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IN THIS ISSUE – “We’re Sending a Really Strong Market Signal”
POLICY & POLITICS
- Good Times Keep Rolling: Another Historic State Budget Surplus
- Newsom Oil Well Ban Ignites Union v. Environmentalist Fight
- All Hat, No Cattle? Critics Contend Newsom Fails to Follow Through
- Legislators Reluctant to Challenge Governor’s Vetoes
- “Hegemonic” Democrat Party May Reject Police, Utility Contributions;
Progressive & Moderate Wings Skirmish
DROUGHT
- Governor Declares Statewide Drought Emergency; Water Restrictions Could Follow for 2022
- Eyes in the Sky Watch Water Use
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 22, 2021
Good Times Keep Rolling in California: Another Historic State Budget Surplus
Sacramento Bee
California will have another “historic budget surplus” next year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. The Democratic governor made the announcement during an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd at the Milken Institute’s 24th Global Conference.
Newsom in July signed a $262 billion budget that relied on a projected $75 billion surplus, based on estimates from January.
On top of its record-breaking surplus, California also received $27 billion in COVID-19 relief funds from the federal government. Newsom and lawmakers used the surplus to send $600 checks to Californians making less than $75,000 a year, expand grants for small businesses and bolster other programs to help the Golden State emerge from the pandemic recession.
His announcement Wednesday means his administration anticipates another windfall as it begins writing the 2022-23 budget proposal he’s expected to announce in January. Newsom said he’ll propose using next year’s surplus to pay down $11.3 billion in pension obligations, but didn’t give further details.
In addition to a surplus for next year’s budget, Newsom said California has already collected $14 billion more in tax revenue than expected for the current budget year. The state had such a massive surplus this year in large part because the state slashed money during the first year of the pandemic, anticipating a much deeper recession than materialized.
Instead, high earning individuals and businesses in California largely escaped the economic pain from COVID-19 and continued to pay high taxes, filling the state’s coffers, while low-income people bore the brunt of the recession.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article255159587.html#storylink=cpy
Dept of Finance monthly State revenue report for September:
Newsom Oil Well Ban Ignites Union v. Environmentalist Fight
Politico
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a crackdown on oil and gas wells, a long-awaited move to protect public health that sets up a fight between environmentalists and labor unions allied with industry.
The governor’s proposal — which comes just weeks after an offshore oil spill that fouled stretches of the Southern California coast — would require new wells to be more than half a mile away from neighborhoods, schools and other public areas. Officials said the policy would give California the strictest environmental standards in the country for fossil fuel extraction.
The announcement triggered a fiery response from one of the state’s largest union umbrella groups: the State Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents some 450,000 plumbers, ironworkers, electrical workers and other skilled laborers and has been a key roadblock to environmental bills in the state Legislature.
“We have a stockpile of foreign goods sitting in container ships up and down the coast — a visual reminder of California’s overdependence on other countries, most with little to no environmental or labor standards,” said Robbie Hunter, the group’s president, in a statement.
Officials acknowledged the tension during Newsom’s unveiling of the draft rule in the port town of Wilmington, in southern Los Angeles County. Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) pointed out that his bill to mandate such buffer zonesdied last year “in the face of the powerful combined opposition of big oil, and the State Building and Construction Trades unions” and that “this fight is not over.”
Assemblymember Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican, said the governor’s proposal “makes little sense.”
“At a time when Californians need affordable and reliable energy, the governor is once again choosing to increase energy costs, reduce needed energy production, and puts jobs and careers at risk in Kern County and throughout the state,” Fong wrote in a statement.
California is the seventh-largest petroleum-producing state in the country; unlike some others, including Colorado and Pennsylvania, it has no minimum distance between wells and homes.
Officials said it would be the most protective rule “in the country, if not the world,” and that they expected some companies to close wells rather than absorb the cost of compliance.
“What we’re sending is a really strong market signal to people who want to participate in oil extraction that if they’re there right now, they’re going to have to invest a significant amount of time, money and attention in order to get into compliance,” said Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of California’s Environmental Protection Agency.
Environmentalists and some lawmakers had been pushing Newsom for a buffer zone of at least 2,500 feet, citing research showing increased risk of respiratory issues, heart problems and low birth weights. Newsom relied on a state-convened panel of public health experts, which recommended 3,200 feet. Existing wells within that same radius from homes and other protected areas would still be allowed to operate but would face new requirements to monitor emissions, noise, light and water quality.
“The overwhelming evidence came back that 2,500 feet wasn’t good enough,” Newsom said. Yet that distance failed to even survive an initial hearing earlier this year in the Legislature, after moderate Democrats joined Republicans in blocking it.
The governor also this year announced a fracking ban starting in 2024 and directed state agencies to begin planning for a complete phaseout of petroleum activity by 2045. About 2 million people in the state live within 3,200 feet of an oil or gas well, officials said.
At the same time, officials on Thursday pointed to jobs that would be created by increased emissions requirements at existing wells, as well as a $600 million fund in this year’s state budget to develop clean energy and climate adaptation jobs.
“We’re focused on our labor partners, those people who made their living with good jobs in the oil and gas industry, but I think the time has come; we don’t have to choose between good jobs and protecting the health of our communities, we can have both,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.
Industry groups and environmentalists were anxiously awaiting the buffer zone rule. It had been under development since 2019, the same year Newsom and lawmakers renamed the oil and gas agency after several of its employees were found to hold investments in oil and gas companies. Its release date was delayed twice.
Now begins months of lobbying as the rule works its way through state agencies. The draft will be open for public comment while state agencies perform an economic analysis. The final rule should take effect sometime in the first half of 2023, officials said. The draft proposal lets existing wells take up to another two years to comply, depending on the type of equipment that needs to be installed.
Petroleum industry representatives slammed the proposal.
“The proposed rule’s true setbacks will be imposed upon California’s families, workers and businesses that need affordable, reliable energy every day,” Western States Petroleum Association President and CEO Catherine Reheis-Boyd said in a statement. “It’s time we call these series of actions, bans, rules and mandates what they are: an activist assault on California’s way of life, economy and people.”
But it’s unions that have the clout to steer the debate in deep-blue California. By moving the process to the regulatory sphere, Newsom may be able to get around the political thicket in the Legislature — and around the building trades, one environmentalist said.
“There have been unions who have been with us on oil issues in the past, but they’ve been intimidated into keeping their mouths shut since Robbie has been there,” said Kathryn Phillips, former director of Sierra Club California, referring to Hunter, the union president. “Every time something goes through a regulatory process, at least usually, there’s much more debate about the issue and less debate about the politics.”
All Hat, No Cattle? Critics Contend Newsom Fails to Follow Through
Politico
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a bully pulpit that can change the national agenda, and he’s not afraid to use it.
Newsom has mandated student Covid-19 vaccines and made big promises on banning sales of gas-powered vehicles. Both pronouncements immediately landed him on the national interview circuit.
But Newsom often gives scant details on getting from announcement to action. Lost in his student vaccine mandate was the fact that it likely won’t take effect until next summer, once federal officials fully approve a shot and school leaders hash out logistics. Newsom also signed a nation-leading bill this month making ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement — in 2029.
The media-savvy politician who just survived a recall election has embraced cultural flashpoints for nearly two decades, often setting markers that take time to realize. He landed on the national stage as San Francisco mayor when he illegally issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, and it took a U.S. Supreme Court battle and years of Democratic infighting to legalize gay marriage.
Newsom seems to revel in setting markers that shift the conversation before the nuances are worked out. He told CalMatters in 2018 that “I’d rather be accused of [having] those audacious stretch goals than be accused of timidity.”
Here are some of his most recent examples.
MORE:
Legislators Reluctant to Challenge Governor’s Vetoes
CalMatters
A particularly striking statistic about the 66 bills Newsom finished vetoing last week: a whopping 56 of them were supported by two-thirds or more of lawmakers in both the state Assembly and Senate — enough, on paper, to override the governor’s veto.
But, as the Los Angeles Times’ John Myers and San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli explain in recent columns, the chance of that happening is practically nonexistent: State lawmakers haven’t overturned a governor’s veto since 1980. Instead, their preferred method appears to be reintroducing the vetoed legislation — with tweaks to address some of the governor’s concerns — until it’s signed into law.
Case in point: Newsom last year vetoed a version of the ethnic studies high school graduation requirement he signed into law this year. Same story with a bill, introduced by state Sen. Sydney Kamlager of Los Angeles, to create a pilot program in which mental health teams respond to most nonviolent 911 calls.
Kamlager told Garofoli: “There’s a sense that, ‘Oh, all you need are X number of votes and you can overturn a veto.’ In theory, absolutely. In reality, you’re talking about 120 legislators that have their own priorities and their own relationships with a particular governor and administration. Are legislators willing to compromise those agendas and/or those relationships for the benefit of someone else’s bills?”
“Hegemonic” Democrat Party May Reject Police, Utility Contributions;
Progressive & Moderate Wings Skirmish
Politico
The California Democratic Party is poised to start refusing checks from some major interest groups.
Law enforcement and utilities have poured millions into party coffers in recent campaign cycles. Democratic activists want to cut them off, arguing that accepting their cash clashes with the party’s stated progressive values. This weekend, they’ll get their chance: On Sunday, party members will vote on prohibiting donations from powerful police unions and electricity-generating investor-owned utilities, along with executives and lobbyists of those entities.
Last cycle alone, the party pulled in more than $2 million from utilities like Edison and Sempra, as well as unions representing various law enforcement personnel. That’s a relative drop in the bucket for a fundraising juggernaut that raised more than $41 million last cycle and regularly outspends its Republican counterpart.
But party activists say it’s a matter of principle: In their view, a party committed to reforming criminal justice and phasing out fossil fuels cannot accept the support of entities that operate counter to those goals. And while the party has not reported taking any fossil fuel or law enforcement money in months, advocates have objected that there’s been no hard prohibition in place that would prevent future donations.
It’s the latest skirmish in the never-ending struggle between California’s liberal base and more moderate Democrats — both of whom must coexist, sometimes uneasily, under the hegemonic party’s enormous tent. California contains Democratic multitudes.
You don’t claim two-thirds-plus majorities in both houses of the Legislature without electing Democrats who sometimes align with — and accept money from — groups that are anathema to the party’s left flank. California Democratic Party activists who get involved in endorsement and rules fights tend to represent the latter bloc.
Backers of these donation bans tried to put the proposals to a vote at an earlier party meeting but were ruled out of order, sources told us. California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks is continuing to argue for studying the issue further, rather than proceeding with a Sunday vote. (Hicks’ representative did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
“There has already been a process,” environmental caucus chair Igor Tregub told us. “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Some environmentalists distrust Hicks, given his past leadership of a union that pushed back on tougher climate rules (that labor-enviro tension is a broader source of liberal heartache).
Even if the party does repudiate utilities and police unions, that won’t stop money from flowing directly to specific candidates and other political action committees. The same law enforcement and utilities that donated to the party channeled more than $2.5 million to Democrats’ state legislative campaigns last cycle, and many have maxed out to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association has been an especially prolific supporter, spending more than $4.5 million combined to elect Newsom in 2018 and defend him from a recall vote this year. And these groups send plenty of money to Republicans, too.
So this is a piece in a larger puzzle of balancing ideals with election imperatives. We’ve already seen candidates and parties refuse money from various interest groups and, more recently, promote efforts to bar law enforcement donations to elected prosecutors.
Sean Dugar, a member of the state party’s executive board, told us he hopes the party’s decision will ripple across other races: “It provides cover for those who are afraid to stand on their own and say ‘I’m not going to accept this money,’” Dugar said. Now, he said, candidates can simply say they’re “going to follow the example of the California Democratic Party.’”
State Treasurer Charging Taxpayers for Travel Expenses – More Than Other Officials
Sacramento Bee
California Treasurer Fiona Ma and her top deputy have charged taxpayers more for business trips to Sacramento than any other statewide elected official in the last three years, including ones who live much farther from the capital than San Francisco-based Ma, a Sacramento Bee investigation has found. The Bee reviewed more than 2,000 pages of travel expense records from nine of the 10 officials who have held statewide elected office since 2019 and their chief deputies.
During Ma’s first two years as the state’s top banker, The Bee found taxpayers spent more than $32,000 for her and her chief deputy to travel regularly from their homes in San Francisco to Sacramento, where they routinely stayed for days at a time at hotels near the Capitol.
The two women frequently shared lodging “to save money,” according to their expense reports, making it difficult to separate their trip expenses. Through the California Public Records Act, The Bee requested travel expense records from all of California’s statewide offices.
Superintendent Tony Thurmond’s office was the only one to not provide all of the documents The Bee sought in its request, which was filed in June. A spokeswoman for Thurmond, who lives in Richmond, said she couldn’t say whether he expensed Sacramento lodging until the department finishes filling the records request.
Ma is the only statewide officer reviewed who consistently expensed her trips to Sacramento as full business trips throughout her first two years in office.
Although several officials who live in Southern California routinely expense their flights back-and-forth from Sacramento, those officials do not consistently charge all of their meals and lodging costs to taxpayers during their stays, as Ma does.
In a statement, Ma defended her practice of charging taxpayers for her stays in Sacramento. “I am a dedicated public servant who takes my responsibilities and stewardship of California’s dollars and resources seriously, and this will always be my highest priority,” Ma wrote.
“Any suggestion otherwise is simply false and meritless.” She pointed out that she runs an office that oversees hundreds of thousands of banking transactions each day and manages a portfolio of more than $175 billion in investments. She also chairs 12 boards, commissions and authorities.
“The broad and complex nature of my work and commitments requires that I and my principal aides go to where the demands of these critical functions occur,” she wrote. “We often must respond rapidly to unpredictable and dynamic events. During the pandemic this has meant going to the office daily, often when other government agencies were shut down, to ensure that critical business functions continue uninterrupted.”
Only one other statewide elected official in the last three years reported regularly expensing lodging in Sacramento: Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara. The former state senator from Bell Gardens continued to live in Southern California after being elected in 2018 to be the state’s top insurance regulator.
For the first six months of his term, he asked for reimbursement of rental costs for a Sacramento apartment, which spokesman Michael Soller said was permitted by state law. “He accepted a lodging reimbursement of about $100 a night and paid it to rent, rather than rack up hotel bills on the state’s dime,” Soller said. “He abided by the law.”
Lara stopped charging taxpayers for rent on his Sacramento apartment after June 2019, when the practice was “being misconstrued,” Soller said. He declined to elaborate. Lara reported spending $3,700 in taxpayer money on rent for the apartment, and an additional $6,600 for meals and flights back and forth from Sacramento to the Los Angeles region during that period. Since June 2019, he has spent an additional $12,500 on flights between the Los Angeles area and Sacramento.
Alex Padilla, who lives in Los Angeles, charged taxpayers for Sacramento lodging just once during his second term as California’s secretary of state, which began in 2019 and ended earlier this year after Newsom appointed him to the U.S. Senate. His expense report describes that charge, for a $162 hotel room downtown the night of California’s 2020 primary election, as an exception. “Due to the late night election monitoring, the secretary needed somewhere near the Secretary of State’s Office to lodge,” the report notes.
Normally, Padilla flew home to Los Angeles after his work days in Sacramento. His expense records show taxpayers regularly covered the cost of those flights. He racked up more than $16,000 in flights between Sacramento and the Los Angeles area in 2019 and 2020.
After Newsom appointed San Diego Assemblywoman Shirley Weber to replace Padilla as secretary of state, she continued his practice of expensing flights from Southern California to Sacramento, but not lodging costs.
Ma’s chief of staff, Genevieve Jopanda, was the only chief deputy reviewed who reported expensing lodging in Sacramento. Loyola Law School Professor Jessica Levinson, an expert on government ethics, said Ma’s practice of expensing her lodging in Sacramento isn’t illegal or unethical, but does raise questions about whether it’s a good use of taxpayer money.
Although the commuting costs she and her top deputy have racked up are small in the context of California’s $262 billion budget, the money still represents a significant amount to an individual taxpayer. “She’s costing us money by deciding to live in San Francisco and commute part of the time in Sacramento,” Levinson said. “I don’t think she should be required to live in Sacramento, but I think it’s fair to ask about the wisdom of her setup.”
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association President Jon Coupal said statewide officials are expected to be in Sacramento when they take those jobs. He said the fact that Ma is the only official charging the state for her stays in Sacramento is notable. “Taxpayers question the legitimacy of this practice,” Coupal said. “If you run for statewide office, you should be expected to maintain – at your own expense – a residence in Sacramento.”
State travel reimbursement guidelines generally allow state workers to expense business trip costs when they travel more than 50 miles from their headquarters. However, the rules also forbid reimbursement for regular commuting.
“It is not unusual or extraordinary for state employees to commute 50 miles or longer from their home to headquarters and back again on a daily basis,” the state’s human resources manual says. “An employee who does not live in the immediate vicinity of his/her headquarters is not eligible to receive meals and lodging when required to work extended hours in the headquarters location. Likewise, an employee who must work at a site other than headquarters is not automatically considered to be eligible for meals and/or lodging simply by crossing the ‘50 mile line.’”
Although the manual provides general guidance around travel reimbursement, individual departments can still make their own rules, CalHR spokeswoman Camille Travis said.
During the period covered by the records The Sacramento Bee reviewed, Ma and Jopanda were technically based in San Francisco, where both women lived, which means they don’t appear to have violated the 50-mile guideline. However, The Bee’s review found Jopanda spent more working days in Sacramento in 2019 than in San Francisco.
State law defines a state employee’s headquarters as “the place where the officer or employee spends the largest portion of his/her regular workdays or working time” but also gives power to state department officials like Ma to set different rules for headquarters “in special situations.”
Ma’s office did not respond to questions about precisely how much time she and Jopanda spent in Sacramento versus San Francisco, but records show Jopanda spent at least 114 working days in Sacramento in 2019, nearly half of the working days in that year, excluding weekends and federal holidays. Although the days she spent working from San Francisco are not specified in the expense records, Jopanda spent 56 days traveling to other cities, including Los Angeles and Washington D.C., leaving less than 81 days for work from San Francisco, the office where she was based.
In 2020, when state offices switched to largely remote work, Jopanda spent significantly less time in Sacramento and other cities, according to expense reports. “Travel arrangements are made to maximize efficiency and minimize costs to taxpayers consistent with all ethical and legal requirements,” Jopanda said in a statement.
Expense reports show Ma spent at least 50 days working from Sacramento and 59 days working from other cities in 2019. In 2020, she spent at least 89 days in Sacramento. When it comes to travel costs, the HR guidelines direct managers to “demonstrate that every consideration has been given to minimizing the cost to the state through responsible planning and scheduling.”
During her first two years in office Ma expensed $14,000 for Sacramento trips and nearly $12,000 for trips to other cities. During the same time period, Jopanda expensed $18,000 for trips to Sacramento and more than $12,000 for other trips.
The two women approved one another’s expense reports. Both women frequently had the state cover their meals while in Sacramento. They also expensed commuting costs. Ma sometimes filed for mileage and parking cost reimbursement, while Jopanda expensed parking, car rental and electric vehicle charging.
On one three-day trip in April 2019, Jopanda expensed meals, but noted that she did not stay at a hotel and instead “commuted with state car each day.” On most trips, however, Jopanda and Ma stayed at hotels in Sacramento, including the Best Western, the Marriott and the Citizen.
Ma’s practice of sharing lodging with staff came under public scrutiny after a former employee filed a lawsuit in July accusing her of sexual harassment while the two women shared rooms in Sacramento on business trips. Ma has denied the allegations in the suit.
Many high-profile state officials and top staffers commute from the Bay Area regularly and don’t charge the state for it. Former Alameda Assemblyman Rob Bonta has opted to drive back to his home in the Bay Area each night after Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him attorney general earlier this year, California Justice Department spokeswoman Bethany Lesser said. His expense records contain no reimbursement requests for lodging in the capital city.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis lives in San Francisco, but doesn’t charge taxpayers for lodging in Sacramento. Newsom’s former Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary was one of several top staffers in the governor’s office who regularly commuted from the Bay Area to her headquarters in the state Capitol. Expense reports for O’Leary show she didn’t expense any costs related to her commute like mileage, meals or lodging during her two years as Newsom’s lead aide.
In 2019, the Newsom administration said it had stopped paying officials to commute after a Sacramento Bee investigation revealed the state spent more than $21,000 in one year for a former Caltrans director to commute from San Diego to Sacramento.
The Bee found the state paid for former Caltrans director Laurie Berman’s flights and most of the rent for a Sacramento apartment, along with thousands of dollars more in Lyft rides, rental cars and meals.
After The Bee report, Newsom’s office informed state secretaries, undersecretaries and other officials that they must pay for their own travel if they choose to live somewhere other than where they work, according to the governor’s office.
As a duly elected statewide official, Ma does not report to the governor and isn’t required to follow rules he sets for the state workforce he oversees. State lawmakers, who are required to live in their districts, are entitled to a “per diem” payment to cover commuting costs.
Statewide officials, however, are not entitled to per diem payments. Some top officials move to Sacramento when they assume statewide office. When Newsom became governor, he moved his family from Marin County to Fair Oaks. Travel expense reports show the governor does not expense any lodging costs in Sacramento.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra also moved to Sacramento when he was appointed to the job, Lesser said.
Controller Betty Yee lives in San Francisco and has a second residence she maintains at her own expense in Sacramento, spokeswoman Monique Blue Langer said. Yee doesn’t expense meals and only seeks lodging reimbursement when she travels to events and meetings outside the Bay Area, Sacramento and Los Angeles.
https://www.sacbee.com/article254957832.html#storylink=cpy
Governor Declares Statewide Drought Emergency; Water Restrictions Could Follow
CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency this week for the entire state of California, as conservation efforts continue to fall far short of state targets.
Newsom also authorized California’s water regulators to ban wasteful water use, such as spraying down public sidewalks, and directed his Office of Emergency Services to fund drinking water as needed. But he stopped short of issuing any statewide conservation mandates.
“As the western U.S. faces a potential third year of drought, it’s critical that Californians across the state redouble our efforts to save water in every way possible,” Newsom said in a statement.
Today’s announcement extends drought emergencies, already declared in 50 counties, to the eight remaining counties where conditions had thus far not been deemed severe enough: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Imperial, San Francisco and Ventura.
The emergency declarations are aimed at easing responses to the deepening drought — such as emergency bottled water purchases or construction to bolster water supplies — by reducing environmental and other regulations. Under the proclamation, local water suppliers must begin preparing for the possibility of a dry year ahead.
“We think we’ll be able to manage through this year,” said David Pettijohn, director of water resources at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Next year is the issue. And we don’t know what the water year is going to look like. Nobody can predict the weather.”
But California’s water watchers say that without a conservation mandate, California is losing time, and water. “We know mandates are more effective than voluntary calls,” said Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. “It takes time to ramp up, and because of the delay in asking Californians to save water this spring, we are further behind than we should be.”
New data released today by the State Water Resources Control Board reveals that Californians cut their water use at home by 5% in August compared to August 2020, an improvement over the reductions of less than 2% in July but still far short of the voluntary 15% cuts Newsom urged in July.
The hard-hit North Coast, where the state’s first drought emergencies were declared in April, continued to show the biggest drops in household water use — with an 18.3% decrease compared to August of last year. Conservation numbers tapered off moving south, with the San Francisco Bay Area conserving nearly 10% more water than last August.
The South Coast region — which includes Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties — showed an improvement over July, when water use was roughly even with last year. In August, residents used about 3.1% less water than they did in August 2020.
“Those numbers are a little bit misleading, frankly,” said Pettijohn, pointing to existing conservation measures including mandatory outdoor watering restrictions. “Looking at one month, in one year, compared to the same exact month in the current year, it’s really not a true measure of what the efforts in the city have been.”
The current reductions in water use are on top of conservation that has continued since the last drought. In 2020, Californians were already using about 16% less water in their homes and businesses statewide compared to 2013, according to water board data analyst Marielle Pinheiro.
This August was both the hottest and driest on record, according to the governor’s office. And the increased conservation, even during an exceptionally dry month, “is especially significant,” Pinheiro said at the water board meeting Tuesday.
“Once you’ve learned to save water, why turn the water on when you’re brushing your teeth?” said former water board chairperson Felicia Marcus, who led the response during the last drought under former Gov. Jerry Brown. “The glass half full view of that is that messaging is starting to take hold.”
Still, Newsha Ajami, director of Urban Water Policy at Stanford University, was surprised that Newsom didn’t declare a statewide water conservation mandate today.
“We really need to reduce per capita water use significantly in some areas of the state,” she said. “If this drought lingers longer and we end up having a few more dry years we are going to have a lot more communities experiencing water scarcity and water access issues.”
Newsom’s announcement this week comes at a pivotal moment for California’s water.
The state just closed out its second-driest water year on record, with nearly 88% of California now in the clutches of extreme drought, or worse. By the end of September, statewide reservoir storage had hit 60% of average, with Lake Oroville setting a new record low.
“It’s amazing that in the second dry year, we’re in as scary a position if not scarier than what we faced in that last drought. It’s almost beyond comprehension,” Marcus said. “It’s a stunning challenge.”
State officials have warned water providers south of the Delta relying on state water allocations that they might be cut off completely next year.
“We’re starting with record low (reservoir) storage,” Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said last month. “We would have to have north of 140% of (average) precipitation to generate average runoff into the reservoirs that would begin filling that hole.”
But some experts say that number is likely an underestimate.
Now, California is on the cusp of its rainy season, when it receives almost all of its yearly precipitation.
A series of storms are expected to reach Northern California this week, with another that could unleash some rain over Southern California as soon as this weekend, according to Chad Hecht, a meteorology staff researcher with the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Precipitation forecasts range from eight inches in the Sierras over the next seven days, to less than half an inch in Southern California, said Julie Kalansky, the center’s deputy director.
While the rain is highly unlikely to substantially refill empty reservoirs, it could help prepare thirsty soils for more rains to come.
For these storms, “the runoff from them may not be very high, but they’ll help moisten the soils. So if we get more, hopefully you get more runoff that can go into reservoirs or streams and ecosystems,” Kalansky said.
But the water year ahead remains murky: Cooler than average temperatures in the tropical Pacific herald the arrival of La Niña conditions, which the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center reports have an 87% chance of continuing between December and February.
La Niña can stir up storm tracks, changing how much precipitation falls on California. But the results vary — especially for Northern California — making it difficult to predict what this means for rain and snowfall in the northern two-thirds of the state, Kalansky said.
For Southern California, on the other hand, La Niña tends to foretell a drier year. “It doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to have a really dry year, but we typically don’t get really wet years when it’s a La Niña,” she said.
Overall, Kalansky said, “it’s still yet to be decided on whether or not this year is going to be wet or dry and what this means for drought. We just don’t have those answers yet.”
https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/10/california-drought-newsom-emergency/
Eyes in the Sky Watch Water Use
National Public Radio
In a new push to stop further depletion of California’s shrinking aquifers, state regulators are turning to technology once used to count Soviet missile silos during the Cold War: satellites.
Historically, California’s farmers could pump as much as they wanted from their wells. But as a consequence of that unrestricted use, the underground water table has sunk by hundreds of feet in some areas, and the state is now trying to stabilize those aquifers.
Regulators need to calculate just how much water each farmer is using across California’s vast agricultural lands, and scientists and private companies are now offering a technique that uses images from orbiting satellites. “The days of agricultural anonymity are over,” says Joel Kimmelshue, co-founder of the company Land IQ, which is helping to hone the technique.
Water surveillance got a big boost when California passed a law in 2014 that aims to protect the state’s aquifers. It places limits on the amount of water that farmers are allowed to pump.
There was a big problem: Local officials like Eric Limas weren’t sure how to enforce limits on water use. Limas is general manager of the Lower Tule River and Pixley Irrigation Districts, in Tulare County, where aquifers are among the most depleted in the entire state. He’s also in charge of a newly established groundwater sustainability agency for that area.
“That was one of the first conversations that our groundwater committee tackled,” Limas says. “OK, how are we going to do that? Are we going to measure every molecule that’s pumped?”
Limas doesn’t even know exactly how many wells there are in his part of the county. Thousands of them are hidden away in the middle of corn fields and almond orchards.
Many farmers weren’t inclined to help him out. Especially in the first years after the law was passed. Limas recalls the initial reaction: “At first it’s like, ‘You’re crazy if you think you’re going to come on my place and … figure out how much I’m pumping. That’s my water.’ ”
Then Limas heard that researchers at California Polytechnic State University had developed a way to estimate the amount of water used by agricultural crops from images recorded by NASA-operated satellites.
Land IQ, meanwhile, was using that same technique — supplemented with stations on the ground — to collect data on field-by-field water use. It sounded like “Star Wars stuff,” Limas recalls. But it also sounded easier and cheaper than getting water meters installed on every well in his district.
The technique involves several steps. The first is figuring out which crops are growing on each field. The satellite images, which are updated almost every week, contain clues: the shade of green, the spacing of vegetation, the time of year the field turns green. Combining those clues, Kimmelshue says, produces a fingerprint of each crop. “We have a fingerprint for walnuts and a fingerprint for alfalfa, tomatoes and all these different crops.”
About 4% of the time, Kimmelshue says, there’s a case of mistaken identity. “We might confuse almonds for peaches,” he says. “But a peach tree and an almond tree have similar water needs” so the estimate of water use still ends up being quite accurate.
Land IQ uses data from a NASA satellite to determine which crops are growing on each field. This map on the left shows one small part of California’s Central Valley. The darkest green areas are almond groves. This map on the right shows evapotranspiration (water used by crops or evaporated from soil) in this region during June 2020. Some fields (shown in dark blue) consumed 8 inches of water.
Land IQ
Each crop, at a particular point in its life cycle, takes up a predictable amount of water and releases it through its leaves, depending on local weather conditions. Land IQ has set up local monitoring stations to keep track of things like wind speed, heat and humidity, at hundreds of locations. Putting it all together, the company calculates the amount of “evapotranspiration” — the amount of water that the plants are releasing to the air, as well as what’s evaporating from the soil.
That’s different from the amount that farmers are pumping because some irrigation water that’s pumped from the aquifer sinks back into the earth. Because of this, Kimmelshue has convinced officials like Limas that it’s more important to regulate water consumption, in the form of evapotranspiration, rather than water pumping.
He’s now selling that data to more than a dozen groundwater regulatory agencies, including the ones that Eric Limas manages.
Limas and his colleagues can monitor how much water is consumed by every farmer, field by field, and show farmers how that compares with their legal allotment under the new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. “A lot of guys are going in and looking at their water budgets and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we don’t have enough water to plant that summer crop,’ ” Limas says.
That’s how the process is supposed to work. Farming practices are supposed to change to conserve aquifer water. Some officials worry that it won’t go so smoothly when limits on groundwater use get tighter over the next two decades. Some are predicting court battles over whether the satellite-based technique is accurate. Some farmers say that regulators ultimately may shift to using data from water meters that are installed on every well.
In the meantime, though, the technique is growing more popular. Next week, a coalition of scientists, NASA and environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund plans to launch a new version of space-based water monitoring. This one is called OpenET.
(ET refers to evapotranspiration.) It will estimate water use in agricultural areas across much of the western United States, and making it available on the web for anyone to see.