Californians younger than 18 is actually expected to dip slightly.
Percentages represent an age group’s portion of the total California population. Source: California Department of Finance.
When U.S. veterans returned from World War II and began the procreation frenzy known as the baby boom, California was one of their favorite destinations to raise kids. Born between 1945 and the early 1960s, the youngest members of this generation are now entering retirement age while the oldest are already in their 70s.
While aging boomers are by no means a uniquely California phenomenon, people in their 50s and 60s here tend to be healthier and have longer life expectancies than in other parts of the country, according to Sharygin.
Despite increases in living costs, baby boomers don’t seem to be leaving California in the numbers you might expect. While some are fleeing to more affordable places like Nevada and Arizona, the vast majority are spending their golden years in the Golden State.
“The data we have don’t show that the 65-plus population moving out of state is a very important phenomenon,” said Sharygin.
According to an analysis of 2017 census data, on net, California lost about 20,000 seniors to other states — less than 1% of its total senior population.
Nearly 60% of California seniors are white. But the state’s over 65 population is far more diverse than it used to be. In a decade, no ethnic group is projected to comprise a majority of California seniors.
“The long history of our state is that the senior population has been the least diverse, and of course, that reflects population changes from decades ago,” said Hans Johnson, research fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “But we’re due to see major growth in Latino and Asian seniors that will shake things a little.”
Source: 2017 American Community Survey, Public Policy Institute of California
Thirty-four percent of California seniors are foreign-born — older Californians are actually more likely to be immigrants than younger Californians. In places such as Los Angeles County and San Francisco, more than 30% of residents over age 60 have limited English proficiency, according to data compiled for the California State Plan on Aging.
Along with the surge in non-white seniors, the state can expect a major bump in the ranks of the elderly without family to help them.
“Baby boomers had much lower birth rates than their parents, and they are more likely to never have kids at all,” said Johnson. “If you don’t have children or you only have one child, the burden of providing that care is larger.”
While the most common living arrangement for seniors is still to cohabitate with a spouse, about 36% of women and 20% of men over 65 currently live alone, according to Census data.
Assisted living facilities — housing communities that can provide daily living assistance to seniors outside of a medical setting — are pretty popular in California. But only 2% of California seniors live in nursing homes — facilities in a medical setting.
Source: Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Note: Living with other family indicates no spouse present. Living with nonfamily indicates no spouse or other relatives present.
Geographically, the senior population in California is roughly distributed the same way as the rest of the state — two-thirds live in major coastal population centers like the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
But over the next few decades, the largest increases are expected to come in Central Valley and Inland Empire counties like Sacramento and San Bernardino, according to the state Department of Finance.
Almost 4.3 million seniors are licensed to drive on California roads, with well over 1 million aged 75 or older, according to data compiled by the Federal Highway Administration. Three of every four California seniors has a driver’s .
The typical California senior has an income of about $25,000 per year, according to data from the American Community Survey. That’s about $10,000 less than your average working-age Californian.
That obviously isn’t much, especially in a state as expensive as California. About 30% of seniors don’t have enough income to cover basic needs.
Where is that income coming from? Most commonly, Social Security. Two out of every three California seniors get a majority of their income from the federal retirement program, according to a UC Berkeley study. Less than half of senior-headed households get retirement income from a pension, 401k or IRA. About 20% of Californians over 65 are still in the labor force.
The good news is that more than 70% of Californians over the age of 60 are homeowners, according to U.S. Census data. Those seniors are typically faring far better economically than older California renters. One UCLA study found that more than half of low-income senior renters spent more than 50% of their income on rent.
“The biggest advantage [for senior homeowners] is having stable rent, especially if their house is paid off,” said Steven Wallace, associate director for health policy research at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Wallace adds that Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that capped property taxes, enables many California seniors to age in place more easily.
According to estimates from the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office, Californians turning 65 right now can expect to spend about 20% of their remaining years with a major disability — something that interferes with a basic activity like eating, dressing or going to the bathroom.
Women will spend more years with major physical limitations, simply because they are more likely to live into their 80s and 90s. The number of California seniors who have difficulty caring for themselves will double to more than 1 million by 2030, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
The state is already starting to see the consequences of an aging population living outside institutionalized care. According to data from the state’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the number of visits to California emergency rooms by seniors from falling accidents increased almost 40% from 2010 to 2015.
State-funded in-home supportive services for the elderly and disabled now cost about $4 billion per year, and are expected to grow 11% annually — making the program one of the fastest-growing and costliest in the state, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“The easy answer is no, California is not prepared,” said Nancy McPherson, head of the California chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons. “But there is hope for California becoming more prepared with the new administration.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a “Master Plan on Aging” to prepare the state for the demographic challenges ahead. The state’s current patchwork of programs to provide senior services — especially long term health care — is routinely criticized as underfunded, fragmented and difficult to navigate.
“I’m hopeful,” said McPherson.”You can’t really solve or reduce any problem until you acknowledge that there is one. And that’s what you see now.”
Legislative Committee Chairs Rule With An Invisible Hand
Under a rule the California Assembly put in place at the start of the current session, committee chairs can decide whether to bring a bill assigned to their committee up for consideration. As key deadlines came and went this month for bills to move out of committee, chairs used the new power to quash bills by just not scheduling them for a public hearing.
No hearing, no debate, no vote.
Democrats—who hold all the chairmanships because of their party’s mega-majority in the Legislature—flexed their muscle not only to bury GOP legislation, but also to silently sideline bills by fellow Democrats that might be embarrassing to publicly vote down.
Among the victims: Democratic legislation to alter the formula for funding public schools to devote more money to low-achieving students (a complex plan that stresses racial inequities); a bill to develop a strategy to phase out sales of gas-powered cars in favor of cleaner vehicles (guaranteed to create conflicts for Democrats whose constituents work in the oil industry); and a potentially divisive proposal requiring that gun owners lock up their weapons when they leave home.
“I was very frustrated,” said Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, a Democrat from Glendale whose bill on gun storage was shelved without a hearing.
“The committee is there to discuss areas of policy. If the chair has concerns about the policy, it’s my opinion that having it discussed in committee is the right approach.”
It’s the latest sign that Democrats’ growing majority in Sacramento doesn’t necessarily mean more unity. Democrats now hold about three-quarters of the Legislature’s seats—a margin that gives the party the potential for great power, but also makes it vulnerable to fracture under the weight of its ideological, geographic and socio-economic diversity.
Refusing to set a hearing for a bill isn’t the only way Dems are quietly killing Democratic legislation. Several progressive bills stalled this month because their authors knew they would fail in committee and so opted not to bring them up for a vote. They included measures to expand rent control, broaden data privacy protections and ban super-sized servings of soda.
But lawmakers have long had the face-saving authority to pull their own bill if they could tell it wasn’t going to pass. The change this year is in the Assembly, where members are grappling with the committee chairs’ new authority to not hear a bill. (The state Senate did not enact a similar rule change this year. Its custom has been to let chairs decide whether to set hearings.)
The lower house adopted new rules when the legislative session began, explicitly giving committee chairs the power to choose whether to hear legislation. Previously, committees generally heard all bills if the author wanted them heard, and it was unusual for a chair not to extend that courtesy.
The Assembly’s move to clarify that chairs can decide whether to set a hearing is in keeping with Speaker Anthony Rendon’s long-stated philosophy that committee chairs should have more power.
Assembly Republicans quickly jumped on the change as something that could doom their bills, and voted against the rule.
“Chairmen under these new rules would have the power to essentially kill a bill by denying it a hearing,” GOP Assemblyman Jay Obernolte said in December as the Assembly voted on the new rules. “And they would be able to do this… without a vote of the members of that committee and without any testimony from the public. That is a violation not only of the longstanding practice of this chamber, but also of the principles of democracy itself.”
Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who chairs the public safety committee that held Friedman’s gun storage bill, said that by not hearing it he’s giving supporters more time to resolve problems and bring it back next year. He wouldn’t say why he objected to the gun storage policy, though his committee’s analysis says it could conflict with local ordinances.
“I want to see if we can come together and make the bill much better so it’s not a contentious bill and we can get it through,” Jones-Sawyer said. “I’m trying to make sure the committee as a whole doesn’t kill the bill.”
Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber said that in her more than six years in the Legislature—during which she’s carried plenty of controversial legislation—this month was the first time a committee chair has refused to hear one of her bills. Her legislation to change the formula for funding public schools so that more money would be devoted to student groups that post the lowest test scores was one of several measures related to the funding formula that were not heard in the education committee.
“Generally even if the chair opposes a bill they will set the bill for a hearing, and then people can vote it up or down,” Weber said.
The new way, she said, amounts to “a one-person decision.”
It’s striking a nerve across the political spectrum, from a Sierra Club lobbyist who’s angry that a clean-cars bill wasn’t heard, to a conservative Republican who’s fuming because her campus free-speech bill—making it harder for colleges to restrict who can speak at campus events—wasn’t brought up for a vote.
“When you don’t allow that bill to be heard then you don’t even have the discussion,” said GOP Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez. “The opportunity for a healthy debate is taken away.”
Governor Orders Water Management “Resilience Portfolio”
Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered key state agencies to develop a blueprint for meeting California’s 21st-century water needs in the face of climate change.
The executive order includes few details and doesn’t appear to set a dramatic new water course for the state.
Rather, it reaffirms Newsom’s intentions to downsize the controversial twin tunnels project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, use voluntary agreements to meet new river flow requirements and provide clean drinking water to impoverished communities.
The directive calls for the Natural Resources Agency, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Food and Agriculture to assess water demands and the impacts of climate change on California’s far-flung water system.
The agencies will “identify what priorities and actions we take in this governor’s term to strengthen resilience in our water systems throughout the next century,” natural resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said.
The order says the plan should include innovation and new technologies, use “natural infrastructure” such as flood plains and encourage regional approaches.
Newsom announced in his February State of the State address that he planned to pare Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin tunnel project down to a single tunnel.
The order mentions a single water tunnel but says nothing about the size, financing or permitting of the smaller project, which would partially reconfigure the way Northern California supplies are shipped south through the delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
The impact of climate change on California water is not simple. The latest models suggest precipitation in Northern California — the source of most of the state’s supplies — will increase. But rising temperatures mean more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, reducing the natural reservoir of mountain snow pack that the state relies on.
Warmer temperatures will also worsen drought impacts.
“The way that California has thought about and dealt with water in the last 100 years has not been integrated,” said environmental protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld.
He added: “How do we think about water reuse, water capture, water recycling in a way that we can set long-term, bold targets that bridge the gap between what we know is an uncertain water future with climate change and a growing population in the state?”
Governor’s media release:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/04/29/water-resilience-portfolio-for-california/
Executive Order:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/4.29.19-EO-N-10-19-Attested.pdf
Natural Resources Agency fact sheet:
CDFA media release:
https://plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov/wordpress/?p=17743
Following Governor’s Lead, DWR Cancels Delta Tunnels for Down-Sizing
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration officially pulled the plug Thursday on the twin Delta tunnels, fullfilling Newsom’s pledge to downsize the project to a single pipe as he attempts to chart a new course for California’s troubled water-delivery system.
The Department of Water Resources halted the planning on the twin tunnels by withdrawing its application to a sister agency, the State Water Resources Control Board, for permission to build the massive project from a starting point on the Sacramento River near Courtland. The state also scrapped documents declaring that the twin tunnels plan — designed to smooth water deliveries to the southern half of the state — complied with California’s environmental laws.
In the short run, the decision means more delays for a project that’s been on the drawing board for more than a decade. Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, said it could take up to three years to rework the environmental documents and other permits needed to build a single tunnel beneath the Delta. But by downsizing and simplifying the project, she said the state hopes it can speed up the “overall delivery schedule” for the project.
Nemeth said the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the state’s partner in the Delta project, is also withdrawing its applications and environmental permits.
Officials said they will soon file a new application, as well as new environmental reviews, to support their plan for a single tunnel.
Downsizing the project is in line with Newsom’s effort to push a more centrist approach on water issues than his predecessor, Jerry Brown, who once told tunnels opponents to “shut up.” Earlier this week Newsom signed an executive order directing Natural Resources and other agencies to develop a comprehensive “water resilience portfolio” in an effort to unite warring factions like environmentalists and farmers.
Besides costing billions of dollars less than the original, Nemeth said a downsized project could be “more responsive to the naysayers” who believe WaterFix, as it’s officially known, will harm the Delta instead of helping it. A single tunnel will bring fewer environmental impacts to the Delta, and “that’s a good place to be,” she said.
Shortly after the announcement, the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the environmental groups suing to block the project, said a single tunnel “that takes less water from the Delta” is worth considering.
But Nemeth acknowledged, “I don’t expect that all parties will be supportive,” and some critics remain skeptical of the smaller proposal.
Dante Nomellini, a Stockton attorney who represents the Central Delta Water Agency, said farmers and others he represents still oppose a single tunnel. Even a downsized project could be used to send copious amounts of Northern California water to powerful south state interests, bringing more harm to the estuary, he said.
“And the disruption to our area for 10 or 15 years with tunnel construction going right through the middle of important habitat in the Delta, it’s just terrible for us,” Nomellini said.
Downsizing would save about $5 billion, bringing project costs down to around $11 billion. South state water agencies that rely on shipments from the Delta will foot the bill.
Jeff Kightlinger of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — which was one of the key backers for the original twin tunnels proposal and has pledged to contribute billions to the project — endorsed Newsom’s decision.
“We will work with the administration to expeditiously advance a project that is long overdue to both meet the water reliability needs of the state and minimize impacts to the communities and ecology of the Delta,” he said in a prepared statement.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the hub of the state’s water network. Giant pumps at the south end of the estuary, near Tracy, deliver supplies from Northern California to irrigation districts and municipalities that belong to the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Around 25 million Southern Californians and Bay Area residents receive imported water from the Delta. The pumps supply water to 3 million acres of farmland.
Scientists say decades of pumping is a key reason for the decline in the Delta’s ecosystem and its imperiled fish species, including the critically endangered Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon.
The pumps are so strong that they sometimes reverse river flows within the Delta and push migrating fish toward predators or the pumps themselves. As a result, often the pumps have to be throttled back, allowing the river water to follow its natural course to the ocean — to the frustration of the south state water agencies counting on the deliveries.
The Delta project — one tunnel or two — has been touted as a way of correcting the problem. By routing a portion of the Sacramento River’s flow underground and delivering it directly to the pumps, the state’s engineers say the “reverse flow” issue would be eased, enabling the pumps to operate more reliably while doing less harm to the fish.
The original twin tunnels proposal has been enormously controversial, though.
Environmentalists, salmon fishing groups and Delta farmers said the project, by diverting a portion of the Sacramento River, would harm native fish and leave the estuary too salty for agriculture; they also branded it a south-state “water grab.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article229949089.html?#storylink=cpy
DWR documents:
https://water.ca.gov/deltaconveyance
Snowpack Surveyors Report Better-Than-Average Water Supply
Four months ago, surveyors with the California Department of Water Resources probed the frozen ground in a field in the Sierra Nevada, calculating the first snowpack of the year, an important measurement of the state’s water supply.
On Thursday, they returned for the season’s final tally — one not typically recorded in May because there often isn’t any snow left that late in the year — and were pleased with the results.
Although the measurement was a big decline from the previous month, and one that was expected, it was still better than usual for this time of year: 188% of average for the day.
The DWR’s monthly snowpack surveys typically attract hordes of reporters and photographers, but the latest one occurred without the usual entourage. The measurement has taken place for decades outside a cabin known as Phillips Station that sits at 6,820 feet elevation near Echo Summit. But the wooden structure was destroyed in a fire last month, so the state agency opted not to invite the media to the site out of respect for the cabin’s owner, said Chris Orrock, spokesman for the Department of Water Resources.
Instead, a team of water experts and surveyors hiked to their usual spot and made their marks alone. The snowpack measured 47 inches, with 27.5 inches of snow-water content, Orrock said.
This season’s snowfall has been frequent and steady, which experts think will help sustain the state’s reservoirs for longer than usual. The April 1 measurement, which is typically the largest and is used by the state to make decisions about water supplies, measured 106.5 inches and 51 inches of snow-water content.
That snowpack measurement was slightly smaller than the month before because there was a brief period of warmer weather that melted some snow, but the snow-water content measurement was still the fourth-best on record.
The snowpack is tested in May only when there’s enough snow to measure. The last time that happened was in 2017, and in 2011 before that, Orrock said.
A series of atmospheric river storms during the winter made for above-average snow levels that doubled several times, full reservoirs and streams, and even left California drought-free for the first time in nearly a decade.
While 2017 was a banner year for precipitation in California, most of the rain that fell on the state was the result of warm atmospheric rivers, which created conditions that caused the snowpack to melt quickly during the spring season.
The atmospheric river storms the state experienced this year were often coupled with a cold front, which lowered temperatures and likely will keep the snowpack intact longer, Orrock said.
“It’s a very dense and cold snowpack,” he said. “An icy crust on the surface of it helps maintain the snowpack.”
He added that experts expect the snow to melt slowly, replenishing reservoirs all the way through August.
Eyes in Space Measure Water Supply – Snow Joke!
To better measure the water in our snow, California is sending sharper eyes up into the sky.
Two sensors peer out from a turboprop Beechcraft Air King 90, soaring from Mammoth Yosemite Airport over the white Sierra Nevada – collecting data that tells us almost exactly how much water we’ll have this summer.
Last week’s findings: 1.1 million acre-feet, or 350 billion gallons of water in the mountain snow of Yosemite’s Tuolumne River basin, which flows into Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and provides water to major Central Valley irrigation districts, San Francisco and several other Bay Area communities.
That’s more than 2.5 times the amount as the same time last year, and nearly as much as the record-breaking snow year of 2017. Because our winter was cold, its pattern of distribution is different than in recent years, with more snow at lower elevations and less snow at higher elevations. And there’s been less melting than expected, because recent flurries have kept snow so fresh and bright that it reflects sunlight.
That’s critical information for water managers, because they need to make room in reservoirs — and keep promises to farms and cities, who rely on the steady supply of water to irrigate our farms and fill our faucets.
“The later this big snowpack waits into the spring, the more powerful the likely snowmelt will be,” boosting risk of flooding, said Tom Painter, principal investigator of the Airborne Snow Observatory, designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
With the Snow Observatory’s aerial survey, “we can understand the magnitude and timing of snowmelt runoff,” he said. “Without this information, there’s a lot of guessing going on. Huge mistakes can be made.”
The survey, which began in 2013, currently covers the central Sierra, from Yosemite to Sequoia National Park, including the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, and Kings River basins. It depends on support from a coalition of local and regional water agencies, plus state funds from 2014’s Proposition 1, which authorized $7 billion in water infrastructure projects, because federal support has ceased
But a $150 million funding package now under consideration in Sacramento could expand the project, supporting flights over the entire Sierra Nevada as well as the Trinity Alps.
Once a month in the winter and every two weeks during spring’s snowmelt, a pilot climbs into the aircraft and crests the eastern Sierra, climbing 20,000 feet in the air.
Like a lawnmower, the plane travels in long and perfectly straight lines, using GPS to traverse the sky.
“The pilot sees the flight line on a screen right in front of him, like a video game,’ said Painter.
Two tools are pointed through glass in the plane’s belly.
One is Lidar, which shoots 400,000 pulses per second of laser light towards the snow. It compares this to measurements taken in the summer. And the difference between those two is snow depth.
The other is a spectrometer, which measures reflectivity, a sign of how quickly the snow will melt and reach downstream reservoirs.
Scientists combine this data with ground-based measurements and modeling to calculate water content.
For decades, more traditional tools have helped us calibrate the water levels in our major reservoirs to meet the needs of the economy, environment and public safety.
On Thursday, in an anxiously watched rite of spring, surveyors will make their final trek this season to Phillips Station to plunge aluminum tubes into the snow, sampling for water content.
The state also reports daily snowpack data from more than 90 remote electronic sensors, called “snow pillows,” that weigh the snow atop them. The April 1 measurement — considered the most important for predicting summer water supply — showed California’s snowpack at 161 percent of normal for that date.
But the tubes measure just a cylinder of snow. And the pillows, located on flat spots at middle to lower elevations, don’t measure snow on high steep slopes with wind-blown drifts or avalanches. They can’t differentiate the melting rates of south and north-facing slopes. They cover only about 270 square feet — an infinitesimally small fraction of the vast landscape.
So their tally is just an extrapolation — with a margin of error that ranges from 20 to 40 percent. For a major reservoir, that’s a difference of billions of gallons of water.
In 2017, “our snow sensors were at zero and we still had inflow into the reservoir of 20,000 cubic feet per second,” said Kings River Watermaster Steve Haugen at an Association of California Water Agencies conference in Sacramento last year. “We were flying blind at that point.”
To hedge imperfections in those surveys, water managers have long over or under-estimated water forecasts to avoid flood damage or shorting deliveries.
But as demand increases, this once-acceptable practice is outmoded.
In contrast, the Snow Observatory is capable of measuring depths at several points in every square meter of a watershed. Its tools can see through hazy atmospheres and between trees. It measures avalanche depths and bare ground.
As a result, it is far more accurate, with runoff forecasts that are 96 to 98 percent accurate.
Senate Bill 487, introduced by Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, is now awaiting action by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill would require the department to collect and share the aerial survey data up to 10 times per year in each hydrologic area of the state.
Proponents of the bill say it’s crucial, because as California’s population grows, more people depend on a reliable water supply. At the same time, our warming planet is expected to create “climate whiplash,” with volatile swings between wet and dry years.
With more extremes between dry and wet, accurate water management becomes essential, said Painter.
“Having that understanding of snowpack,” he said, “is really critical to protect our infrastructure, protect our water resources, and in general to stay safe.”