By the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board | February 2, 2022 | The Sacramento Bee
Sacramento — which once only had to worry about seasonal floods — now worries each year about delivering water to its citizens in a hotter and drier California. But there is a way for Sacramento to capture rain and snow, and for the broader region to keep surface reservoirs like Folsom and Oroville lakes nearly full. This same technique could help Sacramento capture enough water to share with neighboring areas in dry years, as well as to store it when we need it most.
On September 8, 2021, ECOS and Habitat 2020 submitted a letter regarding the Groundwater Sustainability Plan of the South American Sub-basin (SASb), just south of the American River.
Background
Climate change in the Sacramento region requires innovation to deal with more extremes in precipitation. In wetter years, we should pump water into groundwater basins so that we can pump it out during drier years. Just south of the American River is the South American Sub-basin (SASb) that we agree should be used this way. The SASb Groundwater Sustainability Plan includes a Sustainable Yield value – the amount of groundwater that can be extracted annually from the SASb while maintaining it at a sustainable level. This letter provides comments on how the draft Groundwater Sustainability Plan develops the Sustainable Yield level and proposes management actions that should be taken to ensure the SASb’s Sustainable Yield is maintained in the future.
By Ralph Propper And Tom Gray | July 31, 2021 | Special To The Sacramento Bee
ECOS Board President Ralph Propper co-authored this op-ed, published in the Sacramento Bee on July 31, 2021.
Vigilance is required to reduce water consumption and water waste. Water your lawn less and early in the day to minimize evaporation; don’t let sprinklers run off onto sidewalks; fix household leaks; take shorter showers and wash only full loads of dishes and clothes.
You should also, however, be sure to efficiently water your trees. Many trees were lost in the last drought, an unintended casualty from reduced lawn watering. Let’s give them special care this time.
Invest in long-term water efficiency measures, like removing or reducing your lawn by half in favor of water-sipping native plants, or adding high-efficiency appliances, WaterSense-labeled smart sprinkler timers, high-efficiency sprinklers and drip irrigation. Many local water agencies offer rebates and other incentives to help residents pay for these improvements — some have recently even doubled rebate amounts.
Water providers are doing their part to preserve water in our lakes and rivers by sustainably shifting to using more groundwater.
Saving water today could leave some carry-over storage in Folsom Reservoir for next year. We don’t want to drain that bank account in case next winter is dry, too.
As the West descends deeper into drought, climate and water experts are growing increasingly alarmed by California’s severely shriveling reservoirs.
On Monday, Shasta Lake — the largest reservoir in the state — held a scant 1.57 million acre-feet of water, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, or about 35% of its capacity.
A series of satellite images captured by NASA show just how dramatically the water level has fallen.
By Tony Bizjak, Dale Kasler, and Phillip Reese | July 18, 2021 | The Sacramento Bee
As ECOS has been trying to raise attention about for years, Folsom doesn’t have the water supply it needs to add as many residents as it is with new housing developments.
The increasingly dire situation has rekindled a simmering debate about one of the Sacramento area’s fastest-growing suburbs: Are Folsom’s lofty growth ambitions putting residents at risk of becoming water poor as climate change reduces the region’s already tight water supply?
Folsom has added roughly 9,000 residents in the last six years. And California’s latest drought arrives as the city is in the early stages of building a subdivision that some day will include 11,000 homes: Folsom Ranch south of Highway 50. State officials have already questioned the city’s ability to supply that development.
