HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-25-2016 PC Correspondence Item 01 (Lucas)Meeting. -R 0 "a 5 - l �
Item:
From: Bob
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2016 1:59 PM
E
RECEIVED
CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO
MAY 2 5 2016
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
To: Mattingly, Carrie; Floyd, Aaron; Metz, Jennifer
Cc:
Subject: Item one May 15 meeting
Please forward this note to the Planning Commission for its meeting tonight.
Planning Commission Members:
I join Allan Cooper In commending the Utilities Department on its revisions of the
drought management update. The level of detail now offered about who identifies
remaining water availability, what the parameters are to be considered, how they are
invoked, what happens at each stage is like a thesis in its completeness compared to
the sketch of vague possibilities offered in the 2010 document. Congratulations to all
who were involved. I suspect there was a go -to person who drew all the disparate parts
together into a whole. I commend that person for guiding to comprehension what must
have been wide ranging discussion within the department. There is the old joke that a
camel is a horse designed by a committee. In this case, the Utilities Department came
out with Nyquist. Congratulations!
also agree with the recommendations Allan made, and will not repeat them here.
What is missing from the two reports is a discussion of the likely impacts of climate
change on our waters' reliability. The State may not have specifically called for it in the
2015 Water Management Update report, but its impact is still important, especially in
those sections where water reliability is examined. I am disappointed in how little
attention has been paid to this issue, especially when the Planning Commission at its
last meeting broached concerns about a 30 -year mega -drought.
was only able to find the term "climate change" used once in the 2015 Urban Water
Management Plan. Elsewhere the broader terms like "climate conditions" or
"environmental conditions" are used, with no discussion, other than to include it in a list
of examples of how excess water might be used. Some people think the issue has been
handled by the Boyle Engineering report of 2002, referenced in the discussion of
Nacimiento, but it was ignored as an issue in that report.
Climate change needs to be dealt with somewhere because for right now, three
reservoirs--Nacimiento, Whale Rock, and Salinas—provide us with 98% of our potable
water. And they will be directly affected by climate change.
Now that Nacimiento is on line and fully allocated, it is the bellwether of our reservoir
system. In this extended drought, it has bailed the ailing Salinas out, and given Whale
Rock a chance to rest. But all three reservoirs depend upon water falling out of the sky
in more or less the same area and holding it in more or less the same way, subject to
heat and evaporation, until used. Each reservoir has its own character. They are pretty
much three of the same item, in three different places, pretty much affected by the same
things when spread over time. In effect, we have one big reservoir.
How they interact and interplay with climate change is critical to understanding where
we stand with this as a future source of water. But my experience in trying to figure out
how climate change might affect Lake Nacimiento has been a humbling one. When I
think I understand it, I meet with the folks in the department and learn that I didn't get it.
Then I revisit the issues, and find out again that the data I used wasn't the right data,
and so on.
know the Utilities Department doesn't intend my confusion. They have tried to be
helpful. But successfully piecing together a coherent picture of how Nacimiento acts is
confounded by data points that are inconsistent. For example, from report to report,
rainfall for years is recorded without mentioning whether they are calendar years, or
water years beginning in October, or even fiscal type years beginning in July. Further,
SLO rainfall amounts for the same year vary depending on which station is used, Cal
Poly's, or Reservoir Canyon, or Nacimiento Dam, or whatever. (In your agenda packet,
for instance, the rainfall tables in the five annual Water Updates show different amounts
of rainfall for the same historical years.)
When the term "drought" is used, there is no definition of it other than in terms of a
grouping of years, e.g., our worst drought is the one of "2012-14." The reports show
three-year droughts, and how reliable water is for each of those three years. But that
seems almost timid for these days. What about the fourth year, or fifth year? According
to the data in the yearly water updates, in the last ten years, we have had only one year
in which rainfall was average or above. Does that suggest some sort of ten year
drought? And what of the 30 -year mega -drought mentioned earlier? For online
documents, embedded links might offer welcome explications.
Because of that vagueness and the moving targets, and because water is of paramount
importance, and because we are currently almost unilaterally dependent on a single
type of water source, albeit three -partite, if the matter is not to be part of this future
study, I believe it is imperative to call for a white paper exploring and explaining in
coherent consistent terms what we can expect from our reservoirs in the future, a
document that makes sense of the intricacies of the three reservoirs and what we can
expect from an extended drought of some defined conditions.
I know the department has a computer program into which we can plug parameters and
play with them, but I also am aware that it can't project a year in which we wouldn't get
our annual contract amount from Nacimiento. Now I can imagine such scenarios, even
much less drastic than the 30 -year drought, in which we would receive only half our
allocation, perhaps even less. The interplay between wet water and paper water that
has spawned a lot of problems and misunderstandings.
My hope is that such a paper will put people's minds at ease. And the public may be
able to catch something that those too close to the issue have missed. Our Water
Resource Recovery Facility is due for a massive $70 million plus rebuild. It happened
apparently because no one in the industry asked or heard the question, "if you let too
many yellows mellow before you flush, or if you flush the regular yellow with one third of
the water, won't that send a stronger solution to the reclamation facility and overload the
system?"
If the numbers work out, there will still be other vexing intangibles, as enumerated in the
attached update to my precis on Nacimiento which was also part of my email for your
last session.
My hope is the same clarity the Utilities Department brought to detailing its drought
response and rationing policies will enliven a similarly intelligible and coherent report
about how our reservoir system will respond to probable—and particularly worst case --
climate change scenarios.
Best wishes,
Bob Lucas
1831 San Luis Drive
4594344