WaterWired

From 'The Water Report': Lisa Beutler's Interview of California DWR Director Karla Nemeth

David Light of The Water Report grated me permission to publish this interview from Issue #188. The interview of Karla Nemeth was conducted by my friend, colleague and AWRA President Lisa Beutler, Principal and Executive Facilitator extraordinaire at Stantec.

The entire interview is five pages long; I have reproduced several items that caught my eye. There is more, though, such as a section on the Bay-Delta but I could not go there - still recovering from my term on the NRC Bay-Delta Committee.

Click on the text to enlarge it.

Download Nemeth_10.14.19

Time to cut to the chase...

Very good! Karla has her work cut out fur her but she sure sounds that she is up for the challenge.

Thanks again to David Light! And to Lisa Beutler for her interviewing skill.

Enjoy!

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol (in @theipaper via @TheWeek)

Paper: 'Compound Climate Events Transform Electrical Power Shortfall Risk in the Pacific Northwest'

I just ran across this open-access paper in Nature Communications: Compound Climate Events Transform Electrical Power Shortfall Risk in the Pacific Northwest by S. W. D. Turner, N. Voisin, J. Fazio, D. Hua & M. Jourabchi, Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 8 (2019).  

Download S41467-018-07894-4

Download data:click here 

Abstract
Power system reliability is sensitive to climate-driven variations in both energy demand and water availability, yet the combined effect of these impacts is rarely evaluated. Here we show that combined climate change impacts on loads and hydropower generation may have a transformative effect on the nature and seasonality of power shortfall risk in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Under climate change, potential shortfall events occur more readily, but are significantly less severe in nature. A seasonal reversal in shortfall risk occurs: winter shortfalls are eradicated due to reduced building heating demands, while summer shortfalls multiply as increased peak loads for day-time cooling coincide with impaired hydropower generation. Many of these summer shortfalls go unregistered when climate change impacts on loads and hydropower dispatch are analyzed in isolation—highlighting an important role of compound events.

Cutting to the chase...

Discussion
A planner or policy-maker trying to interpret and respond to these results might consider the following practical implications. First, the dramatic shift in vulnerability of the system from winter to summer highlights the importance of informing resource expansion planning with the combined effect of climate change on load and water availability. For instance, there are certain actions that might be taken in light of the potential for increased summer event frequency. Demand response measures may be viewed more favorably, and alternative joint power-river operating methods could be explored. Second, given the apparent sensitivity of shortfall severity to climate change, it may be useful to know how damage or cost varies according to shortfall duration and magnitude. This has to be studied in light of the potential for non-linearity in costs of emergency actions (e.g., compensation to industry for loss of power). For example, a 5000 MW shortfall is likely to be more than five times as costly as a 1000 MW shortfall if it exhausts standby and emergency options, causing rolling brown-outs for customers. Incorporating this level of understanding will be necessary to make risk-based planning decisions based on an analysis of shortfall events. Third, it will be important to consider uncertainty in the load and hydropower dispatch projections, and the conditions under which the forcing effects used in this study could be mitigated or exacerbated. Important considerations might include evolving market and regulatory structures that promote inter-regional planning, transmission, and distribution constraints, changes to the Columbia River Treaty, and new environmental regulations. There may also be socioeconomic changes that affect the relationship between load and temperature. Homes that currently lack electrified cooling may install new air conditioning systems. The prevalence of air conditioning systems in Portland (Oregon,), for example, increased from ~44% of households in 2002 to more than 70% of households in 2016. The future relationship between temperature and load will depend on whether and for how long this uptake trend will continue before reaching saturation.

The Western electricity crisis of 2001 was referred to as a “perfect storm”—the culmination of a decade of underinvestment and a steadily widening supply-demand deficit, exposed by an extreme dry period with impaired hydropower conditions in the Pacific Northwest. The crisis wrought enormous financial costs for utilities in the Pacific Northwest, including substantial compensation paid to the aluminum industry to halt production. Today, rigorous, forward-looking planning ensures that power systems are built out to be more resilient for now and in the future. Yet whilst planning makes allowances for expected socioeconomic change, including population growth and industrial development, the possible impacts of climate change on shortfall risk are rarely evaluated. Currently, the science literature contains only a small and piecemeal collection of studies examining climate impacts on grid operations, with each study focusing on disparate aspects of the power system. For example, a study of the U.S. Eastern Interconnection found that grid reliability is sensitive to summer heatwaves, which may raise peak cooling loads and derate gas turbine plants simultaneously Similarly, a study of grid operators in Germany and Austria demonstrated a need for additional generating capacity to meet growing summer peak loads for cooling. The importance of compound effects demonstrated in the present work suggests that what planners will ultimately need is an assessment that combines all potential climate-related impacts across a spectrum of climate futures and policy scenarios.

In this study we apply lower-bound, conservative climate change scenarios to demonstrate a measurable impact of compound events under the most conservative climate scenarios available. Summer shortfall risk would be intensified further under more extreme forcing that is projected by other models, or which may be expected later in the century (see Supplementary Figure 1). Planning for such effects will be particularly important for the Pacific Northwest, which, like many other power grids throughout the world, exports electricity across adjacent grids. Further research for this region may be directed toward improved understanding of climate impacts on supply and demand under a broader range of climate futures, including the imminent river flows and reservoir rule curves to be produced under the auspices of the River Management Joint Operating Committee (RMJOC).

Enjoy!

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” - Matthew 11:28

The Great Salt Lake and 'The Decline of the World's Saline Lakes'

Tim Smith, retired USGS hydrologist, sent around an October 2017 Nature article by Wayne Wurtsbaugh et al., Decline of the World's Saline Lakes. Download the article below or read it online by clicking on the title. 

Download Decline_of_Saline_Lakes 

Thanks to Michael van der Valk for providing the PDF.

The text below is from Tim's email and is taken from the article.

“The Great Salt Lake, located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest salt water lakein the Western Hemisphere,and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. In an average year the lake covers an area of around 1,700 square miles (4,400 km), but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its shallowness. For instance, in 1963 it reached its lowest recorded size at 950 square miles (2,460 km²), but in 1988 the surface area was at the historic high of 3,300 square miles (8,500 km²). In terms of surface area, it is the largest lake in the United States that is not part of the Great Lakes region.

“The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric pluvial lake that once covered much of western Utah. The three major tributaries to the lake, the Jordan, Weber and Bear rivers together deposit around 1.1 million tons of minerals in the lake each year. As it is endorheic (has no outlet besides evaporation), it has very high salinity (far saltier than seawater) and its mineral content is steadily increasing. Due to the high density resulting from its mineral content, swimming in the Great Salt Lake is similar to floating. Its shallow, warm waters cause frequent, sometimes heavy lake effect snows from late fall through spring.”

“Since 1847, the Great Salt Lake has steadily shrunk, reaching its lowest recorded level in 2016. Today, the lake is 3.6 meters below its 1847 level and just half its original volume. Previously, many researchers thought the decline—here and in other saltwater lakes—was caused by wet and dry cycles related to climate change, says Wayne Wurtsbaugh, a limnologist at Utah State University in Logan.

“To test that notion, Wurtsbaugh and his colleagues recreated the climate around the Great Salt Lake for 170 years, based on historical precipitation, stream level records, and tree ring data. The records showed that precipitation and temperature patterns had hardly fluctuated during the period, meaning that the amount of water flowing into the lake from nearby streams is likely the same today as it was in 1847. Next, the team did some hydrological accounting, creating what’s known as a water balance. They compared the amount of water flowing into the lake from rivers, precipitation, and groundwater to the amount evaporating out of the lake; if the lake stayed the same size, the water in and out should balance. It didn’t.

“Why? Every year, people living in the region (which includes rapidly growing Salt Lake City) divert 3.3 trillion liters of water, not from the lake itself, but from the handful of streams feeding it. With climate staying relatively stable, the team concluded that humans are triggering the decline by consuming streamwater before it replenishes the lake, they reported last week in Nature Geoscience. Although some of that water returns to the lake (for example, by soaking into the ground after irrigation), Wurtsbaugh says the new calculations show that the overall amount fell 39% from 2003 to 2012. This, in addition to long-term stream records, suggests that climate change isn’t the culprit.

Wurtsbaugh says that the key to preserving saltwater lakes (including Iran's Lake Urmia) is to strike a balance between human consumption and conservation. The team concludes that inflows to the Great Salt Lake will need to increase 24% to 29% to maintain its health and stability. Wurtsbaugh adds that with the population of Utah set to double by 2050, long-term conservation and planning is crucial. “We need to be thinking 50, 100, 200 years out.”

I love the way that the water use is expressed in liters, which makes the annual freshwater diversion sound really high. That figure is about 2,600,000 acre-feet per year, a commonly-used unit. for volume in the wester USA. A lot, for sure, but it sounds 'better' than 3.3 trillion liters. Even the use of cubic meters instead of liters would have decreased the figure by a factor of 1000. I suspect the people who divert would prefer the acre-feet figure. Why not use ounces?

Very good article.

Enjoy!

"Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves." - Richard Feynman

Paper: Recharging Aquifers by Capturing Flood Flows - Texas Case Study

Good stuff from Qian Yang and Bridget R. Scanlon in this informative paper, How much Water can be Captured from Flood Flows to Store in Depleted Aquifers for Mitigating Floods and Droughts? A case Study from Texas, US, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 14, No. 5.

Click on the article title to access the online version with its links and supplemental information.

Here is a popular description of the project.

Abstract
Extreme flooding from Hurricane Harvey (~100 km³, ~80 million acre feet, maf of rainfall) in Houston, Texas, US co-located with depleted aquifers raises the question of whether we can capture floodwater to reduce flooding impacts and replenish aquifers for droughts. Here we quantified how much water could be captured from high magnitude flows (HMFs) in 10 major rivers discharging to the Gulf of Mexico for potential storage in depleted aquifers along the Texas Gulf Coast. Results show that HMFs (≥95th percentile) from rivers discharging to the Gulf of Mexico total 37 km³ (30 maf) in 2015–2017, similar in capacity to US Lake Mead (32 km³, 26 maf). These flows are less than modeled unappropriated flows that consider appropriated water rights and limited analysis suggests moderate reduction from environmental flows. Similarity in high flow volumes and modeled groundwater depletion in the Gulf Coast Aquifer system (~25 km³, 20 maf) underscores the potential to partially mitigate flooding using aquifer storage. Interim storage would be required to resolve disconnects between high flood intensities and low aquifer injection rates. Engineering approaches will become increasingly important to manage climate extremes.

Conclusions
The challenges of floods and droughts to water resource managers can be partially mitigated by storing HMFs in surface and subsurface reservoirs, as evaluated for the Texas Gulf Coast region. Estimated HMF volumes exceed modeled unappropriated water rights. Capturing an estimated 65% of HMF flows should not impact modeled environmental flow requirements, using the San Antonio and Brazos basins as case studies. The total HMF volume during the last three wet years (37 km³; 30 maf, ~2 times state water use, 2015–2017) is sufficient to replenish the depleted Texas Gulf Coast Aquifer system (~25 km³, ~20 maf). The inverse exponential relationship between number of HMF events and HMF duration and volume is favorable for aquifer storage as low numbers of long duration events (e.g. ≥1 week) contribute most (80%) to HMF volumes based on the past 50 years record. Capturing HMFs and storing them in these depleted aquifers will require additional wells for storm water management and aquifer storage and recovery in the Texas Gulf Coast region. In addition to quantifying the potential water volumes that can be captured from HMFs, this study highlights many of the additional factors that need to be considered, such as water rights and environmental flows, to assess the feasibility of subsurface storage of flood waters.

We're thinking along the same lines based upon our MAR work in the Yakima Valley, WA.

Enjoy!

"We need to talk. Your students are complaining you are being adultist in the classroom. I don't know what that is but I know we need to keep the kids happy." - @ass_deans

CRS In Focus Report: 'The Reclamation Fund' (Updated 21 May 2019)

I wonder how many Western WaterWonks have heard of the Reclamation Fund? Probably a bunch.

Here's a nice little CRS two-pager from Charles V. Stern simply titled 'The Reclamation Fund'.   

Download CRS_InFocus_Reclamation_Fund_21May2019

Here is the introduction:

The Reclamation Act of 1902 authorized the Secretary of the Interior to construct irrigation works in western states through the Reclamation Service (later renamed the Bureau of Reclamation [BOR or Reclamation]). It also established the Reclamation Fund to pay for these projects. The Reclamation Fund was established as a special fund within the U.S. Treasury. (Special funds are fund accounts for receipts and spending with specific taxes or revenues earmarked for a specific purpose.) The fund was designated to receive receipts from the sale of federal lands in the western United States, as well as other sources. It was originally conceived as a revolving fund (i.e., a business- like fund). That is, after its initial capitalization by federal appropriations, receipts from existing project repayments were expected to fund new projects. Congress later made substantial changes to the fund, including adding new receipt sources and making it subject to annual appropriations.

Enjoy!

"You are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights for there is not sufficient water to supply the land". - John Wesley Powell, 1893