LADWP releases annual Owens Valley Operation Plan
As another dry winter comes to a close in Inyo County, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has announced its annual Owens Valley Operation Plan and groundwater pumping program for the 2013-2014 runoff year. Typically, the LADWP proposes a 1-year pumping plan, releasing the plan to Inyo County with a 10-day period for comment, followed by an Inyo/Los Angeles Technical Group meeting. But after two successive drought years, the Water Agreement between Inyo and Los Angeles now requires the LADWP to execute this year’s Operation Plan in two, 6-month periods.
The current pumping plan is based upon the Eastern Sierra Runoff Forecast, which anticipates an annual runoff 54% of normal, or 220,900 acre-feet rather than the 1961-2010 average of 412,284 acre-feet. “The Forecast can be 5% to 10% off,” said Inyo County Water Department Director Bob Harrington. Depending on information gathered during April to October of this year, the LADWP will issue its second, 6-month Operation plan on October 20.
Thus far, the Operation Plan for April 1-October 1 proposes pumping 47,370-54,660 acre-feet of groundwater from the Owens Valley. The pumping plan cover letter indicated that the LADWP will pump a total of about 70,000 acre-feet over the course of the year. “For a year this dry, it’s a pretty reasonable level of pumping,” said Harrington. “There have been similar drought years where 2 to 3 times this amount of water has been pumped.”
Last year, another year with very low runoff, the LADWP pumped 88,600 acre-feet from the Owens Valley. Even that figure pales in comparison to the most water pumped in one year: 209,00 acre-feet in 1987, according to Harrington.
The Operation Plan also proposes that, should the County forego some pumping for its own irrigation purposes, the pumping plan will require water in the low, rather than the high 70,000 acre-feet range. “That’s one of the issues the Inyo County Board of Supervisors will have to grapple with,” said Harrington; “whether to agree to reductions in irrigation during the current runoff year.” The Board of Supervisors will discuss this and other pumping plan issues at a special meeting on Monday, April 29.
While the DWP uses the Runoff Forecast to determine what it considers a reasonable amount of groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley this year, the Inyo County Water Department is also “scrambling to figure out, by well field, how much what the DWP is planning would change the water table and effect groundwater and vegetation,” said Harrington. Last year, he reported, water tables in the Valley dropped between a foot and a few feet, “from a combination of pumping and low recharge from runoff.”
Inyo County has objected to LADWP pumping projections in the past, particularly concerning well fields in sensitive areas near Independence and Laws (see “Inyo County, LADWP hit a bump in the pump”). These areas include the Taboose-Aberdeen, Thibaut-Sawmill, and Independence-Oak well fields. The 2013-14 pumping plan proposes pumping between 4,200 and 7,380 feet at Taboose-Aberdeen, 6,800 acre-feet at Thibaut-Sawmill, and about 5,300 acre-feet at Independence-Oak.
However, the LADWP will return some 198,800 acre-feet to the Valley for irrigation, stockwater, recreation and wildlife projects. Dust mitigation on Owens Lake could require the return of as much as 95,000 acre-feet, although, said Harrington, “to date, the most they’ve used is 75,000.” He added, “That’s still a big amount of water.”
LA took the water from the lake and has never wanted to put it back. Now LA wants to modify the lake into some sort of artificial habitat that supposedly requires less water than simply putting it back into the lake. In other words, more god-playing, only this time with no pretense of what originally existed and worked for millenia. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, LA also pumps the groundwater, in competition with people who are essentially fortunate squatters. What pressing need compels us to grow alfalfa (or anything) by irrigation in the Owens Valley? Really? Farming by irrigation was failing there for many reasons before LA even arrived on the scene. And alfalfa for growing beef cattle in a desert? Retarded. Do we need golf courses and an Indian casino, while we’re at it?
Once you cut the fat and cut through the bs, you realize how easily you could have water in the River all the way down, water in the lake to control dust without a goofy artifical habitat “master plan” as has now been proposed, and still export to LA, without pumping groundwater. The obstacles are (1) the economic elite of LA, who tax the masses to fund consultants and DWP god-playing in the name of securing more water at any cost (not more cheaply for the masses who will pay, that’s for sure), and (2) the fortunate squatters in the Owens who pretend like irrigated agriculture to support beef cattle in a desert is a legit industry with a future. These two doomed forces pretend to oppose each other but really their common enemy is the environment and anyone who questions their subsidies.