03 July 2015 | Volume 1 | Issue 13
BABY, IT’S HOT OUTSIDE...
California’s drought condition remains
dire, with almost 47 percent1 of the
state’s landmass characterized as being in
Exceptional Drought. The conditions are
impacting both humans and the health of
fish in the state’s rivers. The California State
Water Resources Control Board is currently
considering a United States Bureau of
Reclamation temperature management plan
to release in the order of 7,250 cubic feet
per second2 from the Shasta Reservoir to the
Sacramento River to ensure sufficient cold
water to protect Chinook salmon. The Board
has also enacted additional conservation
requirements for approximately 13,000
properties that use surface or groundwater
connected to four tributaries of the Russian
River system to ensure vital environmental flows are maintained.3
AND DRY...
The state’s major reservoirs are showing the strain
CALIFORNIA RESERVOIR CAPACITY
of maintaining water demand for the environment
and humans. While California enacted conservation
regulations in May 2015, the fact remains that only 18.7
percent of the state’s water providers have met these
requirements.4 Moving into the heat of the summer,
California’s reservoirs are at 45 percent of capacity
– and only 59 percent of the long-term average – for
this time of the year. In fact, reservoir levels are flirting
with numbers unseen since California’s 1977 drought
– the driest period on record in California. With the
climatological dry season in full swing, the current
drought is likely to persist and/or intensify throughout
most, if not all of, the July/August/September 2015
CALIFORNIA RESERVOIR LEVELS, 2014/15 COMPARED TO CAPACITY,
season.5
HISTORICAL AVERAGE, 1977 (DRIEST PERIOD ON RECORD) AND 1983
(WETTEST PERIOD ON RECORD)7
For more information, please visit www.gwfathom.com or call 1.855.FATHOM1 (1.855.328.4661).
©2015 FATHOM Water Management, Inc. Intellectual Property. All Rights Reserved.
And the situation for groundwater is not
any better. Using sophisticated computer
models that combine measurements of
water storage from NASA’s GRACE satellite
with a long-term meteorological data,
researchers estimate that the majority of
California’s shallow groundwater is in the
second percentile6 – meaning that since
1948, soil in California has been wetter than
it currently is more than 98 percent of the
time.
BUT IT’S WORSE THAN THAT
The problem today has been made
CALIFORNIA AVERAGE YEARLY PER CAPITA STORAGE AVAILABILITY7
worse by the combination of the
extended nature of the current
drought and the fact that the state’s
population has increased by over
50 percent since 1977. On a per
capita basis, California has less
stored water available today than
it had during the 1977 drought. In
1977, California had an average
available storage of 0.471 acre-feet
per person. In 2014, that number
was 0.396 acre-feet per person.7
While groundwater is often viewed
as a hedge against drought, the
Stockholm Environment Institute
estimated in 2011 that Californian groundwater use was resulting in an overdraft of 150 million acrefeet per year – approximately 49 trillion gallons per year8. The result is that a large portion of California’s
aquifers have suffered declines in excess of 40 feet.9
Our engineered, supply-side water systems, while well situated for a narrow range of environmental
conditions, are straining under the volatility that exists in the water delivery cycle today.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
On the scale of water issues, the crisis in California is progressing at light speed. Water managers and
utilities accustomed to having years to plan and deploy solutions are faced with the reality that measures
For more information, please visit www.gwfathom.com or call 1.855.FATHOM1 (1.855.328.4661).
©2015 FATHOM Water Management, Inc. Intellectual Property. All Rights Reserved.
need to be implemented today. We are simply not
going to be able to build new supply, new reservoirs
or new pipelines fast enough to adapt to this problem.
And in fact more supply is not the solution. We need
a better understanding of how, where and when we
are using water. The good news is that data-driven
conservation schemes that combine more granular
data from Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
with Customer Information Systems and Customer
Presentment platforms can effect meaningful
reductions in demand in short time frames.
AREAS OF WATER-TABLE DECLINE OR ARTESIAN WATER-LEVEL DECLINE IN
For the customer, access to detailed, time-relevant
EXCESS OF 40 FEET.9
data, means dramatic changes in consumption. With
access to this data, subtle societal pressures can be
reinforced and the utility can nudge the customers’ fundamental understanding of water – particularly
when combined with financial context. In the face of increasing water prices, making consumers
intimately aware of the impact their own actions have on their costs will be imperative.
The highly-configurable FATHOM demand-side management tools are a rapid, flexible and effective
means of reducing pressure on water resources and preserving revenue. FATHOM can be deployed in 60
to 90 days resulting in decreased demands, while also improving utility revenue by combining geospatial
data with billing, taxation and building records.
In a time where wild variations in natural delivery systems and financial conditions are a constant
threat to utility operations, such tools are powerful assets in our arsenal. Rather than spending decades
permitting and constructing new water supplies or water transfer schemes, FATHOM can be deployed
quickly, reliably and result in an almost instantaneous demand reduction – with the corollary benefit of
incremental revenue.
REFERENCES
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA
1
http://www.acwa.com/news/endangered-and-invasive-species/drought-drives-changes-flows-shasta-protect-salmon
2
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/press_room/press_releases/2015/pr061715_fnl_russianriver_emerg.pdf
3
FATHOM Drought Watch, 12 June 2015, Volume 1, Issue 10 http://www.gwfathom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/FATHOM-
4
Drought-Watch-v1.10.pdf
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_discussion.html
5
http://drought.unl.edu/nasa_grace/GRACE_GWS.png
6
Data from http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/prevreservoirs/STORAGEW and http://www.google.com/publicdata/
7
explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&met_y=population&idim=state:06000:48000&hl=en&dl=en
F. Ackerman, E.A. Stanton, “The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis,” Stockholm Environment Institute—
8
US Center, 2011:5, http://www.sei-us.org/publications/id/371
T. E. Reilly, K. F. Dennehy, W. M. Alley, and W. L. Cunningham, “Ground-Water Availability in the United States,” US Geological
9
Survey Circular 1323 (2008): 70; also available online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1323/,
For more information, please visit www.gwfathom.com or call 1.855.FATHOM1 (1.855.328.4661).
©2015 FATHOM Water Management, Inc. Intellectual Property. All Rights Reserved.