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This community opinion was contributed by Mary Zanger. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. BenitoLink invites all community members to share their ideas and opinions. By registering as a BenitoLink user in the top right corner of our home page and agreeing to follow our Terms of Use, you can write counter opinions or share your insights on current issues.

 

As we worried thru another year of possible drought, we are blessed with an atmospheric river of storms.  Yet another dam proposed by Dan Walters of calmatters.org will not fit the situation. Building a dam is not the only means to solve the problem of adequate water for a growing population. Four doable solutions are proposed in the Dec. 12 issue of AgAlert by Edward Ring, senior fellow at California Policy Center.

One: Build more desalination plants like the one just north of San Diego. The $1 billion Carlsbad Plant 2015 desalinates water for nearly half a million people each year. Imitating this inexhaustible water supply is a must.

Two: My favorite is to build reservoirs with no high walls in dry valleys away from rivers so as to not interfere with vital river flows. These would provide a safety valve for dams by providing an extra basin for filling. Flooded runoff could be pumped into these reservoirs during storms thus preventing early dam release. A $4 billion site is proposed north of Sacramento that could store enough water to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland per year.  Irrigation water for the ground to drink is to feed us and our economy.

Three: Our waste water can be recycled. We need a plant to filter wastewater and treat it similarly as it would be treated if left in the ground to become clean. Enough plants to recycle city wastewater statewide per year would supply enough water for 3 million people.

Four: This last process is an underground system of piping water from high supply regions of the Delta to low supply regions of the San Joaquin Valley.  The Delta is the rich land from water deposits at the mouths of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The pipes would be perforated and would originate beneath gravel aquifers in the Delta and would reach to underground aquifers in the valley replenishing valley aquifers to fullness.

These projects have the potential to harvest and store water in California cities and farms regardless of droughts and snowfall. Plus being worry free about having sufficient water would be simply amazing.

 

Mary Zanger

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