Rather than conserve water, Golden Staters continue to hatch far-fetched schemes for importing it. They’re not going to stop anytime soon !
Thirsty appeal: Named for an advocate of piping Northwest
water to So Cal, Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area has views across the dry
L.A. Basin. Photo: CC/Flickr/T.Tseng
Kenneth Hahn was an icon of progressive
Los Angeles. Hahn, who died in 1997, was a member of the Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors for 40 years, 1952 to 1992, and before that a member of
the Los Angeles City Council.
A state recreation area near Culver City
is named in his honor. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times described
Hahn as legendary. He championed major league baseball for the city, freeway
callboxes, paramedics and civil rights.
He also advocated diverting a portion of
the Columbia River to water-scarce Southern California at a time when the city
faced withering drought, as it does today.
Several times in his illustrious career,
perhaps more than several times, he unsuccessfully introduced resolutions
calling for investigation of his diversion idea.
In May 1990, he wrote to then-Oregon
Governor Neil Goldschmidt imploring him to “act like a good neighbor” and
support diverting the Columbia.
Talk about walking into a running Oregon
chainsaw.
“I have the distinct impression that you
are trying to steal my water,” Goldschmidt responded in a letter to Hahn. “I don’t have enough
water in the Columbia to raise the fish we need to rear, move the barges we are
trying to move, generate the electricity that we all so badly need, irrigate
the crops that need it, keep the native American tribes happy and then send
some south to you.”
Goldschmidt ended with a curt, “hoping
you’re not serious.”
None of those constraints has changed
today. In fact, there are more constraints on Columbia River water today than
in 1990—protecting threatened and endangered species of salmon and steelhead,
for example—including in the estuary downstream of Bonneville Dam where Hahn’s
pipeline would have started.
Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer
also responded to Hahn, urging the supervisor to “save your stationery and
postage. The rivers you would tap to slake the unquenchable thirst of Southern
Californians happen to be major waterways of life and commerce in our area.
Oregonians will not stand still for such a threat to this vital lifeline.”
Indeed.
There was public outrage, but also
“can-you-believe it?” humor.
A Portland radio talk-show host asked his
listeners what Oregon should accept in return for Columbia River water. The
most popular answers: Disneyland and 60 days of California sunshine every year.
Covetous history
For decades, the Pacific Northwest has
responded to and fended off efforts to divert its water, particularly from the
Columbia River, to the Southwest, and particularly to California or Colorado.
These “inter-basin transfers” were
proposed from Oregon, Washington, Alaska and British Columbia.
For example, in 1968 as Congress debated
authorization of the Colorado
River Basin Project, House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee Chairman
Wayne Aspinall of Colorado said the authorizing bill would only initiate a
series of studies by the Department of the Interior.
“Water is the lifeblood of this area, and
unless new sources can be found, this thriving, prosperous, large segment of
our Nation is, in my opinion, on a collision course with economic
disaster,” said Aspinall.
Northwest members of Congress noted the
veiled threat of “new sources,” to which Aspinall responded, “representatives
of the Northwest felt that their area was the target of the studies for new
sources of water. This, of course, is understandable, since water flow records
on the Columbia River show that more than 10 times the average annual flow of
the Colorado River empties unused into the Pacific Ocean each year.”
The word “unused” became something of a
rallying cry for the diverters.
Later in his floor speech, published in
the Congressional Record for May 1968, Aspinall as much as
implied diversions would be needed.
“It is certain that no future water need
in an area of origin [read: the Northwest] will ever be denied by reason of
such diversion,” he said. What exactly was meant by “never be denied?” He
didn’t explain.
Climate change will indeed result in
regions eyeing other places’ resources, likely leading to legal, policy and
other types of conflicts.
There were other proposals.
In 1991, a Canadian public relations
consultant, Bill Clancey of Vancouver, and two private investors
from Washington state, proposed to divert water from the North Thompson River
west of Jasper, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies to the Columbia River in
British Columbia, and from there to California.
Clancey estimated the project would cost
$3.8 billion, which probably is a fraction of what it actually would have cost
considering planning, permitting, construction and the inevitable flood of
litigation. The proposal never got traction. There was massive opposition,
including among citizens and politicians in British Columbia and even from
Clancey’s intended customer, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California. Clancey died in 2003, and his dream of an international water
transfer project died with him.
Also in 1991, the governor of Alaska,
Walter Hickel, proposed a water pipeline from his state to California.
Hickel’s proposal was quickly criticized for being too
expensive, environmentally difficult and hopelessly optimistic.
Congress’s Office of Technology
Assessment, defunded in 1995, reported in 1992 that a proposed pipeline down
the Pacific Coast—essentially Kenneth Hahn’s idea—would not be as effective as
water conservation, water banking and changing water pricing rules in
California.
It added that if the water needs of the
“entire arid West” were considered “a subsea pipeline to transport water from
Alaska, diverting some water from the Columbia River, or various proposals for
diverting water from Western Canada’s rivers, as well as other expensive
options such as tankering water, might then be considered.” So far, at least,
that hasn’t happened.
In 2012, the federal Bureau of Reclamation
investigated various inter-basin transfer ideas including Hahn’s Pacific Coast
pipeline, ocean tankers full of fresh water and even dragging icebergs from the
Arctic.
None passed either the laugh test or, more
importantly, the financial and political tests.
Idea that won’t die
California’s congressional delegation
outnumbers the entire four-state Northwest delegation two-to-one, then and now.
In response to what seemed to be credible threats to Northwest water, in the
early 1980s the small but powerful Northwest delegation wrote into federal law
a permanent statutory prohibition against diverting the Columbia.
This was followed by annual prohibition
resolutions.
With Goldschmidt’s dismissal, the idea
should have died, but it didn’t.
Moving the river: As water woes increase
across the West, some states are looking north. Photo: Fotech
In April 2015, the San Diego Union newspaper editorialized that,
in response to then-Governor Jerry Brown’s call for innovative solutions to
address California’s drought, “the idea that intrigues us the most is a
pipeline from the Columbia River.”
The editorial went on to acknowledge that
a diversion would be politically, economically and legally difficult.
Then Captain Kirk teleported into the
fray. In a speech, Star Trek star William Shatner proposed a
Kickstarter campaign to raise $30 billion to fund a pipeline from Washington.
Bill Monroe, a columnist for The Oregonian in Portland, wrote in response
that “the beloved Captain Kirk’s phaser was set on stun.”
Once again, the idea should have died but
didn’t.
The Fresno Bee newspaper
editorialized in 2019—just three years ago—in support of “the incredibly simple
solution” to the state’s water problems, which would be “to send south to
California the abundant waters of the Columbia River.”
According to the newspaper, “only a lack
of political will may defeat it”—no idle threat given the size of California’s
congressional delegation.
And this summer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published letters to
the editor supporting a pipeline from the Columbia—or the Snake River—to the
big Colorado River reservoirs that are once again plagued by drought.
In May, the newspaper had editorialized
that California’s “green polices” meant the state will not acquire any more
water, such as from the Northwest—implying, at least, that a pipeline from the
Northwest would solve all problems.
How about conservation first?
Nothing about a diversion would be simple.
Consider 1). the multiple billions it
would cost, 2). the innumerable permits that would be needed, 3). the
challenges of engineering, financing and construction, 4). the impacts to
Columbia and Snake river fish, both upriver and in the estuary, including more
than a dozen species listed as threatened or endangered, 5). the inevitable
massive amount of litigation, and 6). the unlikely acquiescence of Columbia
River states, tribes, irrigators and municipalities to give up their rights to
Columbia River water.
Daniel Rohlf, Professor of Law at
Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland and also Of
Counsel for the Earthrise Law Center, says it’s important to consider the
source when thinking about the potential for a Columbia River diversion.
“It is hard to take very seriously
anyone’s complaints about water shortages anywhere in the West when we still
grow enormous amounts of very thirsty—and extremely water-inefficient—crops
like alfalfa,” he says. “We’re facing unprecedented water shortages and still
pouring this precious resource on food for cows—amazing.
“So before we go geo-engineering the West
Coast we should reform the dumbest ways we continue to use water.”
From a legal standpoint, Rohlf says
federal law probably doesn’t have the final say in whether California could
divert water from Oregon or Washington because federal law allows states to
decide most questions of water allocation for diversions and consumptive uses.
“So good luck to California in attempting
to get a right to divert water in Oregon or Washington and transfer it,” he
says. “Unless California’s big, bad congressional delegation is willing and
able to overturn a pillar of prior appropriation water rights in the West—the
so-called McCarran Amendment—I don’t see much of any possibility that
California diversion hopes have any realistic chance.”
And then there are other laws that
certainly would come into play if a diversion were proposed—the Endangered
Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, for example.
“I don’t see how any diversion to
California could avoid triggering federal jurisdiction somehow, so both NEPA and the ESA would
come into play,” Rohlf says. “I’d love to see the Environmental Impact
Statement for a diversion to California.
“And with 13 listed evolutionarily
significant units of salmon and steelhead transiting and depending on the lower
river and estuary, I think it would be tough to avoid a jeopardy Biological
Opinion for a diversion scheme.”
Time to get real
So far, at least, new ideas for diverting
Columbia River water to California don’t appear to have generated interest
outside of certain news media.
“The state of California is not
considering diverting water from the Columbia,” says Ailene Voisin, information
officer for California’s State Water Resources Control Board. “The topic always
comes up during times of drought, but again, I am told nothing has changed on
our end.”
“It was an avenue that was looked into in
decades past, and due to the significant environmental impacts, interstate
water rights, along with other complications, it culminated in a decision to
not pursue the project,” says Mia Rose Wong, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power.
Likewise, Elliot Mainzer, president and
chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, told
Clearing Up in an email, “I think I can safely say that that idea has not
resurfaced in recent years” outside of hopeful editorials.
In fact, California has a much better
solution, the one derided as green policies by the Las Vegas newspaper. This is
Governor Gavin Newsom’s $8 billion strategy to reinforce California’s dwindling
water supply, unveiled in August.
“The science and the data lead us to now
understand that we will lose 10% of our water supply by 2040,” Newson said in
discussing the strategy. “As a consequence of that deeper understanding, we
have a renewed sense of urgency to address this issue head on.”
And his strategy does just that, through
water recycling and desalination, capturing and saving more stormwater both
above ground and below, reducing water use in cities and on farms by improving
water-use efficiency, improving all water management actions and reusing at
least 800,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2030 and 1.8 million acre-feet by
2040.
Most of the reused water will come from
recycling wastewater discharges that are now going into the ocean.
If this sounds a bit familiar, it’s more
or less what Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment recommended for
California’s ongoing water crises back in 1995.
Unremitting need
Despite the pragmatism and prescience of
California’s drought resilience strategy, threats to Pacific Northwest water
very likely could continue, as the Office of Technology Assessment hinted in
its 1995 report.
“Climate change will indeed result in
regions eyeing other places’ resources, and will likely lead to legal, policy
and maybe even other types of conflicts. But at least in the next couple of
decades, I see pretty slim chances for any big water pipeline from the
Northwest to California,” says Rohlf.
Diverting the Columbia or Snake is a bad
idea, it’s always been a bad idea and it will never be a good idea.
It would be impractical, cost billions,
launch hundreds of lawsuits and take years, if not decades, to even study.
There’s not enough time.
Climate change is now driving decisions
about water conservation throughout the West—or should be. What’s needed are
innovative, climate-driven and practical responses to the perils of drought,
like Governor Newsom’s strategy.
Increasing California’s water supply by decreasing it elsewhere is not the right solution.
- Overland Aqueducts: Concepts have included pumping water over 4,000 feet of elevation to reach Lake Shasta, requiring immense energy—roughly equivalent to the entire output of Bonneville Dam—to move the water through mountain ranges.
Cost: Estimates suggest the project would cost billions of dollars, with water delivery costs potentially exceeding $2,200 per acre-foot, making it significantly more expensive than local conservation or desalination.
https://columbiainsight.org/for-drought-plagues-california-diverting-columbia-river-water-is-a-pipe-dream-for-now/