Water and energy are interconnected. A frequent term to describe
this relationship is the “water-energy nexus.”
Energy for Water: Energy is needed to store water, get it where
it is needed and also treat it to be used:
* Extracting water from rivers and streams or pumping it
from aquifers, and then conveying it over hills and into storage
facilities is a highly energy intensive process. The State Water
Project (SWP) pumps water 700 miles, including up nearly 2,000
feet over the Tehachapi Mountains. The SWP is the largest single
user of energy in California. It consumes an average of 5 billion
kWh per year. That’s about 2 to 3 percent of all electricity
consumed in California
* Water treatment facilities use energy to pump and process
water for use in homes, businesses and industry
* Consumers use energy to treat water with softeners or
filters, to circulate and pressurize water and to heat and cool
water
* Wastewater plants use energy to pump wastewater to
treatment plants, and also to aerate and filter it at the plant.
Different end uses require more electricity for delivery than
others. Water for residential, commercial and industrial end-use
needs the most energy (11 percent), followed by agricultural
end-use (3 percent), residential, commercial and industrial
supply and treatment (3 percent), agricultural water supply and
treatment (1 percent) and wastewater treatment (1 percent),
according to the California Energy Commission.
Water for Energy: Water is used to generate electricity
* Water is needed either to process raw materials used in a
facility or maintaining a plant,or to just generate electricity
itself.
Overall, the electricity industry is second only to agriculture
as the largest user of water in the United States. Electricity
production from fossil fuels and nuclear energy requires 190,000
million gallons of water per day, accounting for 39 percent of
all freshwater withdrawals in the nation. Coal, the most abundant
fossil fuel, currently accounts for 52 percent of U.S.
electricity generation, and each kWh generated from coal requires
withdrawal of 25 gallons of water.
The mining company, Imperial Gold, is currently in the process
of being approved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to
create a new gold mine by Black Mountain that would see new
jobs and health benefits introduced into the Imperial Valley.
…. But what was perhaps the most exciting prospect was
how their mine construction could have a direct beneficial
impact on the health crisis at the Salton Sea, according to
[Chief Operating Officer for Imperial Gold, Marc] Leduc.
The first floating data center built for Nautilus Data
Technologies is getting a second-phase expansion in Stockton,
Calif., while the firm accelerates plans for it and Bechtel to
engineer and construct others in Maine and possibly
Ireland. The multi-year program allows Nautilus to deploy
its water-based system for sustainable and efficient data
center cooling, while Bechtel focuses on development and
construction. … Nautilus completed the floating 7-MW scalable
Stockton 1 Data Center, located on a barge on the San Joaquin
River, last year before it signed an agreement in June with
Bechtel.
As the first winter storms rolled through this month, a King
Air C90 turboprop aircraft contracted by the hydropower company
Idaho Power took to the skies over southern Idaho to make it
snow. Flying across the cloud tops, the aircraft dropped flares
that burned as they descended, releasing plumes of silver
iodide that caused ice crystals to form and snow to fall over
the mountains. In the spring, that snow will melt and run
downstream, replenishing reservoirs, irrigating fields and
potentially generating hundreds of thousands of additional
megawatt hours of carbon-free hydropower for the state.
For years, policy wonks who wanted to get the lowdown on New
Mexico water went to the “Stansbury Hour.” The informal chats —
usually at bars — were named for Melanie Stansbury, the driving
force behind the gatherings, which were a breeding ground for
legislative and regulatory ideas. Stansbury is now in a
position to try to put those ideas and others into action. In
June, she won a special election to fill former Rep. Deb
Haaland’s seat after President Biden tapped Haaland for
secretary of the Interior Department.
On Oct. 27, the San Jose Planning Commission struck down
recommendations from city staff and the San Jose General Plan
Task Force to protect Coyote Valley from future development. I
cannot express how disappointing this vote was for me.
… Commercial development proposals for Coyote Valley are
rejected because they cause more wear and tear to our roads,
threaten our wildlife crossings, destroy native habitat and
endangered species and contaminate our groundwater. -Written by Assemblymember Ash Kalra,
representing the 27th Assembly District, which encompasses
approximately half of San Jose and includes all of
downtown.
Barely a mile from the southern shore of the Salton Sea — an
accidental lake deep in the California desert, a place best
known for dust and decay — a massive drill rig stands sentinel
over some of the most closely watched ground in American
energy. There’s no oil or natural gas here, despite a cluster
of Halliburton cement tanks and the hum of a generator slowly
pushing a drill bit through thousands of feet of underground
rock. Instead, an Australian company is preparing to tap a
buried reservoir of salty, superheated water to produce
renewable energy — and lithium, a crucial ingredient in
electric car batteries.
All over Pinal County, you see the signs of the drought: empty
fields, abandoned cotton gins and it may get worse. The water
allocation for Pinal County farmers from the Central Arizona
Project is set to drop in January. It could disappear
altogether in 2023. But north of Pinal County’s dusty
fields, an industry that also relies on large amounts of water
is thriving and expanding. Two giant semiconductor projects are
getting underway.
On November 5, 2021, the U.S. Congress
passed President Biden’s major infrastructure bill, HR
3684, the $1.2 trillion ‘‘Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act.” The President is expected to sign
the bill into law. The bill is the largest
single federal investment in infrastructure in a
generation, with the funds to be expended over five
years. It aims to rebuild and
replace failing, aging, and outdated water,
energy, transportation, and communications
systems.
The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California, the only one
still operating in the state, is set to close in 2025. A team
of researchers … found that this nuclear
plant could simultaneously help to stabilize the state’s
electric grid, provide desalinated water to supplement the
state’s chronic water shortages, and provide carbon-free
hydrogen fuel for transportation.
As I finished up my night shift on Sept. 30, there was one
thing that remained in the back of my mind throughout that day:
“WELL No. 28 DRILLING PROJECT” (June – October 2021). Earlier
that day, I … came across the infamous (or rather, unknown to
residents) drilling project, located near my university’s film
school. It didn’t really stand out — I only ever heard about it
from my professors, and with some searching, a Facebook post
announcing its construction from Aug. 12, 2021. -Written by Owen Lucas Agbayani, part of the
Wilkinson College Student Advisory and Leadership Council, a
volunteer for Solar Rights Alliance, as well as an editor for
Chapman University’s Undergraduate Law Review.
Traditionally, washing just one pair of denim pants would
require about 22 gallons of water, but the green tech washing
machines at the Saitex USA factory in Vernon use less than
one-fifth of a gallon. General Manager David Chang says that’s
… equivalent to saving over 10 million gallons of water
per year. Saitex does this by using a recycled water filtration
system. While California is experiencing extreme drought with
its driest year in a century, Saitex has invested in a future
with less water.
After years of restricting the growth of fossil fuel
infrastructure, California is looking to natural gas for power
generation this coming winter after drought and wildfires leave
the state with few other options to keep the lights on.
… Hydropower’s contribution to electricity is set to
fall to just 5% in 2021, from a five-year average of 12%, while
non-hydro renewables, mainly wind and solar, are expected to
rise to 37%, government data shows.
In southern Calif., the Yucaipa Valley Water District (YVWD)
Board of Directors have approved a 28-year energy contract with
ENGIE North America for a customized solar, storage and
microgrid project. YVWD will prioritize the adoption of
clean-powered energy to improve its water energy nexus at two
of its most critical locations, the Yucaipa Valley Regional
Water Filtration Facility and the Wochholz Regional Water
Recycling Facility.
Dam owners sometimes consider dam removal as a policy option to
address dam safety, ecosystem restoration, or other concerns.
The National Inventory of Dams (NID) lists more than 90,000
dams in the United States, many of which function as part of
the nation’s water infrastructure and provide benefits (e.g.,
flood control, hydroelectric power, recreation, navigation, and
water supply). Stakeholders may consider the removal of a dam
for various reasons—for example, if a certain dam requires
major dam safety modifications or no longer provides its
intended benefits.
To date, the discussion around companies and governments moving
to net-zero has mostly centered on greenhouse gas emissions
goals. … But there is another environmental pledge that
several companies are now taking, focused on water. Often
called “water positive,” it centers on making water-intensive
processes more efficient and putting more water back into a
geographic area where a company operates than it takes out …
Citing the accumulation of nearly two weeks of rain in the
North Bay, the Santa Rosa Fire Department on Monday declared an
end to the city’s wildfire season, which began May 17 and
included blazes as large as 50 acres. In addition, PG&E
said it will hit pause on its controversial fire prevention
plan that zapped power to Sonoma County customers living in
fire-prone areas whenever something touched a power line.
California has a reputation as a leader on climate and
environmental policy. So it doesn’t advertise the fact that it
allows the oil and gas industry to store wastewater produced
during drilling and extraction in unlined pits in the ground, a
practice that began in the early 1900s. Now, though,
researchers have revealed the environmental costs of
California’s failure to regulate how its $111 billion oil and
gas industry manages the wastewater, known as produced
water.
For years people on the central coast have been wondering: With
the Pacific Ocean in our back yard, why is there a shortage of
water? And what can be done about that? As the state grapples
with another dry year on the record books, the concern about
having a desalination plant on the Central Coast is only
growing for some.
On the heels of Governor Newsom’s historic $15 billion climate
investment, the state today released a draft of the 2021
California Climate Adaptation Strategy to continue the state’s
work to confront the climate crisis head-on. The draft strategy
is designed to accelerate climate adaptation action across
regions and sectors in California; identify how key state
agency actions fit together to achieve these priorities; and
build on the successes and lessons learned since the first
climate adaptation strategy in 2009.
The number of abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States
is much higher than previously thought, according to an
exclusive analysis shared with The Climate 202. The
analysis, which was done by the Environmental Defense Fund and
McGill University, found that there are 81,283 documented
orphan wells across the country that were drilled and then
improperly abandoned by oil and gas companies. … Each
orphan well is a major climate problem: It spews methane, a
potent greenhouse gas.
A steward of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, Kim Kolpin describes her
panic earlier this month when she heard that oil was spilling
off the shore of the habitat-rich park she has worked at since
1996. The 1,400-acre Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in
Huntington Beach is home to 23 species that are endangered,
threatened or of special concern. It’s treasured by
birdwatchers for the nearly 300 feathered resident and
migratory species, many of which lay their eggs there.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The majestic beauty of the Sierra
Nevada forest is awe-inspiring, but beneath the dazzling blue
sky, there is a problem: A century of fire suppression and
logging practices have left trees too close together. Millions of
trees have died, stricken by drought and beetle infestation.
Combined with a forest floor cluttered with dry brush and debris,
it’s a wildfire waiting to happen.
Fires devastate the Sierra watersheds upon which millions of
Californians depend — scorching the ground, unleashing a
battering ram of debris and turning hillsides into gelatinous,
stream-choking mudflows.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this 24×36
inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson River, and
its link to the Truckee River. The map includes Lahontan Dam and
Reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming areas in the basin.
Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and geography, the
Newlands Project, land and water use within the basin and
wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan Basin
Area Office.
Redesigned in 2017, this beautiful map depicts the seven
Western states that share the Colorado River with Mexico. The
Colorado River supplies water to nearly 40 million people in
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
and the country of Mexico. Text on this beautiful, 24×36-inch
map, which is suitable for framing, explains the river’s
apportionment, history and the need to adapt its management for
urban growth and expected climate change impacts.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use.
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam in 1964 created Lake Powell.
Both are located in north-central Arizona near the Utah border.
Lake Powell acts as a holding tank for outflow from the Colorado
River Upper Basin States: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking,” in California. Much of the information
in the article was presented at a conference hosted by the
Groundwater Resources Association of California.
The connection between water and energy is more relevant than
ever. After existing in separate realms for years, the maxim that
it takes water to produce energy and energy to produce water has
prompted a re-thinking of management strategies, including an
emphasis on renewable energy use by water agencies.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at the energy
requirements associated with water use and the means by which
state and local agencies are working to increase their knowledge
and improve the management of both resources.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
desalination – an issue that is marked by great optimism and
controversy – and the expected role it might play as an
alternative water supply strategy.
This printed copy of Western Water examines climate change –
what’s known about it, the remaining uncertainty and what steps
water agencies are talking to prepare for its impact. Much of the
information comes from the October 2007 California Climate Change
and Water Adaptation Summit sponsored by the Water Education
Foundation and DWR and the November 2007 California Water Policy
Conference sponsored by Public Officials for Water and
Environmental Reform.
Hydropower generation is prevalent in the West, where rapidly
flowing river systems have been tapped for generations to produce
electricity. Hydropower is a clean, steady and reliable energy
source, but the damming of rivers has exacted a toll on the
environment, affecting, among other things, the migration of fish
to vestigial spawning grounds. Many of those projects are due to
be relicensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The California power crisis has made international headlines. But
what is the link between water and power in California? How is
the state’s dry spell affecting its hydropower generation? How
has the electric crisis affected water users in the state? These
questions and others are addressed in this issue of Western
Water.
