Thread: Weed CA. Protests Firm’s Plans to Turn Off Water

Weed California Protests Firm’s Plans to Turn Off Water

Timber Company Tells California Town, Go Find Your Own Water

By THOMAS FULLER OCT. 1, 2016



The snow-capped dormant volcano Mount Shasta, as seen from Weed, in Northern California. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

WEED, Calif. — The water that gurgles from a spring on the edge of this Northern California logging town is so pristine that for more than a century it has been piped directly to the wooden homes spread across hills and gullies.

To the residents of Weed, which sits in the foothills of Mount Shasta, a snow-capped dormant volcano, the spring water is a blessing during a time of severe and prolonged drought.

To the lumber company that owns the land where the spring is, the water is a business opportunity.

Roseburg Forest Products, an Oregon-based company that owns the pine forest where the spring surfaces, is demanding that the city of Weed get its water elsewhere.

“The city needs to actively look for another source of water,” said Ellen Porter, the director of environmental affairs for Roseburg who led the company’s negotiations with the city.

“Roseburg is not in a position to guarantee the availability of that water for a long period of time.”

For the past 50 years, the company charged the city $1 a year for use of water from the Beaughan Spring. As of July, it began charging $97,500 annually. A contract signed this year directs the city to look for alternative sources.

Roseburg has not made public what it plans to do with the water it wants to take back from the city. But it already sells water to Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring, which bottles it in Weed and ships it as far away as Japan. Crystal Geyser is looking to increase its overall supply.

Residents of Weed, including the current mayor and three former mayors, say the water was always intended for municipal and domestic use and should not be sold to the highest bidder.



Bob Hall, a member of the Weed City Council, at Beaughan Spring, a source of Weed’s water. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“The corporate mentality is that they can make more money selling this water to Japan,” said Bob Hall, a former mayor of Weed and currently a member of the City Council. “We were hooked at the hip with this company for years,” he said of the timber company, the largest private employer in the area.

“Now, they are taking advantage of people who can’t defend themselves.”

Bottled-water plants have met with resistance and in some cases protests in a number of places across California, including a Nestlé plant last year in Sacramento. In the water-rich towns in the shadow of Mount Shasta, residents have raised concerns over proposed bottling plants that they say could severely diminish local water supplies.

A measure on the ballot in the November election in Siskiyou County, where the towns are, would for the first time require that companies obtain permits to export water.

The disputes echo California’s broader water wars. Five years of drought have escalated competition among farmers, factories and residents over water use and have pitted the arid south against the more water-rich north.

“Water is money,” said David Webb, a resident of the city of Mount Shasta who follows the water disputes in the area. “If you can get it, you can make money from it.”

The mayor of Weed, Ken Palfini, says the value of the city’s water was emphasized during a visit several weeks ago by Pierre Papillaud, the founder of the company that owns Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring. In what the mayor and another participant described as a tirade of abuse, Mr. Papillaud demanded that the city give up its spring water so that his company could have more.

“He said if he didn’t get his way, he was going to blow up the bottling plant,” Mr. Palfini said of Mr. Papillaud’s visit. “He said that twice.”

Mr. Papillaud’s son Ronan Papillaud came to Weed in mid-September to apologize for the brusque treatment and to rescind his father’s demands. But Mr. Palfini said it was a lesson on how small municipalities in the area need to protect themselves from water-hungry companies.



Paul Welliver at the controls of a lathe at the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Weed. Roseberg owns the pine forest where the spring providing city water surfaces. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“They are just corporations,” Mr. Palfini said. “They are not your friend.”

Residents of Weed, which is still rebuilding after a major wildfire two years ago, say they believe that their dispute with Roseburg will end in the courts and that they have a document showing that the previous owner of Roseburg’s timber business here, International Paper, handed over water rights to the city in 1982.

But they describe a David and Goliath battle between Roseburg, a wealthy corporation capable of paying for high-powered lawyers, and a relatively poor city with just 2,700 people.

Residents in Weed followed the legal battles of Missoula, Mont., where the State Supreme Court ruled in August that the city could seize water from a private company by eminent domain to secure the municipal water supply.

The alternative to legal proceedings for now is to drill a new well at a cost of around $2 million, according to Ron Stock, the Weed city administrator.

Roseburg has suggested a site on its property, but city officials say it is potentially dangerous: The well would be located a few hundred yards from a former wood treatment facility that is contaminated with highly toxic chemicals including arsenic. The facility, which is managed by Roseburg, was fenced off in 1986 and has been declared a Superfund site.

Because of the complex hydrology of the area, including lava tubes that carry water in various directions under the mountains, the city would not know whether the water was safe until it drilled a test well, Mr. Stock said.

“The city has to be very careful,” he said. “We don’t want a Flint, Mich., situation.”

Ms. Porter, the Roseburg representative, said the proposed well site was “well outside any area of contamination.”

In an interview at the company’s timber plant outside Weed, where logs are spun and shaved into thin sheets used for plywood, Ms. Porter blamed Mr. Hall, the city councilor, and others in the city for casting Roseburg in a bad light.



Bottles filled with water from the Mount Shasta city spring in a park in Mount Shasta, Calif. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“We are becoming the corporate bad guy, and that’s really unfortunate,” she said. The city already has wells that serve around half the population, she said.

Ronan Papillaud, the president of CG Roxane, which owns Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring together with a Japanese pharmaceutical company, Otsuka, was also defensive when asked about his company’s plans.

“We do not belong in this story,” Mr. Papillaud said. “We are not depriving anyone of anything.” CG Roxane has bought water from Roseburg since the late 1990s and dedicates one of its production lines in its Weed plant to bottling water bound for Japan.

Mr. Papillaud described his deal with Roseburg as a simple relationship between a buyer and seller.

“Is this blood water? Are they involved in child labor?” he asked rhetorically. “We are clients, end of story.”

Watching the water dispute warily are members of the Winnemem Wintu, a small Native American tribe that considers the slopes of Mount Shasta sacred.

According to tribal beliefs, one of the springs on the mountain is the place where animals and mankind emerged into the world. Six years ago, for the first time in the oral history of the tribe, that spring dried up, according to Luisa Navejas, a tribe member.

The water around Mount Shasta is not limitless, she said.

“This mountain is calling us now, and we need to listen,” Ms. Navejas said of the inactive volcano.

“This mountain will talk,” she said. “The time will come.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/us...T.nav=top-news

Nestle Trying Another Water Grab

Drought turns Californians against water bottling companies

by Katie Lobosco @KatieLobosco May 26, 2015: 1:47 PM ET

As California residents are forced to cut back their water use, some are outraged that companies bottling water there aren't asked to do the same.

They've made a scapegoat of big names like Nestle, which operates five water bottling plants in California. Dozens of activists protested outside two of the plants last week and online petitions have garnered thousands of signatures demanding Nestle (NSRGF) halt its bottling operations.

In fact, there are 110 water bottling plants in the state.

In addition to Nestle, others big bottlers include Pepsi (PEP), which bottles Aquafina; Coca-Cola (CCE), which bottles Dasani; and Crystal Geyser.

But the thing is, the amount of water bottled in California is a tiny fraction of what the entire state uses.

"It's a pretty small amount," said Tim Moran, a spokesman for the state's Water Resources Control Board. The state doesn't actually track how much water is bottled there.

Related: She's $10M closer to replacing plastic bottles

The International Bottled Water Association says that about 3.1 billion gallons of water are bottled in California annually. Nestle, for example, uses 725 million gallons of water annually at its California bottling plants.

But that volume is dwarfed by the 4 trillion, (with a "t,") gallons used by residents every year.

Those figures don't include the biggest users in California: farmers. Agricultural use accounts for about 80% annually.

Still, people are angry that companies continue to bottle water during the fourth year of the drought, making money off of it. Meanwhile the governor has imposed mandatory water restrictions on residents for the first time in the state's history. Water districts must reduce the amount customers use by an average of 25%, or face fines. That means Californians need to pull back on watering their lawns.




Nestle said it won't stop bottling water in California because, chiefly, "people need to drink water."

The State Water Resources Control Board agrees.

"We've determined that bottled water serves a good use, especially in drought-stricken areas where people's wells have gone dry," said spokeswoman Miryam Barajas.

While the board implements regulations on residents, it doesn't regulate bottled water companies, which collect surface water, pump water from the ground, or buy water from local providers. In some areas, bottlers don't need any kind of approval to use ground water.

Related: Starbucks to shift Ethos bottled water out of California due to drought

Nestle, as well as Pepsi and Coke, say that they are conserving water by making their plants more efficient.

Starbucks (SBUX) did bow to public pressure, and said it would stop producing its Ethos bottled water in the state. It's moving those operations to Pennsylvania in the next six months.

Even if every bottling company moved out, that wouldn't solve the drought.

But that doesn't mean it wouldn't have an impact at the local level, said Peter Gleick, president of the environmental think tank called the Pacific Institute.

"We're in a really bad drought," he said, "and it's reasonable to take a look at all water uses."

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/26/news...water-drought/

And when the illegals and "refugees' get to bring their 20 family members each, let the water wars begin! Overpopulating is dangerous with dire consequences not just by water needs.

Also seehttp://www.alipac.us/f19/nestle-tryi...r-grab-331484/

A Nat'l Geographic story on the world's waters.

What You Need to Know About the World's Water Wars

Underground water is being pumped so aggressively around the globe that land is sinking, civil wars are being waged, and agriculture is being transformed.
A shepherd drinks water on the dry bed of Manjara Dam, which supplies water to Latur and nearby villages in the Indian state of Maharashtra. India has been enduring a severe drought, which has forced millions of farmers to rely more heavily on groundwater, which has been pumped out more rapidly than it can be naturally replenished.

Photograph by Manish Swarup, AP

By Laura Parker PUBLISHED July 14, 2016

Beijing is sinking.

In some neighborhoods, the ground is giving way at a rate of four inches a year as water in the giant aquifer below it is pumped.

The groundwater has been so depleted that China’s capital city, home to more than 20 million people, could face serious disruptions in its rail system, roadways, and building foundations, an international team of scientists concluded earlier this year. Beijing, despite tapping into the gigantic North China Plain aquifer, is the world’s fifth most water-stressed city and its water problems are likely to get even worse.

Beijing isn’t the only place experiencing subsidence, or sinking, as soil collapses into space created as groundwater is depleted. Parts of Shanghai, Mexico City, and other cities are sinking, too. Sections of California’s Central Valley have dropped by a foot, and in some localized areas, by as much as 28 feet.

NG Maps. Sources: University of California, Irvine; WhyMap; Margat, 2008; Margat and van der Gun, 2013, Groundwater Around the World

Around the world, alarms are being sounded about the depletion of underground water supplies. The United Nations predicts a global shortfall in water by 2030. About 30 percent of the planet’s available freshwater is in the aquifers that underlie every continent.

More than two-thirds of the groundwater consumed around the world irrigates agriculture, while the rest supplies drinking water to cities. These aquifers long have served as a backup to carry regions and countries through droughts and warm winters lacking enough snowmelt to replenish rivers and streams. Now, the world’s largest underground water reserves in Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas are under stress. Many of them are being drawn down at unsustainable rates. Nearly two billion people rely on groundwater that is considered under threat,

You Might Also Like

• Amid Drought, New California Law Will Limit Groundwater Pumping for First Time
• Richard Damania, a lead economist at the World Bank, predicts that without adequate water supplies, economic growth in the most stressed parts of the world could decline by six percent of GDP. His findings conclude that the most severe impacts of climate change will deplete water supplies.

“If you are in a dry area, you are going to get a lot less rainfall. Run-off is declining,” he says. “People are turning to groundwater in a very, very big way.”

But few things are more difficult to control than groundwater pumping, Damania says. In the United States, farmers are withdrawing water at unsustainable rates from the High Plains, or Ogallala Aquifer, even though they have been aware of the threat for six decades.

“What you have in developing countries is a large number of small farmers pumping. Given that these guys are earning so little, there is very little you can do to control it,” Damania says. “And you are, literally, in a race to the bottom.”



Over the past three decades, Saudi Arabia has been drilling for a resource more precious than oil. Engineers and farmers have tapped hidden reserves of water to grow grains, fruits, and vegetables in the one of the driest places in the world. They are tapping into the aquifer at unsustainable rates. On these NASA satellite images of the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin, green indicates crops, contrasting with the pink and yellow of dry, barren land.

Photographs by NASA Earth Observatory; Final illustration by Robert Simmon

As regions and nations run short of water, Damania says, economic growth will decline and food prices will spike, raising the risk of violent conflict and waves of large migrations. Unrest in Yemen, which heavily taps into groundwater and which experienced water riots in 2009, is rooted in a water crisis. Experts say water scarcity also helped destabilize Syria and launch its civil war. Jordan, which relies on aquifers as its only source of water, is even more water-stressed now that more than a half-million Syrian refugees arrived.

Jay Famiglietti, lead scientist on a 2015 study using NASA satellites to record changes in the world’s 37 largest aquifers, says that the ones under the greatest threat are in the most heavily populated areas.

"Without sustainable groundwater reserves, global security is at far greater risk,” he says. “As the dry parts are getting drier, we will rely on groundwater even more heavily. The implications are just staggering and really need to be discussed at the international level.”

Below are answers to your key questions.

Where is groundwater the most threatened?

The most over-stressed is the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to 60 million people in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Indus Basin aquifer in northwest India and Pakistan is the second-most threatened, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa the third.

Drought, bad management of pumping, leaky pipes in big-city municipal water systems, aging infrastructure, inadequate technology, population growth, and the demand for more food production all put increasing demand on pumping more groundwater. Flood irrigation, which is inefficient, remains the dominant irrigation method worldwide. In India, the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, the government subsidizes electricity – an incentive to farmers to keep pumping.

How did these giant basins become so depleted?


The 20 million people of Beijing get about two-thirds of their water from the North China Plain aquifer, which is one of the world's largest groundwater basins.

Photograph by Sim Chi Yin, VII Photo

How has irrigation changed farming?

Irrigation has enabled water-intensive crops to be grown in dry places, which in turn created local economies that are now difficult to undo. These include sugar cane and rice in India, winter wheat in China, and corn in the southern High Plains of North America. Aquaculture has boomed in the land-locked Ararat Basin, which lies along the border between Armenia and Turkey. Groundwater is cold enough to raise cold-water fish, such as trout and sturgeon. In less than two decades, the aquifer there has been drawn down so severely for fish ponds that municipal water supplies in more than two dozen communities are now threatened.

How much water remains?

More is known about oil reserves than water. Calculating what remains in aquifers is extraordinarily difficult. In 2015, scientists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada concluded that less than six percent of groundwater above one-and-a-half miles (two kilometers) in the Earth’s landmass is renewable within a human lifetime. But other hydrologists caution that measurements of stores can mislead. More important is how the water is distributed throughout the aquifer. When water levels drop below to 50 feet or less, it is often not economically practical to pump water to the surface, and much of that water is brackish or contains so many minerals that it is unusable.

Is there any good news?

Depleted groundwater is a slow-speed crisis, scientists say, so there's time to develop new technologies and water efficiencies. In Western Australia, desalinated water has been injected to recharge the large aquifer that Perth, Australia's driest city, taps for drinking water. China is working to regulate pumping. In west Texas, the city of Abernathy is drilling into a deeper aquifer that lies beneath the High Plains aquifer and mixing the two to supplement the municipal water supply.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...rs-water-wars/

People have been fighting over water in California since the 1860s when the settlers killed the Indians and took their land and water.
------------------------------------

"In 1861, Samuel Bishop and other ranchers started to raise cattle on the luxuriant grasses that grew in the Owens Valley. They came into conflict with the Paiutes over land and water use, and most of the Paiutes were driven away from the valley by the U.S. Army in 1863 during the Owens Valley Indian War."^[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

Officials Say San Diego County Has Healthy Water Supply Despite Drought

Friday, September 30, 2016
By City News Service

The San Diego County Water Authority reiterated Friday that the region has sufficient supply to meet expected demand next year and beyond, but efficient water use by customers remains essential.


Special Feature Drought: Running Dry In California


The agency, which distributes water to 24 cities and water districts in the county, previously stated in filings with state water authorities that there would be enough supply for the next three years, even if they were dry. The status was confirmed at a media briefing, one day before the traditional start of the water year.

The Water Authority credited the opening of a desalination plant in Carlsbad and contracts to receive Colorado River water.

"The San Diego region has a track record of smart investments in supply reliability and water-use efficiency that have proven their worth during five years of drought," said Mark Muir, whose term as Water Authority Board chairman begins Saturday.

The Water Authority also announced that regional water savings stayed strong during the summer.

From June through August, urban water use in San Diego County was 18 percent below the same period in 2013 — even though state-mandated emergency water-use reductions were lifted in June and average daily maximum temperatures were 2 degrees above normal. In addition, conditions were cooler at Lindbergh Field during the June-August 2013 period, when average daily maximum temperatures were 0.4 degrees below average.

"The commitment our region's residents and businesses continue to show for saving water is remarkable," Muir said.

Amanda Sheffield, a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told reporters that the expected La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean — which often bring cooler and drier conditions to Southern California — are weakening. That makes it difficult to forecast the snowpack and runoff levels in major watersheds like as the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, she said.

While La Nina conditions remain in question, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted warmer than average temperatures across the West through December, according to the Water Authority. Warmer temperatures typically put upward pressure on water use.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/sep/30...healthy-water/

San Diego Water Authority Makes History at San Vicente Dam

What's the latest?


The new San Vicente Dam more than doubles the water storage capacity of the original San Vicente Reservoir.

The San Diego County Water Authority has raised San Vicente Dam 117 feet, more than doubling the storage capacity of San Vicente Reservoir. The expansion represents the single biggest increase in water storage in San Diego County’s history. It is the largest dam raise in the U.S. and the tallest roller-compacted concrete dam raise in the world. The project was completed in spring 2014.

The Water Authority used roller-compacted concrete to raise the dam because it is just as strong as conventional concrete but can be placed more efficiently. The Olivenhain Dam, constructed by the Water Authority in the early 2000s, is also a roller-compacted concrete dam.

San Vicente Reservoir has a distinguished history. Constructed by the City of San Diego in 1943, it was the first reservoir in the county to receive imported water when the Water Authority’s First Aqueduct was completed in 1947. The original dam stood at 220 feet and stored up to 90,000 acre-feet for use by the City of San Diego.

The dam raise provides storage capacity for an additional 152,000 acre-feet of water. The new capacity is owned by the Water Authority, and will be used to store water for dry years and emergencies such as an earthquake that curtails our imported water supplies.


In April 2012 the original dam was still visible behind new roller-compacted concrete, which produces a stair-stepped appearance on the downstream side of the raised dam.

Workers placed the first layer of concrete for the foundation of the dam raise in September 2011. The new dam rose swiftly, reaching the top of the existing dam in May 2012, and its full height just four months later. Additional work will continue at the reservoir through 2015 to construct a new marina and replace a portion of the reservoir bypass pipeline.

The City of San Diego has continued to operate the San Vicente Reservoir during construction to supply its customers, and owns its original 90,000 acre-feet of storage capacity. The two agencies will share the cost of operating the expanded reservoir. The Water Authority and the City of San Diego are coordinating to set an opening date for San Vicente Reservoir, which is expected in late 2015. More details will follow when the date is announced.



The original control tower, foreground, is dwarfed by the new dam. Construction continues on the new control tower at far right.

The San Vicente Dam Raise is the largest project of the Emergency Storage Project, a system of reservoirs, interconnected pipelines, and pumping stations designed to make water available to the San Diego region in the event of an interruption in imported water deliveries.

Web Cam Shows Progress at San Vicente Dam
A web cam system at San Vicente Dam allows the public to witness progress on the world’s largest roller-compacted concrete dam raise. Two cameras offer different views of construction activities, enabling viewers to see weeks of dam raise work compressed into a brief time-lapse video.

Click on Topside View or Downstream View for two vantage points of construction. These high-resolution photos are updated every 30 minutes, providing a current snapshot of dam raise construction. The time-lapse sequences combine these photos, illustrating the construction process.

- See more at: http://www.sdcwa.org/water-authority....lDCY07Nu.dpuf

Drinking Water Starts Flowing From Carlsbad Desalination Plant

Water official answers five questions about the $1 billion project

Monday, December 14, 2015
By Erik Anderson




Aired 12/14/15 on KPBS News.

The largest ocean desalination plant in the western hemisphere opens for business Monday in Carlsbad. A San Diego County Water Authority official explains what the $1 billion project means to the region.

The $1 billion Carlsbad Desalination Plant officially opens Monday and starts producing 50 million gallons of drinking water a day.

That’s enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every 18 minutes.

The project was in various phases of planning and construction for two decades.

The facility is built on about 6 acres of land next to the Encina Power Station beside the Agua Hedionda Lagoon.

Bob Yamada is the director of water resources for the San Diego County Water Authority. He answered five questions about the desalination project.

What is desalination?
Yamada: Desalination, as it's being applied to the Carlsbad project, means taking in seawater and cleaning that seawater up and running it through a process called reverse osmosis that essentially separates the fresh water from the salts. And by doing so, we can create drinking water out of ocean water, which, as we all know, is not drinkable.

Why is it important to develop local water supplies?

By Nicholas McVicker

Bob Yamada, water resources director at the San Diego County Water Authority, talks about the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, Dec. 7, 2015.


Yamada: It is very important that we develop not only new supplies of water but also new local supplies that are locally controlled. And a supply that is drought-proof like the Carlsbad desalination project is. Back in the early ’90s when this region was facing 50 percent cutbacks in its water supply — coming out of that, the charge was, we need to diversify our water supply, we need to strengthen that reliability. We did so by many means, including the agriculture urban water transfer (moving water from the Imperial Valley to San Diego) we have, and including developing recycled water supplies and additional groundwater desalination. And now we’re adding a significant new water supply in seawater desalination to that portfolio that replaces unreliable imported water supplies.

Where does San Diego’s water come from?
Yamada: The San Diego region gets about 64 percent of our water from the Colorado River, about 20 percent from the state water project in Northern California, with about 16 percent in local supplies. With the addition of the Carlsbad desalination project, that local supply will grow to 25 (percent) to 26 percent. So it’s a substantial increase in the percentage of our water supply that’s served by local supplies.


Katie Schoolov

Why is this water so expensive?
Yamada: The Carlsbad desalination project is actually a public-private partnership, whereby the water authority as the regional water wholesaler is purchasing the water that’s produced from the Carlsbad project and Poseidon Water.

That is the owner of that project. The water authority has committed over a 30-year period to purchase the output from that project at a set rate, and that rate will escalate over time.

We expect the cost of water to approach the cost of imported water as we go out into the future. Ultimately, we think the water from the Carlsbad project will be less expensive than our current imported water supply. Right now, the cost of imported water is about half of what the cost of water from the Carlsbad plant.

How much will the typical resident pay?
Yamada: Whether you’re going to directly receive water from the Carlsbad plant or you may not get that water directly, you are receiving the reliable benefit of having that water supply as part of our overall water supply portfolio. The average ratepayer in San Diego is going to see an average increase of about $5 (per month) to pay for the Carlsbad project over time.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/dec/14...-desalination/