In February, major news organizations from Smithsonian Magazine to the Daily Mail published headlines declaring a “1,200 year drought,” meaning it’s drier in the Southwest now than it’s been since roughly 800 BC. The news came out of a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, which stated the years since 2000 have been the driest seen in California and surrounding states in the past 12 centuries.
In response to that news, Santa Monica-based nonprofit Heal the Bay hosted a community conversation via Zoom on Tuesday evening, focusing on the Los Angeles area’s ongoing efforts to prepare for the future.
At the water chat, Safe Clean Water Program senior watershed specialist Mikaela Randolph asked panelist John Dorsey about local effects of climate change. Dorsey is a board-certified environmental scientist and a research fellow with the Coastal Research Institute.
“What’s interesting is, all the modeling and everything — the models actually showing when we expected things to start changing from climate change? Everything’s happening even earlier than the models show,” Dorsey began.
“One thing is more extreme dry and wet seasons, especially during our wet seasons. The way the pressure systems line up in the North Pacific, we can get these things called atmospheric rivers,” he continued. Dorsey called the phenomenon “climate whiplash,” with extreme rain followed by extreme dry conditions, which results in a “rain grow, dry burn” cycle. Heavy rain also results in more intense urban runoff as well as mudslides in burn areas. At the same time, the drought cycle means less water from the snowpack.
“That means we’re going to have to require a lot more reliance on local water instead of bringing in,” Dorsey said.
Later in the conversation, another Safe Clean Water Program senior watershed specialist, Nancy Shrodes, asked about infrastructure that will protect against the effects of the extended drought.
“A study from February 2022 said that we are in the worst drought in 1,200 years,” Shrodes asked a panelist. “So, it’s a kind of multi pronged question: What does that look like for Angelenos? And what do we expect for the next water year and the years to come?”
Shrodes directed the question at Rob Beste, assistant general manager of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California.
“Well, the one thing we’ve done and really planned for is to store water and to get water into LA,” Beste said. “As a state and as a region, we’ve really done that quite well.”
Best went on to describe the District’s WIN program — “water independence now” — which is an effort to push water agencies to reduce dependence on imported water as much as possible.
Locally, Santa Monica has spent the last decade hard at work to wean itself off of imported water and toward more stable, reliable and sustainable sources.
Reliance on imported water exploded to nearly 100 percent of the total local water use in Santa Monica due to methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) chemical contamination of local groundwater in the 1990s.
“When the MTBE contamination hit, it took out all of our local groundwater supply,” Water Resources Manager Sunny Wang described in a later phone call with the Daily Press. “So, we had to switch to Metropolitan [Water District] imported water almost 100 percent overnight. So that kind of signaled that, hey, we can’t just rely on one or two sources — we really need to diversify water supply.”
Beginning in 2011, Wang said Santa Monica City Council began developing a sustainable water master plan, to the point where local reliance on imported water is now down to 30 to 40 percent of what it was in the 1990s.
Santa Monica’s next major water infrastructure project — SWIP, which captures and recycles both rainwater and sewer water — is set for completion by late summer 2022. A broad local push toward conservation, coupled with SWIP and other improvement projects, plus local groundwater supply being cleaned and coming back online, means that by next year, local reliance on imported water could be down to just one percent of what it was in 2011.
Beste said it would be decades before a lot of currently contemplated projects go online elsewhere in LA County.
“It’s going to take time, but over the next 10 to 20 years, you’re going to see a lot of projects that treat that wastewater, advance treat that wastewater, and move it so that it becomes usable water,” Beste said. “And that’s really our long term solution for these mega droughts that we’re going to be … You’re going to get more rainwater, less snowpack.
“We’re going to have to take it on to ourselves to come up with solutions — and we will, you know,” Best continued. “We’re not going to run out of water in California.”
One additional bonus of Santa Monica’s early adoption of water independence: The City was first in line for funding from 2018’s countywide Measure W water bond.
“Everybody wants to be construction ready — be shovel ready,” Wang said. “Luckily, we were more than construction and shovel ready for funding agencies to fund us.”
Of the $95.9 million pricetag for getting SWIP online, only about half comes from a City loan. The rest is paid for by $20 million in grants including Measure W; another $20 million comes from Santa Monica’s funds: Measure V Clean Beaches and Oceans Parcel Tax fund and the local City Wastewater Fund.
emily@smdp.com
*This story has been updated to indicate Mikaela Randolph and Nancy Shrodes are senior watershed specialists for the Safe Clean Water Program. It also was edited to say the drought has lasted 12 centuries, not 12 decades.
