B O D Y, M I N D A N D S P I R I T
HEALTH & WELLNESS
THE SOURCE. The Arroyo Secco may seem like
only a slim trickle, but it is Pasadena’s only source
of local water.
Hot, Dry and Thirsty:
The New Normal
Global warming is likely making permanent
drought a reality in California. Are Pasadena’s
days as “The City of Roses” numbered?
STORY BY // MATTHEW FLEISCHER
PHOTOS BY // NATHANIAL TAYLOR
∫ IT’S A GORGEOUS JANUARY DAY IN THE LOS ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST. THE
SUN IS SHINING ALONG THE ARROYO SECO RIVER, JUST NORTH OF NASA’S JET
PROPULSION LABORATORY, SENDING BEAMS OF LIGHT SPARKLING THROUGH THE
SPECTACULAR CANOPY OF THE TREE-LINED EL PRIETO CANYON. THE WEATHER
IS WARM. DOG WALKERS, JOGGERS, DAY HIKERS AND CYCLISTS ALL FLOCK TO THE
CANYON TO ENJOY THE ABSURDLY PLEASANT WINTER WEATHER.
To most people in Pasadena, this kind of
day is the reason we live where we do—the
kind of day that drives freezing New Yorkers
into a jealous rage. And yet, to those who have
been paying attention, there’s menace in these
crystal blue skies—a menace that threatens
to completely alter the way we live, and upend
Pasadena’s reputation as “The City of Roses.”
January is supposed to be the rainiest
month of the year, yet the Arroyo hasn’t seen
a single drop. Nor will it for several weeks.
Despite a hopeful amount of rain in December,
California is still in a severe drought that is
entering its forth year—and is showing no
signs of abating.
How bad is it?
Anthony Zanpiello, executive officer of the
Raymond Basin Management Board, which
oversees the underground aquifer (called the
Raymond Basin) that feeds Pasadena and most
of the San Gabriel Valley, offers this metaphor:
“If you look at getting out of the drought as
a drive from Downtown Los Angeles to San
Francisco, we haven’t even left Los Angeles yet.”
In Pasadena, groundwater levels dropped
so significantly in 2014— between 20-60
feet—that the Pasadena Department of Water
and Power actually had to lower the pumps
that suck the water from the Raymond Basin
for our use.
To its credit, Pasadena isn’t taking the
drought lightly. The city is currently planning
two major projects to boost the local water supply. The first will be to refurbish and update
spreading grounds along the Arroyo Seco. The
plan involves uprooting an unused parking lot
at JPL and naturalizing it, allowing rainwater
and snowmelt flowing down the Arroyo Seco
to seep into the Raymond Basin below, where
it can be stored safely until needed.
A second proposed project would construct
a pipeline to connect Pasadena to the Los
Angeles/Glendale Water Reclamation Plant,
in order to import treated sewage water for
outdoor use. Major water users like the Rose
Bowl and Brookside Golf Course would gain
access to the recycled pipeline, saving precious
and costly city drinking water for indoor use.
Brad Boman, engineering manager for the
Pasadena Department of Water and Power,
estimates the Arroyo Seco project could
boost Pasadena’s local water supply by 1,000
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HEALTH & WELLNESS
B O DY, M I N D A N D S P I R I T
NOT A DROP TO DRINK. Four years of drought
has left many of Pasadena’s water capture sites
bone dry.
acre-feet per year. The Glendale pipeline could
bring an additional 3,000 acre-feet of water to
Pasadena per year.
“I’m hopeful that if we’re proactive, if we
build these upgrades and actively strive to
conserve water, we’ll be fine,” says Boman.
“Cities like Pasadena were built because there’s
water. Pasadena was built because of the
Arroyo Seco.”
Indeed, for decades in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the Arroyo Seco and
the Raymond Basin below provided sufficient
water resources to hydrate the city of Pasadena
and feed a burgeoning citrus industry. As
Pasadena’s population grew however, along
with the rest of the San Gabriel Valley, and
the rush of immigrants from the East Coast
and Midwest of America, it began to shape the
city’s landscaping to feel more like the lush,
rainy environments they left behind, and the
local groundwater supply began to run out.
Pasadena may be landscaped to look like
Illinois, but Illinois it isn’t.
By 1937, the situation was dire enough that
a landmark court case, Pasadena v. Alhambra,
was needed to set safe legal guidelines for
how much water each community in the San
Gabriel Valley could extract from the Raymond
Basin. Finally settled in 1944, the case was the
first regional adjudication of groundwater rights
in the history of California.
Pasadena v. Alhambra ensured Pasadena
didn’t blow through its entire local water supply. It did not, however, change the city’s water
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use patterns. The completion of the Colorado
River Aqueduct in 1941 buttressed dwindling
local water supplies in Pasadena with a rush
of reinforcements imported from the Colorado
River.
These days local water only supplies
roughly 40 percent of Pasadena’s thirsty,
Illinois-like needs. The rest comes from the
Metropolitan Water District—a state agency
that imports water to the Southland from both
the Sierra Nevada’s and from the Colorado.
Despite Pasadena’s best intentions in boosting its local water supply, the city’s planned
improvements, while essential, are far from
sufficient to completely meet Pasadena’s current water needs.
Pasadena uses roughly 30,000 acre-feet of
water annually. That means even with capital
improvements, Pasadena’s giant glass is still
half-empty. And that’s assuming historically
normal amounts of precipitation, something
former Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California chairman Tim Brick,
now managing director of the Arroyo Seco
Foundation, says we likely won’t be able to
count on anymore.
“I think people need to realize that this
drought isn’t a temporary situation,” he tells
Pasadena Magazine. “Because of global
warming, the conditions we’re seeing now are
probably the new normal.”
If severe drought isn’t the new normal,
mild changes in our weather pattern could
have huge impacts on Pasadena’s water supply.
Water collection is a complicated thing. In
order to prevent evaporation, Pasadena harvests
water by creating huge patches of open land
along the Arroyo Seco, where water can spread
out and filter into the ground supply. The
soil along the riverbed, however, is composed
largely of clay—which isn’t particularly permeable. Only so much water can get through
before it runs off and is channeled out to sea
via the county flood control network.
What that means is rainfall patterns are
nearly as important as the amount of rain we
get. Pasadena averages roughly 20 inches of
rain per year. But if all that rain comes in, say,
one or two super storms (severe, sporadic bouts
of inclement weather are a potential outcome
of global warming) most of that rain will run
off into the ocean.
Rain doesn’t do Pasadena much good if we
can’t collect and store it.
It gets worse. Assuming Pasadena
summons the political will and money to
go through with its current planned capital
projects, the city will have all but maximized
its capacity to harvest rainwater and snowmelt
from local supplies.
The reality is that Pasadena, as it’s currently
constructed, simply cannot exist without
significant amounts of imported water.
That’s a huge problem, because Southern
California isn’t the only place where drought
may become the new normal. Foggy, rainy
San Francisco didn’t see a drop of rain in
January—the first time in the city’s recorded
history that has happened. And what happens
in Northern California impacts us, because
the Metropolitan Water District imports water
from there. Melting snow from the Sierra
Nevada’s, for instance, supplies nearly two
thirds of all the water used in the entire state of
California.
As of late February, California’s snowpack
was a dire 20 percent of its normal levels.
“I think people need to realize that this drought isn’t a
temporary situation. Because of global warming, the
conditions we’re seeing now are probably the new normal.”
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B O DY, M I N D A N D S P I R I T
HOPE AND A PRAYER. This cracked JPL parking
lot is arguable Pasadena’s last best hope to
bolster its local water supply.
Due to the prolonged drought, the reserves
that help make up for low snowpack years have
dwindled. According to a February story in
the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Metropolitan
Water District reserves have shrunk to 1.2 million acre-feet of storage, down from 2.7 million
acre-feet in 2012. If that doesn’t sound scary
enough, consider this: Southern California
alone uses four million acre-feet of water
annually.
If we can’t tap enough water locally, and we
can’t import, where does that leave the “City
of Roses?” Is the beauty we’ve grown accustomed to about to wither? Is it environmentally
responsible to even try to preserve it?
“That’s the question we need to be asking
ourselves,” says Brick. “We’ve relied for many
years on outside sources to prop up our green
lawns. Those outside sources are becoming
increasingly less reliable. The big use that
needs to be addressed is outdoor irrigation,
particularly in landscaping.”
If you ask Anthony Zanpiello of the
Raymond Basin Management Board, sustainable water policy means drastic change for
everyone.
“If I were dictator of California’s water
supply I would ban all non-essential outdoor
use,” he says. “We’ve reduced water use just
about all we can inside the home. All that’s left
is outside. No more lawns.”
Before you go bulldozing and paving your
lawn, however, there is some reasoned dissent
on the matter.
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Jim Folsom, director of the Botanical
Gardens at The Huntington, argues that our
landscaped, green community isn’t all bad.
“We are in a heat sink of an urban area,”
he says. “Gardening and landscaping keeps us
cool. It prevents dust from polluting our air.
And, when it does rain, it prevents runoff and
allows more water to filter underground. My
biggest fear is that some people may just give
up. I fear Pasadena might look abandoned.”
Or course, Folsom admits, the realities of
the drought mean that Pasadena can’t stay the
same. It needs to change its landscaping habits.
“These three years of drought have been a
huge wake up call,” he says
Nowhere is that more evident than the
Huntington itself. With more than 200 acres
of grounds to maintain, the Huntington is
one of the biggest water users in the Pasadena
area. Unlike most water users, however, the
Huntington has a deal to extract a negotiated
amount directly from the Raymond Basin. In
2014, the Huntington far exceeded its allotted
amount—by over 14 percent. They were forced
to buy water from neighboring Alhambra to
ensure the survival of the gardens.
The Huntington was lucky Alhambra had
water to spare. That likely won’t be the case
in the years to come. For the Huntington, the
reality is change or die—perhaps a microcosm
for the broader challenge faced by Pasadena
at-large.
To its credit, the Huntington is responding
to the challenge.
“I don’t think the Huntington will resemble
its lush self in 10-15 years,” says Folsom.
“We’ve given up on that. It will be verdant, but
it will use half the water as another landscape
would have used. There are ways to deal with
the drought that are interesting, instead of just
giving up. We’re not out of options. We need to
use our ingenuity.”
Folsom says that the Huntington removed
17 acres of lawn and is in the process of
modernizing its watering system to maximize
efficiency. It also is in the midst of planting a
new, succulent-heavy, water-efficient garden. If
the Huntington was once symbolic of the kind
of unsustainable water opulence the Pasadena
area can no longer afford, Folsom hopes it can
become a model of transition to our new waterstarved future.
“We’re starting to walk the walk,” says
Folsom. “It’s hard to take people down to the
lily pond and say this is how you use less water.
The new garden will allow us to speak more
freely. We need to keep people gardening, but
help them make great choices.”
Folsom says that instead of grass, succulents make for beautiful, low-water garden
options. He also says that native trees like the
coast live oak make a good alternative to open
lawns.
“We have to embrace shade. If you choose
the right trees, they are not water intensive.”
Ultimately, says Pasadena Water and
Power’s Boman, it’s conservation efforts like
the ones Folsom describes that will be essential to the future of Pasadena. There’s only
so much the city can do on its own.
“We all share water resources. You can’t just
generate water like you do power. Conservation
is ultimately the best answer. Pasadena has
done a good job thus far. People have stepped
up to plate with voluntary reductions. We’re using less water now than we were in the 1960s
and 70s. But we all need to be proactive as
possible to ensure water supply for future.”
So can Pasadena still maintain its post as
the “City of Roses?” Probably not. But we can
still be a beautiful, verdant city if we respect
our new environmental realities.
“Drought is a great teacher,” says Brick.
“We need to learn its lessons. There are solutions out there if we take the steps necessary to
conserve.”
“City of Roses” is nice. But we could do a
lot worse than “City of Succulents.”
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