The surprising connection between West Coast fires and the volatile chemicals tainting America’s drinking water

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November 11, 2020

Source: National Interagency Fire Center

November 11, 2020 — Editor’s note: This story is part of a nine-month investigation of drinking water contamination across the U.S. The series is supported by funding from the Park Foundation and Water Foundation. View related stories here.

From his back deck, Bogdan Marian can see the scars running down into the San Lorenzo Valley: the pad of a destroyed home, the scorched brown trees at the ridge line.

Marian is grateful to have a standing home. Yet his family and many others in the area still face another worry: the safety of their tap water. After fires marred the valley near Santa Cruz, California, in August, the local water district issued a “Do Not Drink Do Not Boil” notice to residents.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene, residents were warned, could be seeping into the water system — just as the toxic chemicals did in Santa Rosa and Paradise, California, in the wake of wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

“I have an 18-month-old,” adds Marian. “I don’t want to expose him to anything questionable. So, we went several weeks after that using bottled water for basically everything including showering, cleaning, watering plants.”

Pervasive Chemicals

VOCs are a large group of chemicals that share an ability to vaporize in air and dissolve in water. Since the 1940s, they have been widely used in industry, agriculture and homes. They are components of gasoline, glues, degreasers, dry cleaning fluids, pesticides plastics and more. In addition to the notorious threat they pose to indoor air quality — off-gassing is common from new cabinets or laminate flooring, for example — VOCs can also find their way into the environment, tainting soil and water.

While VOCs that migrate into surface waters tend to evaporate, VOCs that travel through the soil and into groundwater can stick around and, ultimately, contaminate drinking water supplies. Most community water systems and private wells in the U.S. use groundwater. And given the scale of VOC use and frequent large releases into the environment, as well as their persistence and potential to harm human health, these chemicals remain a serious threat to America’s drinking water.

An assessment published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2006 detected VOCs at the 0.2 microgram-per-liter level in nearly one-fifth of aquifers tested. The chemicals commonly seep into systems via spills and improper disposals. Benzene, for example, can enter groundwater from a gasoline or oil spill on the surface or from leaking underground fuel tanks. Similarly, many VOCs, including perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), have been known to leach into groundwater from dry cleaners, as well as electronics and aircraft manufacturing or maintenance.

However VOCs get into drinking water, it can be bad news. “If you’re talking about something like lead in the water, you want to avoid drinking it. If you’re talking about VOCs, then you really don’t want to get those on your skin. Even a dishwasher creates vapor that could be inhaled,” says Gina Solomon, a program director with the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California.

Research has linked exposure to VOCs with increased risks of health effects including anemia, leukemia, kidney cancer, reproductive problems, birth defects and nervous system damage.

In general, children are at greatest risk from exposure to VOCs, explains Solomon. They take in a greater amount of fluid proportional to their body weight, compared with adults. And they have a lot more relative skin surface for their small size, resulting in a higher dose if bathed in the water.

“Benzene is also notorious for delayed health effects,” says Solomon. “The younger you are the more likely you are to live long enough to encounter those health effects.”

Wildfire Connection

Wildfires as a source of VOCs in drinking water had not really been on the radar until the Tubbs Fire burned through large swaths of Santa Rosa, California, in 2017. After the blaze, drinking water samples from municipal supplies had levels of several VOCs, including benzene, above state and federal exposure limits.

The next year, the Camp Fire devastated the town of Paradise, California. Benzene and other VOCs popped up in drinking water teststhere, too.

What tests uncovered after wildfires scorched the San Lorenzo Valley in late August, including one water sample with benzene levels at more than 40 times the state water board’s drinking water standard, “reinforced what we had found previously,” says Daniel Newton, an assistant deputy director with the California Environmental Protection Agency’s State Water Resources Control Board. “As the magnitude of fires is increasing and causing larger impacts to communities and water systems concurrently, we’re seeing more and more of these VOC detections. This year is setting a new pace for us.”

Solomon notes that benzene is known to cause cancer in humans. “It’s an alarming thing to find,” she says.

And benzene was just one of several VOCs detected in various water samples collected after the fire.

Marian recently learned about the drinking water contamination resulting from the earlier fires. And he laments that there still doesn’t appear to be a “playbook” for protecting water resources from wildfires. “I don’t think we’ve caught up to the things we’re learning from the 2017 and 2018 fires,” he says. “And we still don’t really understand how contamination happens. We just know it’s related to fire.”

Melting Plastics, Losing Pressure

No one knows for sure why VOCs are showing up in drinking water in the aftermath of fires. But a few ideas have emerged.

Plastic pipes and other plastics in the water system can melt or burn during a fire, releasing VOCs that could directly dissolve into the drinking water. In Paradise, scientists found globs of melted plastics in portions of the water service line. Chemicals from plastics may also absorb into pipes as they pass through, and then leach back into the water over time. “But I haven’t seen evidence yet that plastics are solely responsible for contamination after wildfires,” says Andrew Whelton, an associate professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University.

Another hypothesis is that when a water system loses pressure due to fire damage, then smoke, ash and gases can get sucked into underground pipes and circulated throughout a water distribution system. Even without a fire, depressurization can cause bacteria and other contaminants to get into the water, notes Stefan Cajina, the north coastal section chief of the California water board’s Division of Drinking Water.

It’s possible that the presence of plastics and a loss of pressure may both be to blame. Whelton says he is doing tests to find the cause of the contamination.

Damaged water meters like this one photographed in Paradise, California, after a wildfire swept through 2019, can release volatile organic compounds, potentially contaminating drinking water. Photo courtesy of Gina Solomon

Historical Threats

Victims of California wildfires are not the first in the U.S. to be threatened by VOC-contaminated drinking water.

Military bases have been one notorious source, says Richard Luthy, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

Take, for example, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s, the drinking water on the marine base was tainted with toxic industrial chemicals including benzene, TCE and PCE, from waste disposal practices at an off-base dry cleaner as well as leaking underground storage tanks and industrial spills. Military veterans who served at the base during this time and developed certain diseases, such as kidney cancer or Parkinson’s disease, may now qualify for disability benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

VOCs were also the suspected villains in an unusual number of childhood leukemia cases in Woburn, Massachusetts, between 1969 and 1986. Well water had been contaminated with TCE and PCE, likely from industrial waste. A landmark lawsuit resulted in the responsible corporations contributing to the costs of remediation.

Still today, VOCs find their way into drinking water systems around the country. In Paden City, West Virginia, PCE levels in drinking water reportedly registered at almost three times the federal limit in January 2020. In August, officials detected 1,4-dioxane in a community water system in Springfield, Illinois.

Regulatory Lessons

The EPA regulates 21 VOCs under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Community water systems are required to monitor for these chemicals and, if their tests detect levels greater than the maximum contaminant level set by the EPA, they must inform their customers of the violation and take steps to remedy the situation. Still, Solomon and Whelton suggest the EPA’s regulations may not go far enough to protect the public from VOC contamination.

Methylene chloride, a VOC that appeared at levels above EPA limits in both Santa Rosa and Paradise, illustrates one potential reason. Federal and global health agencies consider it a probable human carcinogen. But standard drinking water testing might very well miss it. That’s because EPA requires that water systems test at the tap for lead and copper, but other tests for contaminants are done at the water treatment plant, explains Solomon. She notes a hypothesis that methylene chloride can form from a reaction among water pipes, disinfection byproducts and chlorine — contaminating water after it leaves the plant.

Other chemicals might be contaminating water systems after a fire, too. “We look for benzene, styrene, naphthalene. But we don’t actually know what chemicals we should be looking for,” says Whelton. He suggests that water testing using current EPA methods is not capable of detecting all of the chemicals found after the recent California wildfires.

Whelton further notes that government regulations for VOCs are based on long-term exposures and, therefore, generally don’t account for short-term, high-level exposures that can occur during a disaster such as a wildfire. And even when federal and state governments respond to a chemical disaster, they may fail to consider all of the potential routes of exposure. After a major industrial chemical spill in West Virginia in 2014, for example, efforts to protect residents from contaminated tap water relied on a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention screening level for the main compound of interest, a VOC called MCHM, based on ingestion alone. Inhalation of vapors and skin absorption are also critical potential routes of VOC exposure, argues Whelton.

“This is why we have a ‘Do Not Boil’ advisory,” he adds, noting that boiling water can send VOCs into the air. Based on evidence from the Tubbs and Camp fires, he recommends that water systems issue a “Do Not Use” order for their customers that allows use of the water solely “for firefighting purposes and toilet flushing.”

“We have lots of regulations on drinking water, but they are designed for conditions in which the source of the water is considered pretty clean and you haven’t had an immediate natural disaster.” – Richard Luthy

His other advice: Begin widespread sampling after a fire and rush those samples to be tested within 24 hours. Until tests confirm what chemicals are in the water system, don’t allow people to be exposed to that water. And then flush the water distribution system to make sure soot and other debris don’t sit around furthering VOC contamination.

Luthy also recommends that the government provide guidance to help utilities — particularly small ones — “get back in business” after a wildfire, hurricane or the like.

“We have lots of regulations on drinking water, but they are designed for conditions in which the source of the water is considered pretty clean and you haven’t had an immediate natural disaster,” he adds. “Do we need to have some other ways to address the safety of water after a natural disaster? I say, ‘Yes.’”

Cleaning Up

Increases in testing, largely resulting from recent awareness of their potential presence after wildires, along with improved treatment technologies in recent years means VOCs are less likely to reach the tap. Among the popular treatment tools are activated carbon filters that can absorb the chemicals and a process called air stripping, which can remove or “strip” benzene and other VOCs by contacting clean air with the contaminated water. The air movement causes the chemicals to evaporate at a faster rate. Such a system was installed to clean up industrial contaminants in California’s San Fernando Valley. Luthy notes that air stripping is the go-to method for cleaning up groundwater polluted by gasoline stations.

That said, both testing and effective treatment technologies come at a cost. “As soon as we start talking about private wells and small water systems, all bets are off,” says Solomon, referring to the tight budgets and limited staff generally available in these situations to invest in testing and treatment. “The dollar signs start piling up when you start testing that well. And in order to ensure your well is safe you really have to test periodically. If there are no contaminants today, that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be no contaminants a year from now.”

She notes that many homeowners and very small water systems simply skip the testing, especially with limited regulations holding them to do it.

A lot of homes so far affected by 2020 wildfires have been in areas with private wells or small to very small systems. “Those systems are getting some help from the state,” says Solomon, noting that residents in Paradise and surrounding areas also benefited from an emergency federal grant for free testing. “But that’s not typical.”

Of course, prevention is a more effective tool than any testing or treatment. Whelton suggests that communities adopt building codes that require the installation of fire-resistant water meter boxes placed a safe distance from vegetation, for example. Water meters with minimal plastic components would be less likely to ignite. Whelton also recommends water main shutoff valves and sampling taps at every water meter box, which could help responders quickly determine water safety. And to block contamination from flowing from a damaged building into a larger pipe network, he advises the use of one-way valves, also known as back flow prevention devices.

The San Lorenzo Valley Water District took many preemptive steps to mitigate the potential threat to the region’s drinking water. It shut down part of its system before the wildfire’s arrival. A one-way valve also separates the neighborhood of Riverside Grove, one of the communities in which benzene was found, from the rest of the water system.

The “Do Not Drink Do Not Boil” notice has now been lifted for Marian’s neighborhood. But Marian remains cautious until more tests are done. “I’m comfortable enough to use tap water for laundry and cleaning the house,” he says. “But out of an abundance of caution, we’re still using bottled water for drinking and cooking.”

This story originally appeared on Ensia on November 11, 2020.

Degrees of warming: How a hotter, thirstier atmosphere wreaks havoc on water supplies in Pitkin County

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Aspen Journalism

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November 11, 2020

The Crystal River runs low outside of Carbondale on Sept. 1. With average temperatures warming in summer months by as much as 3.5 degrees since the 1950s in Garfield County, streamflows are trending down as peak runoff comes earlier and more water is sucked up by evaporation and dry soils, stressing available water supplies in late summer and fall. (Dan Bayer/Aspen Journalism)

By Catherine Lutz

In November 2018, Marble Town Manager Ron Leach received a letter that he said was a wake-up call.

The letter was a notice from the Colorado Division of Water Resources that the town’s water rights had been “out of priority” for four weeks the previous August and September because of a call placed by a senior water-rights holder downstream on the Crystal River.

During drought years — and 2018 was an extreme one, with the Crystal running at less than 5% of average after peaking in May, several weeks earlier than usual — junior water-rights holders may have to curtail their water usage until the senior call is satisfied.

“Drought and water supply have been on people’s minds for a long time around here, but we’ve never gotten a letter like that,” Leach said.

The letter urged the Marble Water Company — the private nonprofit entity that delivers water to the town’s approximately 150 residents and a handful of businesses — to create a plan of augmentation, which is an alternate source of water such as a storage pond. Without augmentation, the letter warned, a call could subject Marble to a cease-and-desist order on its municipal water wells.

Several other neighborhoods that get their water from the Crystal also narrowly dodged a bullet that August. The same call put more than 40 homes in Carbondale at risk of not having water, according to Town Manger Jay Harrington.

“Firefighting capability was an issue, too,” Harrington said. “That’s where we had to scramble.”

Carbondale officials were able to make an emergency arrangement with another senior water-rights holder on the Crystal to temporarily borrow water to supply the homes. And they quickly set in motion plans to avoid the situation in the future. In essence, the town is shifting the supply for some of its water needs from the heavily irrigated Crystal to the more reliable Roaring Fork, as the town has three wells that draw from the Roaring Fork aquifer, and has the option to develop more wells. The town also owns 500 acre-feet of water in Ruedi Reservoir it can use to offset its well depletions from the Roaring Fork aquifer.

Up in Marble, Leach doesn’t have multiple, redundant water supplies to serve his constituents. Noting that Marble’s water supply barely exceeds peak summer demand, an engineering firm’s preliminary recommendation was for an 11-acre-foot reservoir, which would require 3 to 4 acres of flat ground.

“The town of Marble doesn’t have cash to do anything like that,” said Leach, who added that space in the constrained mountain valley might also be a hurdle. “There’s no easy solution.”

Still, Leach is confident something will get figured out — a state-funded water study of the Crystal was recently approved, he said — but a very dry 2020 has underscored that the water issue is not going away anytime soon. During what’s now widely accepted as a two-decade-long drought in the Colorado River basin, temperatures have risen, summer rains can’t be relied on and streamflows have dropped, with earlier peak flows sometimes leaving little water in streams by late summer. The state’s letter to Marble noted that “it is reasonable to assume that this administration scenario could happen more frequently in the future.”

To those who deal with water day to day, there’s no question climate change is here and its impacts are being increasingly felt in the summer.

“It all starts with climate change — that’s the big picture,” said Leach. “What’s happening in Marble, this is the micro-example.”

Other Roaring Fork municipalities are also grappling with climate-caused water supply issues. The city of Aspen, which provides municipal water from free-flowing Maroon and Castle creeks and has seen Stage 2 water restrictions enacted two of the past three summers, is creating a 50-year water plan — driven in part by climate-change impacts — that may include expanded water storage. In Basalt, the 2018 Lake Christine Fire came close to cutting power supplies, which could have caused the failure of pump stations that deliver water to users. And after one of Glenwood Springs’ water sources was temporarily shut down during this summer’s Grizzly Creek Fire, debris, ash, mudslides and fire retardant pose lingering hazards.

“We need to continually work on our water systems as we continue to adapt to climate change,” said Harrington. “We are going to have to figure out how to slow it down, but in the meantime, we need to take climate change into our planning.”

Marble Town Manager Ron Leach is looking for ways to augment the town’s water supply, which comes from the Crystal River aquifer. In 2018, that supply was threatened when the river was running too low to satisfy all water-rights holders. (Catherine Lutz/Aspen Journalism)

The heat is on

Warming temperatures, linked to increased global greenhouse-gas emissions, are the catalyst that impacts other key conditions in the mountains, including lower snowpacks and streamflows; earlier snowmelt and runoff peaks; more precipitation in the form of rain than snow; more frost-free days; and lower soil moisture.

As average temperatures rise in all seasons, heat waves like the one that gripped Colorado during the summer of 2020 are becoming more common. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, average temperatures from May to October in Pitkin and Garfield counties have risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s. Some months are warming faster than others. In Pitkin County, June, July and September have warmed by nearly 3 degrees since 1950, while in Garfield County, June and September are 3.5 degrees warmer.

A 2019 report prepared for the town of Carbondale hints that warming has accelerated in the 21st century, with three of the five warmest years on record over the past decade. Also, this past August was the hottest on record for Colorado. In Aspen, the average temperature of 66.9 degrees in August was 5.6 degrees above normal.

The Roaring Fork Valley sits on the eastern edge of the largest hot spot in the Lower 48, according to a Washington Post project that analyzed data to identify areas that have warmed by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — double the global average — since the industrial revolution.

Garfield County’s average June temperature has been increasing 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade and is roughly 3.5 degrees higher now than in the 1950s. (Courtesy NOAA)

Noting that 12 of the hottest 14 years in western Colorado have occurred in the past 18 years, Colorado River Water Conservation District general manager Andy Mueller said at a recent conference that “the biggest change in temperatures has been occurring within our district and eastern Utah, which is a real problem when you look at the fact that we’re the area that produces the most-significant amount of water in the entire rivershed.”

Scientists are in broad agreement that as long as greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise — or even level off — temperatures will follow suit.

Projections for the region range depending on emissions scenarios, but nearly all of them forecast at least another rise of average temperatures of 3 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century and a rise of approximately another 10 degrees by the end of the 21st century. To put this into perspective, a warming Aspen could have the climate of Carbondale or Glenwood Springs, while Glenwood would look and feel like Grand Junction in a few decades.

This graph shows the range of average maximum temperature increases projected for Carbondale under both and high and low emissions scenario. (Courtesy The Climate Explorer/NOAA)

The atmosphere taketh away

Local summer precipitation trends are less clear. Monsoon rains — or the lack thereof — drive great swings year to year in summer precipitation, which is usually dwarfed, in terms of volume, by winter precipitation in the form of snow. Historical data shows no clear trends. A report prepared for the town of Carbondale says that average precipitation in the 20th century and since 2000 are about the same.

Still, the summer of 2020 capped a decade of multiple dry summers. Colorado this year saw its third-driest April-July period, according to the National Weather Service, and the 2.5 inches of precipitation Aspen had from June through August was nearly 2 inches below normal. It was the fourth summer in a row with below-average precipitation and the driest in that stretch — even the summer of 2018 saw more rain.

Precipitation projections are also not very clear — although some experts suggest that precipitation could decrease in the summer and increase in the winter. But whether there’s a little more or a little less rain and snow in the future — and the latest models show a long-term decline in the Colorado River Basin — scientists say it doesn’t matter.

“There’s more uncertainty in how much precipitation is going to change and less uncertainty about how much temperature is going to change,” said hydrology expert Julie Vano, who is research director at Aspen Global Change Institute. “And the effect of just having warmer temperatures means more water is leaving the system.”

Jeff Lukas, a researcher on NOAA’s Western Water Assessment team, put it this way: “A warming atmosphere is a thirstier atmosphere.” In the Roaring Fork Valley, he said, only about a third of all precipitation makes it into streams and rivers; the other two-thirds is reclaimed by evapotranspiration, which is the combination of evaporation from surfaces and what plants absorb then release. Since evapotranspiration is driven in large part by temperature, as temperatures rise, the amount of water in rivers declines.

“The atmosphere giveth and the atmosphere taketh most of it away,” said Lukas. “Warming is the factor — across all seasons and all water-cycle processes — that draws moisture away from the land surface before becoming runoff.”

A table showing hydroclimate trends from Western Water Assessment’s “Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science” report. (Courtesy Western Water Assessment/“Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science” report)

The flow is low

After more than a century of diversions, dams, storage projects and other stream manipulations, it’s complicated to calculate trends in natural streamflow, the term for the amount of water in a river. But streamflow, also called runoff, has perhaps the most direct effect on water availability. And trends are not looking good.

Since 2000, according to a recent report, the average annual volume of water in the upper Colorado River basin, from its headwaters to Lees Ferry (just below Lake Powell in Arizona), has dropped 15% below the long-term average from 1906 to 2019. Published last April, the Western Water Assessment’s “Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science” report synthesizes all of the recent studies and data on this massive topic. The report’s authors compiled ever-increasing evidence about how rising temperatures are contributing to less water in the Colorado River, which supplies the needs of 40 million people. Although precipitation is still an important factor, some research shows that warming accounts for up to half of the water loss. One study calculated that every 1 degree Fahrenheit of warming decreases runoff by 7.5%.

Jeff Lukas, a researcher on NOAA’s Western Water Assessment team, has calculated that between 2000 and 2018, the Roaring Fork River at Glenwood Springs had 13% less water than the 20th century average, which in large part is attributable to declining peak flows, shown here in this graph. (Laurine Lassalle/Aspen Journalism)

Declining streamflows are also found up the Colorado’s tributaries. Taking into account water that would’ve been in the stream if it weren’t for diversions and ditches, Lukas calculated that between 2000 and 2018, the Roaring Fork River at Glenwood Springs had 13% less water than the 20th-century average. Analyzing data on the Crystal River near Redstone, he calculated a 5% drop in annual mean streamflow since 2000, compared with the latter half of the 20th century, but a 10% decline during drier years.

In that same analysis of the Crystal, Lukas found that the date of peak streamflow had shifted one week earlier since 2000: from reliably arriving in June to sometimes coming in May. Multiple studies across the Colorado basin have similarly calculated a one- to four-week earlier runoff — which means that high-country snowpacks are melting earlier, so that the highest volume of snowmelt rushing down those streams is coming earlier in the spring.

But an above-average snowpack doesn’t mean an equivalent runoff, as this past year has shown. After a good winter followed by a warm, dry spring and summer, just 55% of the upper Colorado’s runoff made it into Lake Powell.

“The expectation that this amount of snow leads to this amount of runoff — we’re just not seeing as much as we did in the past,” said Vano, the hydrology expert.

Projections on how runoff will change in the coming decades from Western Water Assessment’s “Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science” report. (Courtesy Western Water Assessment/“Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology State of the Science” report)

Earlier peak runoff and lower flows mean less water (especially in drought years) in late summer and early fall, a critical time for irrigation, recreation and natural systems. From late July through October, the Crystal River upstream from Carbondale has been flowing below half of average, lower than the instream flow water right held by the state for that stretch of river — but since irrigation rights are senior to the conservation right, there’s often no recourse. For example, that is what happened in August on another tributary of the Roaring Fork, when the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which holds 1,700 instream-flow rights throughout the state, requested administration of its instream rights on Hunter Creek, acknowledging that it would likely be “a futile call.”

“A river is not a river without water in it,” said Heather Tattersall Lewin, science and policy director for the Roaring Fork Conservancy.

As with higher temperatures, declining streamflows and earlier runoff are certain into the future, but how much will depend on emissions. A 2006 report by the Aspen Global Change Institute calculated that by 2030, peak runoff for the Roaring Fork River at Woody Creek will occur in May rather than June. And by 2100, the lingering snowpack we see on the high peaks in June will no longer exist, which means less water in the stream all summer. Add in increased demand from growth and diversions, and future Roaring Fork River flows through Aspen could go below required instream-flow levels for nine months of the year.

Downstream in Glenwood Springs, the Roaring Fork’s late summer flows could decline by 30% to 50% by 2070, according to a 2018 analysis by Lukas.

“Changes to water will touch nearly everything,” he said. “All the risk is on the dry side.”

The Crystal River showing a fraction of its normal summer volume in September. Water supply challenges related to climate change have been evident along the waterway as warmer summer temperatures stress streamflows. (Dan Bayer/Aspen Journalism)

The underlying factor

Another important factor to consider is one we don’t really see: soil moisture.

One of the metrics used to calculate drought severity, soil moisture has been studied locally by the Aspen Global Change Institute since 2013. This short period of record may preclude discerning any trends about whether local soils are getting drier, but the data does show how moisture levels can have a domino effect season to season.

Elise Osenga, community science manager for the institute, likens the soil to a sponge. A dry sponge, like dry soil, absorbs more water than when it’s wet, while a wet sponge, like saturated soil, lets the excess run off. The water that the soil doesn’t absorb goes into streams.

“Climate change is more likely to dry soils in the spring,” said Osenga, who explained that peak snowmelt and peak soil saturation happen around the same time in the mountains. “When that happens, we’ll see soils dry earlier in the summer and become more dependent on summer rain — which is problematic when we don’t get those rains.”

The Aspen Global Change Institute has been tracking local soil moisture since 2013. In each of the past three years, soil moisture has dipped well under the 2013-2017 average for most of the summer. (Elise Osenga/Aspen Global Change Institute)

Each of the past three years, soil moisture in Pitkin County has dipped well under the 2013-2017 average for most of the summer. The drought year of 2018 saw an early snowmelt and soil drying, but fall rains helped soils recover, auguring well for the next year. Most remember the record snows of late winter and spring of 2019, but the lack of rain that summer dried things up. And 2020 largely mirrored 2018, although 2020 saw slightly better soil moisture until late summer.

This year, things may have cooled off since August, but drought conditions have worsened, with all of Colorado, as of Oct. 22, in some form of drought and 78% of the state in extreme or exceptional drought. This doesn’t bode well for spring.

With soil moisture, said Osenga, “what happens in September and October is actually really interesting, because it plays a big role in determining whether we start the next spring already at risk of a drought versus in better shape.”

With multiple dry years over the past two decades, some scientists are wondering if we’re entering a period of megadrought, which hasn’t been seen in several hundred years.

“It might be a combination of natural variability plus climate change — a double whammy,” said Vano.

No single drought is evidence of climate change, Lukas said, but “what we’re seeing since 2000 is that climate change is stacking the deck. We’re more prone to the deep droughts, the ones that sneak out of left field like in 2020.”

And even with good planning, that’s sure to make water managers in Marble and Carbondale and throughout the Colorado River basin nervous.

“We do see changing conditions, whether attributable to increased demand/development by water users, drought or long-term climate change,” wrote Colorado water commissioner Jake DeWolfe in an email. “Any of them leads to the same problem: a shortage of water. We are involved in planning for the future likelihood that we will need to limit, if not curtail, uses in Colorado to meet the needs of downstream states.”

An abridged version of this story ran in The Aspen Times on Oct. 30.

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Study finds small number of jobs lost under demand-management program

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Aspen Journalism

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November 11, 2020

Big beaches are growing, and stabilizing, along the Colorado River in Cataract Canyon just above Lake Powell, like this one captured in early October. A recent study on the secondary economic impacts of a water-use-reduction program intended to deliver more water to Lake Powell found some jobs could be lost across western Colorado. (Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

By Heather Sackett

A recent study of a program that could pay irrigators for their water to bolster streamflows found that the benefits would be comparable to the negative secondary impacts. But that finding doesn’t take into account what some say is a new worrisome trend in Western Slope water-rights ownership: a New York City-based private equity fund buying land and the water tied to it.

The study, commissioned by the Colorado River Water Bank Work Group, looked at the secondary economic impacts of a potential water-use-reduction program — known as demand management — on Western Slope communities. The Water Bank Work Group is composed of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, Southwestern Conservation District, Grand Valley Water Users Association, The Nature Conservancy and other entities.

Denver-based BBC Research & Consulting ran the numbers for two hypothetical water-use-reduction scenarios.

Under the moderate scenario, irrigators across western Colorado would reduce their consumption of water by 25,000 acre-feet annually. Under an aggressive demand-management scenario, each of the four river basins on the Western Slope — Yampa/White, Colorado, Gunnison and San Juan/Dolores — would each reduce its annual consumptive use by 25,000 acre-feet, for a total annual reduction of 100,000 acre-feet of consumptive use.

The study came about because the state of Colorado is investigating whether to implement a demand-management program where irrigators are paid to voluntarily and temporarily fallow fields and leave more water in the river in order to fill a 500,000-acre-foot pool in Lake Powell. This saved water could be used as a modest insurance policy to help protect the Upper Basin against a compact call. The Water Bank Work Group is concerned with the potential economic impacts to agricultural communities of fallowing agricultural lands as part of such a program.

The study found that payments to irrigators should range from $194 to $263 per acre-foot of water. Annual demand-management payments across western Colorado would total almost $5.9 million under the moderate scenario and nearly $24 million under the aggressive scenario.

The reduction in crop production — in western Colorado, about 90% of irrigated acreage produces grass hay or alfalfa — is likely to create a trickle-down effect and result in fewer purchases of seed and fertilizer and reduce the need for labor, hauling and other services, the study found.

Some agriculture jobs would be lost, but the infusion of money from payments would create jobs in other areas of the economy, including the service sector. The net job loss across western Colorado would be between 14 and 49 secondary jobs under the moderate scenario and between 72 and 222 jobs under the aggressive scenario, the study found.

Doug Jeavons, managing director of BBC Research & Consulting, conducted the study and has given several presentations in recent weeks about its findings. He said that while the net job loss sounds minimal, the impacts could be greater in certain areas if farms participating in a program are not spread out equitably across basins.

“In terms relative to the overall size of the western Colorado economy, the numbers are not that large,” he said. “I do think there’s a risk depending on how the program is set up and administered, that the participation in the program could be much more geographically concentrated, and certainly if most of the participants are within a relatively small area, the impacts could be bigger.”

According to the study, agricultural activity in western Colorado provides about 13,600 jobs, which is about 3% of total jobs in the region. By comparison, tourism provides 75,400 jobs.

As Lake Powell reservoir levels remain low, some of the silt left behind is turning into white sandy beaches, like this one seen this month where the upper Colorado River flows into the upper edge of the reservoir, a sign of years of low inflows into the reservoir. The state of Colorado is exploring a temporary, voluntary and compensated water-use-reduction program to bolster levels in Lake Powell. (Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism)

Game changer

But these study results don’t paint the full picture, said River District general manager Andy Mueller. The study assumes that participants in a demand-management program would be owner-operators of the land being temporarily fallowed. They would probably take the payments they receive from a demand-management program and spend them locally, invest them back into their business or use them to pay down debt. But the negative impacts could be greater if the money paid to irrigators flows out of the region.

In recent years, the New York City-based private equity fund Water Asset Management has been buying up land and the water rights tied to it in the Grand Valley. An investigation by Aspen Journalism and KUNC found that as of June, WAM had spent $16.6 million buying 2,222 acres of irrigated land in the farming communities west of Grand Junction, making it the largest landowner in the Grand Valley Water Users Association.

In many cases, WAM makes improvements to irrigation infrastructure and leases the land back to tenant farmers, who keep it in agricultural production.

WAM representatives have said the company would be interested in participating in a demand-management program.

Mueller called this shift away from small family farm ownership a game changer and said there is a likelihood of significant economic harm to Western Slope communities.

“If you pay New York-based investment companies and they take that money and return it to their investors who live in New York or elsewhere, the money doesn’t get reinvested in the community,” he said. “Tenants are not receiving payments under a demand-management program, so their livelihoods have disappeared.”

Jeavons agreed that money paid to absentee landlords through a demand-management program probably wouldn’t stay in the community.

“The analysis we did assumes that most of the participants would be family-owned farms and ranches because most of the ranches and farms in western Colorado are family owned,” he said. “I think it’s pretty clear that if you have outside investors that are essentially trying to make a profit from this kind of program, that would certainly change some of these results.”

Partly in response to WAM’s activities in western Colorado, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources has convened a workgroup to explore ways to strengthen the state’s anti-speculation law.

But at least one Colorado water-policy expert doesn’t see a problem with WAM’s receiving payments for participation in a demand-management program. James Eklund is the former director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and one of the architects of the Drought Contingency Plan, which allowed for the creation of the 500,000-acre-foot pool in Lake Powell.

He represents WAM as counsel but said his comments to Aspen Journalism for this story were not on behalf of the company. WAM representatives could not be reached for comment.

Eklund said the biggest threat is not out-of-state investors but, rather, climate change. He said filling the Lake Powell insurance pool as quickly as possible should be the goal.

“The Colorado River is facing an existential threat to its water supply that requires solutions at scale (500,000 acre-feet annually at minimum),” he said in an email. “If investment groups are willing to invest in solutions that keep agriculture in production, while also making more water available for the benefit of our state and the environment, we should encourage that investment, just as we do in other sectors.”

Aspen Journalism is a local, nonprofit, investigative news organization covering water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times and other Swift Communications newspapers. This story ran in the Oct. 28 edition of The Aspen Times and the Oct. 26 edition of The Steamboat Pilot & Today.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

State officials set sights on ponds without water rights

By

Aspen Journalism

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November 11, 2020

A canoe floats in the Milvich family pond in Old Snowmass. The Colorado Division of Water Resources issued a cease-and-desist letter because the pond, which does not have a legal water right, was taking water out of priority. (Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism)

By Heather Sackett

OLD SNOWMASS — Rebecca Milvich has many fond childhood memories of playing in the pond on her family’s Old Snowmass property, which they purchased in 1985.

Every summer, the pond off Little Elk Creek Avenue in Old Snowmass, became the neighborhood hangout as Milvich and her siblings and friends swam and paddled a canoe. Still today, the pond, which is filled by a ditch branching off Little Elk Creek, brings the family joy as they admire the ducks, fish and muskrats that live there.

“Those are the passions that are wrapped around it,” Milvich said. “It’s very personal. It’s something that has enhanced our quality of life a thousandfold. Our ability to have a water feature has changed our lives for the better, for sure.”

But on Sept. 22, the Milvich family received a cease-and-desist order from the Colorado Division of Water Resources that said they had to stop filling their pond because of a downstream call on the Colorado River, in which water users junior to the Grand Valley irrigators’ water rights had to be shut off.

It turned out the Milvich family did not have a legal water right for their pond, making them one of the most junior water users on the Colorado River system and one of the first to be curtailed.

“We were from Southern California and we missed having the beach,” Milvich said. “And my dad was excited to purchase an actual piece of property that had water on it, totally not knowing that we were in some ways for these last 35 years breaking some rules and regulations. We had absolutely no idea.”

The Milvich family’s pond is not the only one in the area lacking a water right. DWR officials say undecreed ponds throughout the region are depleting the Colorado River system in a time when a climate change-fueled drought makes it more important than ever to account for every last drop of water.

The Glenwood Springs-based Division 5 engineer’s office issued five cease-and-desist orders for ponds without water rights this season in the upper Roaring Fork Valley. And officials say there are many more ponds like these out there. Some of them are recently built for fire protection.

The main concern with these ponds is water loss to the Colorado River system through evaporation. The bigger the surface area, the more water that is lost.

“A lot of the depletions are pretty small, but it’s death by a thousand cuts,” Division 5 Engineer Alan Martellaro said. “When you have these all over the place, they add up at some point.”

According to Colorado water law, anyone is allowed to divert water from a stream simply by putting it to beneficial use as long as it does not harm senior water-rights holders. To protect their ability to keep using the water and save their place in line, most users make their water right official by getting a decree through water court. This enshrines the water right in Colorado’s system of prior appropriation in which the older the water right, the more powerful it is.

“It’s a good idea because it protects your standing,” Martellaro said. “It protects your priority. That’s the whole point of a water right.”

That means ponds without a decree are last in line and are the first to be shut off when there’s a downstream call from irrigators in the Grand Valley, which have much older water rights — one from 1912 and one from 1934. Known as the “Cameo Call,” these irrigators can control all junior water rights upstream of their diversion at the roller dam in DeBeque Canyon.

Most summers, Grand Valley irrigators “call” for their water when streamflows begin to drop. In general, the drier the year, the earlier the call comes on. This year, the Cameo Call first came July 30 and went off at the end of irrigation season Oct. 26.

As long as the call is on, junior upstream water rights must be shut off or “curtailed” so that the downstream irrigators can get the full amount of water to which they are legally entitled. It is up to the division engineer’s office to decide exactly how to administer the call and which junior water rights to curtail, but undecreed water use is generally the first to go.

“When the call is on, they are stealing somebody else’s water if they don’t have a water right,” said Bill Blakeslee, water commissioner for District 38, which encompasses the Roaring Fork River watershed.

Blakeslee said he doesn’t like to issue cease-and-desist orders, and his goal is to educate people about the Colorado River system.

“We don’t like to do our business this way, but this is one of the tools we use to help people understand we don’t have as much water as we used to and we all need to take steps to preserve as much as we can,” he said. “It makes a statement to the general public that we are in a drought situation, so let’s not do things that continue to contribute to further loss of water.”

Even though the ponds are causing water loss to the river system at all times, Blakeslee said he can apply the pressure of the law only when there is a call.

“I can’t enforce the rules until the call goes on the system,” he said.

Rebecca Milvich has many fond childhood memories of playing in this pond on her family’s property in Old Snowmass. Officials from the Colorado Division of Water Resources say ponds without a water right, such as this one, are depleting the Colorado River system. (Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism)

Compact call

The Milviches were supposed to have stopped diverting water out of priority within 10 days of receiving the order or else face enforcement actions such as having to pay the state’s costs and legal fees. But Martellaro said his office so far has not fined the owners of any of the five ponds and won’t as long as they are working toward a solution. And since the Grand Valley call is now off the river, the issue is less urgent — for the moment.

Colorado is entering a period of tighter accountability for some water users as Lake Powell’s levels continue to drop and the threat of a compact call looms larger in a warming West.

A compact call could occur if the upper-basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) can’t deliver the 7.5 million acre-feet of water per year to the lower-basin states (Arizona, California and Nevada), as required by the Colorado River Compact, a nearly century-old binding agreement. Upper-basin water managers desperately want to avoid this scenario.

“I guess you could say one of the elephants in the room is the interstate compact situation,” Blakeslee said.

So what are the Milviches’ options to remedy the situation? In order to be allowed to keep using water for the pond when a call is on, they must replace that water to the system. One possibility is getting a contract for an augmentation plan with a local water-conservancy district to release water from Ruedi Reservoir to make up for depletions from the pond. The Milviches have met with an engineer to assess their options.

Whatever they decide, securing a water right through water court can be a lengthy, expensive process.

“We are definitely terrified about that reality,” Milvich said.

Aspen Journalism is a local, nonprofit, investigative journalism organization covering water and rivers in collaboration with The Aspen Times and other Swift Communications newspapers. This story ran in the Nov. 2 edition of The Aspen Times.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

Voters overwhelmingly pass Colorado River District tax hike

By

Aspen Journalism

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November 10, 2020

The Colorado River flows through Glenwood Canyon. Voters in the 15-county Colorado River Water Conservation District overwhelmingly passed a tax increase to fund water conservation and infrastructure projects in the election decided on Nov. 3, 2020. Photo by Mitch Tobin/The Water Desk.

By Heather Sackett

Western Slope voters have overwhelmingly passed a proposal by the Colorado River Water Conservation District to raise property taxes across its 15-county region.

According to preliminary results as of 10:45 p.m. Tuesday, encompassing about 246,245 ballots, about 72% of voters said yes to the measure. Saguache County was the lone county to vote against the measure.

Pitkin County voters passed ballot question 7A with 80% in favor, despite three of five county commissioners and Pitkin County’s representative to the River District board John Ely opposing the measure. Nearly 69% of voters in Mesa County, which has the largest population base in the district, supported the measure.

The River District announced that the measure had received voter approval in a news release at 7:55 p.m. Tuesday, saying the organization is ready to get to work implementing water projects across the district.

River District general manager Andy Mueller said the results prove that water is the one issue that can unite voters in western Colorado.

“It was the one issue that’s not partisan, that was about uniting a very politically diverse region,” he said. “Everybody is so sick of the nasty, divisive, partisan politics. People with (Donald) Trump signs and (Joe) Biden signs voted for the same thing.”

Ballot measure 7A raises property taxes by a half-mill, or an extra $1.90 per year for every $100,000 of residential home value. The measure will raise nearly an additional $5 million annually for the River District, which says it will use the money for fighting to keep water on the Western Slope, protecting water supplies for Western Slope farmers and ranchers, protecting drinking water for Western Slope communities, and protecting fish, wildlife and recreation.

According to numbers provided by the River District, the mill levy will increase to $40.28 from $18.93 annually for Pitkin County’s median home value, which at $1.13 million is the highest in the district. In Eagle County, where the median home value is $660,979, the mill levy will increase to $23.63 from $11.11 annually.

Property owners can expect to see the mill-levy increase on their 2021 tax bill.

The proposal received wide support among county commissioners, agricultural organizations and environmental groups.

Eagle County Commissioner and River District board member Kathy Chandler-Henry, who also served as vice-chair of the political action committee Yes on 7A, said it would have been nearly impossible for the River District to protect Western Slope water without the tax increase.

“I’m glad people throughout the district saw the value in that, even though it’s a tough time to be asking for a tax increase,” she said. “I think that’s a huge win and a huge vote of confidence in the work the River District’s been doing.”

The River District, based in Glenwood Springs and created by the state legislature in 1937 to develop and protect water supplies in western Colorado, spans Grand, Summit, Eagle, Pitkin, Gunnison, Garfield, Rio Blanco, Routt, Moffat, Mesa, Delta, Montrose, Ouray, Hinsdale and Saguache counties.

The River District’s fiscal implementation plan for the revenue that would be raised by the tax hike says 86% would go toward funding water projects backed by roundtables and local communities. Those projects would fall into five categories: productive agriculture; infrastructure; healthy rivers; watershed health and water quality; and conservation and efficiency.

This story ran in The Aspen Times, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, the Summit Daily News, the Vail Daily, the Steamboat Pilot and Today and the Sky-Hi News.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

Millions in new taxes approved for West Slope, Front Range water districts

By

Fresh Water News

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November 10, 2020

At the polls Tuesday, a Longmont woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she supported increased funding for water to ensure Colorado's rivers and streams remain healthy. — At the polls Tuesday, a Longmont woman, who asked that her name not be used, said she supported increased funding for water to ensure Colorado’s rivers and streams remain healthy. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

By Sarah Kuta

Water won big in Colorado on Election Day as voters in two multi-county districts approved property tax increases to fund water projects and programs.

Voters in two local water districts — the Colorado River Water Conservation District on the West Slope and the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District on the Front Range — said yes to ballot measures that will generate millions of dollars in new money for conservation, water education, stream health, storage and agriculture.

Based on vote totals as of 4:30 a.m. this morning, 72 percent of voters in the Colorado River District approved ballot issue 7A, with nearly 28 percent voting against the measure.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters in the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District approved a separate ballot issue 7A, with 31 percent voting against.

Though statewide funding for water projects has historically been a tough sell for Colorado voters, local initiatives with a more direct connection to residents are finding more success at the polls in recent years. These 2020 water funding ballot measures come on the heels of similar successes in 2018, when voters in Denver, Eagle, Chaffee and Park counties approved tax increases, new taxes, and tax extensions for water and land-focused initiatives.

“Passing any type of fiscal measures statewide in Colorado is going to continue to be an extreme challenge but it’s a much different story on the local level and the regional level,” said Matt Rice, director of the Colorado Basin Program for American Rivers, which supported the Colorado River District measure. “People in Colorado like to make their own decisions locally about fiscal issues, but also about how we manage and protect and restore our rivers for the environment, for agriculture and for local economies.”

In deciding to ask voters for more money this year, the two districts’ leaders cited factors like growing demand for water, drought, higher temperatures, population growth, declining oil and gas revenue, and declining property tax levels under the state’s Gallagher Amendment.

Those reasons resonated with voters on both sides of the political spectrum across the state. On the West Slope, for example, voters in right-leaning counties like Mesa and Montrose and left-leaning counties like Pitkin and Summit approved the ballot measure. (Of note: Nearly 80 percent of voters in Pitkin County approved the ballot measure, despite opposition by three county commissioners and the county’s representative on the district’s board.)

“It’s really a testament to what can happen if people put aside partisan differences on water issues,” said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District. “Voters in Colorado are seeing the effects of rising temperatures, changing climate and the impact it’s having on water resources, and they know that we need to adapt and mitigate and that it’s going to cost money to do that.”

An angler casts a line on the Roaring Fork River upstream of Basalt in Pitkin County. West Slope voters said yes to millions in new taxes for the Colorado River District. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

West Slope says yes

In the large Colorado River District, which includes 15 counties and some 500,000 residents, voters approved a mill levy increase that will double the district’s budget by generating an additional $4.9 million every year starting in 2021.

The district spans an area that covers 28 percent of the state and encompasses the Colorado River and its major tributaries, which include the Yampa, the White, the Gunnison and the Uncompahgre rivers.

With the passage of the ballot measure, West Slope voters approved a median residential property tax increase of $7.03 per year for residents of Grand, Summit, Eagle, Pitkin, Garfield, Routt, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Mesa, Delta, Ouray, Gunnison and parts of Montrose, Saguache and Hinsdale counties. The increase represents an additional $1.90 per year for every $100,000 of home value.

The district, which has 22 employees, will use the new funding for projects related to agriculture, infrastructure, water quality, conservation, efficiency, and other key priority areas determined by local communities and river basin roundtables.

District leaders say they will also stretch the extra money further by using it to solicit matching funds from state, federal and private sources.

Water funding on the Front Range

It was also a historic night for the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District, where voters approved a property tax increase for the next 10 years. This is the first time in nearly 50 years — since its founding in 1971 — that the district has asked voters for more funding.

The district’s board thought long and hard about how best to approach voters — and whether this was the right year to do it. But in the end, their approach paid off.

“The discussions were good and essentially resulted in consensus and agreement with the board,” said Chris Smith, board vice president representing district 3, which encompasses northwest Longmont and parts of unincorporated Boulder County. “It was all done in a very thoughtful manner, which speaks a lot to having a board that represents, geographically, the entire watershed.”

Smith said he was happy to see the West Slope ballot measure pass, too.

“The people of Colorado have really keyed in on the importance of water,” he said. “There are so many new people moving to Colorado, it’s good to see that they’re carrying on that mantle of protecting our most important resource.”

The St. Vrain and Left Hand district encompasses some 500 square miles along the St. Vrain and Left Hand creeks in Boulder, Weld and Larimer counties. Voters agreed to a mill levy increase from 0.156 mills to 1.25 mills through 2030.

The tax increase will generate an additional $3.3 million per year for the district starting in 2021, up from the $421,000 generated annually by the current mill levy. On a $350,000 home, the tax increase represents an additional $2.61 per month; on a $500,000 commercial building, it’s an extra $15.10 per month.

District leaders say they will use the extra money for projects related to water quality, river and creek health, water education, agriculture, storage and conservation, among others.

Sarah Kuta is a freelance writer based in Longmont, Colorado. She can be reached at sarahkuta@gmail.com.

This story originally appeared on Fresh Water News, an independent, non-partisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Its editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

Who in the U.S. is in ‘plumbing poverty’? Mostly urban residents, study says

By

Circle of Blue

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November 9, 2020

A house in Detroit where water had been shut off in 2014. A study found that 73 percent of people without complete plumbing live in metropolitan areas. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue — A house in Detroit where water had been shut off in 2014. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

By Brett Walton

Even in the wealthiest countries, basic water services are not universal. At least 1.1 million people in the United States do not have hot and cold running water in their house and a shower or tub for bathing, a new study finds.

This “plumbing poverty” is highest in cities and most acute in those like San Francisco that have the greatest income inequality.

Lack of plumbing infrastructure is not limited to those who are experiencing homelessness. Katie Meehan, lead author of the study, said that this is a key insight.

Even though the study found that plumbing poverty is tightly linked with traditional indicators of marginalization such as income and race, Meehan said that other factors are at play. Plumbing poverty is also tied to housing: renters and people who live in mobile homes are more likely to lack complete plumbing services than homeowners.

Meehan said that focusing on these structural issues where there are legacies of discrimination is a way to reframe the problem of water access. Instead of looking at it as a technical matter of building more pipes or increasing supply, Meehan prefers the question of why the pipes were not extended to certain areas to begin with.

“This draws attention away from poor people and to the institutions that produce poverty,” Meehan, a senior lecturer in human geography at King’s College London, told Circle of Blue.

The study, which was published November 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, painted the nation’s water access challenges in broad but nuanced strokes. It found that 73 percent of people without complete plumbing live in metropolitan areas. Nearly half live in the nation’s 50 largest cities. Households led by a person of color were 35 percent more likely to have incomplete plumbing than a white household. Renters in the largest cities were 61 percent more likely to have incomplete plumbing than homeowners. Neighborhoods with higher income inequality were more likely to have plumbing deficiencies.

The high number of urban residents without complete plumbing services is an interesting result that runs counter to the typical narrative that plumbing deficiencies are most prominent in rural areas, Meehan said.

Though New York and Los Angeles had the highest number of people living without complete plumbing, San Francisco had the highest proportion of residents in those circumstances. Portland, Milwaukee, and San Antonio also had high relative numbers of plumbing poverty.

Sera Young is an associate professor of anthropology and global health at Northwestern University who focuses on household water insecurity. Young, who was not involved in the study, commended the research for debunking the idea that inadequate plumbing is primarily a rural problem.

“Water security is a concern worldwide, and here in the U.S., we are not immune to it,” Young wrote to Circle of Blue in an email. “Not only is the 1.1 million individuals with plumbing poverty in the U.S. likely an underestimate, the numbers have likely worsened since 2018.”

Meehan concurred that the numbers are most likely an undercount and the results are the “low end” for those lacking plumbing. The data for the analysis came from the American Community Survey, a questionnaire that is administered annually by the U.S. Census Bureau and sent to households. The study used data from 2013 to 2017. The plumbing question currently asks about hot and cold running water and a shower or tub for bathing. The Census Bureau, at the request of Congress, stopped asking whether homes had toilets in 2016.

Stephen Gasteyer, an associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study, said it helps to fill an information gap: estimating the number of people in the United States who lack water and sanitation service.

Gasteyer, who researches water access, contributed to a separate report published last year that examined not only water access but toilet facilities. That report, which used earlier Census data that included the toilet question, estimated that 2 million people in the U.S. do not have those services.

These sorts of numerical assessments are only a beginning, Gasteyer said. The next step is to investigate why numbers are high in certain areas and not in others. One of the weaknesses of the Census data, he said, is that it’s not clear why a person says they don’t have plumbing services. Is it because their water has been shut off for several months due to unpaid bills? Or is it because there is no piped connection to their house? Or are they living on the streets but have a mailing address?

“If we’re going to fix the issue, we need to understand what’s behind the data,” Gasteyer said. “We need to do case studies to understand the mechanisms and not just the numbers.”

Gasteyer said that the study’s finding that renters are more likely to have deficient plumbing aligns with his experience doing field work on water access in Mississippi. Activists there told him that it is difficult for renters to hold landlords accountable for inferior service.

Meehan is similarly intrigued by the mechanisms by which plumbing poverty occurs. The Census data provides a broad view but does not explain the process for any particular city.

“Does it tell you how the engine works? No,” Meehan said. “That requires additional research.”

This story originally appeared on Circle of Blue and was published through the Institute for Nonprofit News network.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

Record number of mussel-contaminated watercraft intercepted in Colorado amid COVID-19 boating surge

By

Aspen Journalism

-

November 5, 2020

Jaime McCullah points out past samples taken from boats of invasive mussel species at the boat inspection check point at Ruedi Reservoir on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. — Jaime McCullah, an inspector with the state’s aquatic nuisance species program, points out past samples of invasive mussel species taken from boats at the inspection check point at Ruedi Reservoir on July 22, 2020. The reservoir above Basalt saw the most boats containing invasive mussels intercepted of any body of water in Colorado in 2020, which was a record year statewide for mussels intercepted. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)

By Lindsay Fendt

Inspectors in Colorado this season intercepted a record number of watercraft showing signs of invasive mussel infestations as reservoirs across the state saw surging numbers of boaters.

Ruedi Reservoir, near Basalt, recorded the state’s highest number of intercepted boats carrying mussels. Officials said that is probably due to the reservoir’s relative proximity to Utah’s Lake Powell, which has been dealing with a mussel infestation for years.

As public health experts have urged people to maintain their distance and avoid enclosed spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, one logical response for many Coloradans has been to take to the water. Boating, kayaking and paddleboarding have exploded in popularity this year, according to reservoir managers across the state. Riding the wave of that trend are invasive mussels, attaching themselves to watercraft.

“With more opportunities … for a boat to be transporting something into our waters, there is, of course, a little bit more risk,” said Robert Walters, an invasive-species specialist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

By mid-September in Colorado, where the boating season officially will close in November, the state had already recorded more than 600,000 boat inspections. In an average year, it conducts about 475,000. At least 94 boats were intercepted with confirmed adult mussels, the highest number recorded in the state since it began boat inspections in 2008.

Native to Eastern Europe, zebra and quagga mussels have infested waters around the world. The creatures, each wrapped in a hard, sharp shell, cling to surfaces in fresh water and quickly breed. Mussels can devastate aquatic ecosystems and damage infrastructure such as pipes and hydroelectric equipment. The larvae of these aquatic nuisance species — as they are designated by the state — have been detected in several Colorado reservoirs over the years, but adult mussels have never emerged.

Mussels pose a particularly high threat in Colorado because of the state’s position upstream of other watersheds. Scientists suspect that zebra and quagga mussels would have difficulty establishing in a high-elevation river, but it’s still possible that they could be distributed downstream.

“We are at the top of the watershed,” Walters said. “So if something were to happen in one of our headwaters or really anywhere in the state of Colorado, it would have significant potential to impact those downstream of us.”

Park ranger Geraint Mansfield examines the registration of a boat headed into Chatfield Reservoir, near Denver, on Oct. 18. Since 2008, the state has had an inspection program designed to keep invasive zebra and quagga mussels — which can damage infrastructure and disrupt the aquatic food chain — out of Colorado waterways. (Lindsay Fendt / Aspen Journalism)

Keeping up with the crowds

CPW regularly tests the state’s reservoirs for mussel larvae, and so far there are no signs that the increased boating activity has spurred an infestation, which is a testament to the state’s thorough inspection program. Still, keeping pace with the increased boat inspections has been a challenge for many agencies, especially those dealing with pandemic-induced budget constraints.

“I think we’re pretty fortunate that we were even allowed to hire our normal staffing,” said Mark Caughlan, district manager at Horsetooth Reservoir, just west of Fort Collins. “But don’t get me wrong, it still wasn’t enough staffing to handle that massive influx of visitation that we saw.”

According to Caughlan, Horsetooth Reservoir normally gets around 1.2 million visitors a year. This year, the reservoir saw a 30% to 40% increase in visitation, much of which was boaters. The volume of visitors, the limited staff and the need to carefully inspect boats meant that some people waited hours to get on the water. Most reservoirs, including Horsetooth, put inspection stations at every boat ramp, making it improbable that any boat will touch the water before it’s checked out.

Adult mussels can stick to the outside of a boat or be sucked into the ballast tanks of wakeboard boats and ski boats. If mussels are found, inspectors spray the boat with a high-powered water jet to clear them off. The ballasts have to be emptied and washed to ensure that no larvae are inside. The full decontamination process can take up to 30 minutes depending on the extent of the infestation.

Even before boating exploded in popularity during the pandemic, the threat of mussels slipping through the cracks was increasing. In 2017, CPW intercepted 26 infested boats, which was a record at the time. That number increased to 51 in 2018 and to 86 in 2019.

Reservoir managers attribute the increase to surrounding states’ growing number of bodies of waters with mussel infestations, in particular Lake Powell, which became fully colonized by mussels in 2016. Boats leaving Lake Powell are required to undergo inspection by the National Park Service, but many boats slip through. Nearly 70% of the mussel-infested boats intercepted in Colorado come from Lake Powell.

An inspector from Rocky Mountain Recreation begins the boat-inspection process at Ruedi Reservoir in July. Seventeen boats at Ruedi were found to have invasive zebra and quagga mussels this season. — An inspector from Rocky Mountain Recreation begins the boat-inspection process at Ruedi Reservoir in July. Seventeen boats at Ruedi were found to have invasive zebra and quagga mussels this season, which is the highest number anywhere in the state in what was a record year for boats intercepted with the invasive species. The mussels disrupt the aquatic food chain and clog intake pipes for water-related facilities and boat engines. (Christin Kay / Aspen Journalism)

Ruedi on the frontlines

The impact of Lake Powell’s mussel colonies on Colorado is most striking at reservoirs closest to the Utah border. Ruedi Reservoir, in the Fryingpan River Valley above Basalt, has seen more boats containing invasive mussels than any other body of water in Colorado, with 17 interceptions this year. Ruedi is particularly vulnerable to mussels. The turbines and pipes inside its hydroelectric dam are difficult to clean and could be destroyed if they are colonized. Mussels are also a filtering species, meaning they feed off the microinvertebrates, such as plankton, in their ecosystem. These microinvertebrates make up the base of the food chain, which helps sustain the renowned fishery downstream of the reservoir on the Fryingpan River.

“Given our proximity, I think we share a lot of the same boaters with Lake Powell,” said April Long, executive director at Ruedi Water and Power Authority. “Their mussel population is increasing, and I don’t believe that their ability to inspect is also increasing.”

Due to the pandemic, Ruedi delayed opening to boaters until June 1, but Long said the number of boats inspected there has still nearly doubled in 2020. Inspectors worked overtime hours through June and July to keep up.

A boater floats in the waters at Chatfield Reservoir, near Denver, on Oct. 18. Reservoirs across the state reported surging or record use this year as the COVID-19 pandemic drove more people outdoors. Those higher numbers corresponded with increased inspections and interceptions of invasive mussels, which state authorities are trying to keep out of Colorado reservoirs. (Lindsay Fendt / Aspen Journalism)

Most boaters are cooperative — and officials want to keep it that way

Despite the long waits, inspectors across the state say most boaters are cooperative. Long worries that this could change if long lines become the norm, and she said the RWPA is discussing expanding its inspection staff next year.

“If they get frustrated with the amount of time that it takes to do these inspections or decontaminations, we may see some compliance shift to noncompliance,” she said. “We don’t want that to happen.”

While long lines could aggravate some boaters, Walters said boaters, generally, are invested in keeping the waters where they spend time healthy. The mussel colonies at Lake Powell have served as a firm warning for many Colorado boaters.

“If there is anything positive that I can say of the infestation out there at Lake Powell,” he said, “it’s that Colorado boaters love to go out there and seeing something like that happen to one of their favorite waters has really hammered home what this could potentially look like if it happened here in Colorado. From what I’ve seen, I think that’s made the boaters much more supportive of the program and that they don’t want to see that happen at their home waters.”

This story ran in the Oct. 24 edition of The Aspen Times and the Oct. 26 edition of the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

This story was supported by The Water Desk using funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

High marks and worries on home water conservation: Is Colorado’s effort stalling?

By

Fresh Water News

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November 5, 2020

Castle Rock Water Conservation Specialist Rick Schultz, third from the right, inspects and tests a new landscape watering system in Castle Rock. In a Fresh Water News analysis of water conservation data, Castle Rock leads the state, having reduced its use 12 percent since 2013. Oct. 21, 2020. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

By Jerd Smith

The summer days of 2019 in Castle Rock were hot and endless. School teacher Kirsten Schuman, pregnant with her second child, wearily watered her suburban yard only to see it go brown almost immediately, week after week.

But then a friend told her about a new city contest to win an $11,000 yard makeover, one that would remove the beleaguered bluegrass and install an array of low-water use plants, trees and grasses.

Prospects for her lawn suddenly took an exciting turn. In a matter of minutes, the Schuman family mobilized.

She and her husband, a high school football coach, painted slogans on their cars. They posted on neighborhood message boards, and on Facebook and Twitter. They made a video of their oldest child in an empty plastic pool.

“It was intense,” she said. “My husband and I are both very competitive.”

That fighting spirit paid off. They won and now have a low-water use landscape that blooms freely and costs less.

And that’s what it’s like to live in Castle Rock, a fast-growing community where water is scarce and the pressure to conserve runs high.

Kirsten Schuman, her husband, Max Schuman, and daughters Mayla, 11, and Eleanor, 1, stand in their newly installed landscape in the front yard of their home on July 30, 2020 in Castle Rock. The family won the ColoradoScape Makeover contest, which resulted in the new water-conscious landscape. Credit: Jeremy Papasso, special to Fresh Water News

Conservation as buffer

Colorado water officials hope more communities follow in Castle Rock’s footsteps. The state wants to dramatically reduce water use in the next 30 years as a buffer against intense drought and looming water shortages caused by population growth.

But a new analysis of residential water use by Fresh Water News shows statewide savings in recent years may have stalled out, with some cities seeing conservation efforts pay off big, while for others use remains flat or is rising.

The analysis used data collected by the state from 2013 through 2018, the latest year for which complete data sets were available, and examined only metered, residential indoor and outdoor use. Under state law, data must be reported by water utilities and districts delivering more than 2,000 acre-feet of water annually, and who wish to borrow money from the state. Depending on the year, 40 to 45 communities report data. To see how much water your home town uses, click here.

The Fresh Water News analysis looked at data for 15 cities representing the state’s different geographies and major population centers.

A Fresh Water News analysis of residential indoor and outdoor water use shows nine of 15 cities are making progress on conservation, but ski country is struggling.

Nine of those, including Denver, Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, Durango, and Grand Junction, among others, have succeeded in cutting residential water use since 2013. Castle Rock leads the state with a 12 percent reduction over the six-year period, while Denver saw its water use drop 8 percent. Grand Junction reduced its use 4 percent and Colorado Springs has ratcheted its use down 3 percent.

The struggle to conserve

At the same time, however, several communities, including ski towns and the fast-growing south Denver metro community of Parker, continue to struggle. Vail, for instance, saw its water use rise 17 percent between 2013 and 2018, while use at the Parker Water and Sanitation District rose 20 percent.

Statewide, when combining results for all 15 cities examined, per capita water use during that period showed virtually no reduction. Daily per capita use in 2013 registered at 73.66 gallons per person per day. By 2018 it was down to 73.13, a reduction of less than 1 percent.

At 73 gallons per capita per day (gpcpd), Colorado is likely the envy of other states, where that metric is often well over 100 gallons per day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which has tracked national water use data and reported on trends since 1950.

Tamara Ivahnenko, a water conservation researcher with the USGS in Pueblo, said Colorado has historically been a leader in reducing water use.

And she gives the state high marks for establishing the conservation database, something only a handful of states, such as Texas and California, have done.

“Especially in the West there are water-stressed cities. We really have to be careful,” she said.

Colorado’s data collection effort comes under a major conservation bill approved by state lawmakers in 2010. They sought to shed more light on water conservation practices and to encourage communities to reduce water as one tool in staving off shortages.

Bruce Whitehead, a former state senator from Durango, was a sponsor of that legislation. He said getting down to real numbers was and remains critical to successful conservation.

“Without having the law in place, the way things were being reported prior to that was inconsistent,” he said. “If you can start zeroing in on what these numbers are, it gives you a starting point.”

Xeriscaped gardens are a conspicuous feature throughout Las Colonias Park in Grand Junction, Colo., Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. According to state data, residential water usage in Grand Junction declined 4 percent between 2103 and 2018. Credit: Barton Glasser, special to Fresh Water News

Kevin Reidy, water conservation specialist for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, oversees the state’s conservation programs and the database.

The more recent data could indicate that things have stalled, he said. But he said it’s also difficult to gauge how much conservation is occurring in such a short period of time because of the high variability caused by wet and dry years. The state started collecting the data in 2013.

A technical update to the Colorado Water Plan released last year examined an earlier time period, from 2008 to 2015, and used data based on river basin geography rather than town-by-town. That analysis showed statewide water use had dropped roughly 5 percent, Reidy said.

Uphill battles

Communities in Douglas County and other fast-growing areas are often served by water districts that have little if any control over how cities regulate development. That means that things such as lawn size and requirements for water-saving appliances are typically out of the water district’s control. Such is the case at the Parker Water and Sanitation District.

Billy Owens, who tracks the data for the district, said her district has worked hard to bring down water use, in part because it is fast-growing and it relies heavily on non-renewable groundwater. In addition to the town of Parker, the district serves parts of Lone Tree, Castle Pines and unincorporated Douglas County.

That 2018 was a hard-hitting drought year likely bumped up their use numbers, Owens said, as residents used more water on lawns and gardens. That same year the district also began serving several large new developments, where initial watering needs were high.

Reducing water use has also been a challenge for ski towns. Many have introduced elaborate conservation strategies, but the influx of visitors every winter and summer, and the prevalence of second homeowners who have lush landscapes to water and who may be less sensitive to high-priced water bills make it difficult to achieve savings, ski town officials said

All four ski towns in the analysis, Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge and Steamboat, have relative low per capita daily use, in part because their transient tourist populations are included in the equation even though tourists aren’t contributing year-round to those communities’ water use statistic.

But even at the lower per capita numbers, the analysis shows their water use has increased at varying levels since 2013.

For example, in 2013, the Vail region was using 77 gallons per person per day, according to the Fresh Water News analysis, a number that rose to 90 by 2018.

Jason Cowles, manager of engineering for the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, which serves the region, said the rise likely reflects the area’s ongoing struggle to manage second-home water use, climate change, and the dramatic influx in visitors every year.

In the region, more than 50 percent of homes are occupied by part-time residents, whose landscapes are watered even when owners aren’t in residence.

Because hot weather is arriving earlier and staying longer due to climate change, residents are turning on sprinkler systems in May and leaving them on into the fall, Cowles said.

The winning formula

Castle Rock has achieved significant savings with an innovative collection of initiatives, including aggressive water pricing, leading-edge construction technologies, and popular community outreach programs. The ColoradoScape Makeover, introduced in 2019, has helped lure hundreds of homeowners like the Schumans into the water-saving fold.

“When we bought our house, we realized we were dumping a lot of water into the front and back yards. But it didn’t look like we were doing anything and it was expensive,” Schuman said. “So the contest and makeover were amazing.”

Even more effective, according to Mark Marlowe, Castle Rock’s director of water, are the strict guidelines developers must follow if they want to build new homes. Lot sizes are sharply limited; bluegrass is no longer allowed; homeowners have custom water budgets; and development parcels that haven’t been grandfathered in must show how new technologies will reduce water use beyond existing baselines.

“We let developers tell us how they’re going to do better. We want them to be a little creative,” Marlowe said.

Castle Rock also offers generous rebates to homeowners who buy water-saving toilets and other appliances. But if they want a rebate, they have to go to special water conservation classes. And those routinely sell out, according to water conservation specialist Linda Gould. In recent years more than 3,300 people have gone through the city’s classes.

The city also takes a dim view of landscapes that don’t perform as promised. If a developer or homeowners’ association uses a registered landscaper and the system doesn’t perform properly, the landscaper can lose their license to work in the city.

Marlowe says the tight coordination between the planning department, the water resources division, and the city council are paying off.

“The council has been very supportive of everything we’ve been trying to accomplish, and our ratepayers are motivated,” he said.

Lawn sizes in Castle Rock are sharply limited to save water, with some homeowners opting to use artificial turf for convenience and to help keep water bills low. Oct. 21, 2020. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

Will Colorado reach its goal?

The Colorado Water Plan, an initiative coordinated by the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) aimed at making sure Colorado has enough water for its cities, farms and environmental needs, has set a goal of conserving 400,000 acre-feet of water by 2050.

That’s part of a wider plan that also envisions developing new water supplies, as well as reusing and recycling more water to make supplies last longer.

Heather Cooley is director of research at the San Francisco-based Pacific Institute. She said communities across the West are making healthy strides in conserving water, and new technologies, as well as leak detection initiatives, should allow states such as Colorado to do much more.

“We think there is still significant opportunity to reduce use even further,” Cooley said.

Castle Rock hopes to cut its overall water use number to 100 gallons per capita per day by 2050, down from its current level of 115 gpcpd. This number includes commercial and industrial uses, not just residential uses, which Fresh Water News examined.

To help cities hit their goals, the CWCB has also launched an ambitious program to help utilities plug leaks in their systems, a problem that is common and wastes millions of gallons of water a year. At some utilities, that loss can be as high as 10 percent of delivered water.

Jeff Tejral, manager of water efficiency at Denver Water, said the state as a whole is making good progress on the water conservation front.

“I think that there are things to be done that we haven’t actually worked on yet, like how to engage fully with our customers. But some things are working. I take these numbers as a win,” Tejral said.

Technical finesse

Cooley said technology is advancing rapidly as well, offering hope for even more savings. New devices continue to set low-use records. Clothes washers coming out this year are using even less water than those sold just five years ago. Homeowners can attach rain monitors to their houses that automatically shut down sprinklers when it rains. Almost anyone can now install an app on a cell phone that alerts them when their water use rises beyond a set level.

The CWCB’s Reidy said Coloradans are becoming more water savvy all the time.

“We’re definitely more engaged than we were a decade ago and way more engaged than we were 20 years ago,” Reidy said. “And we have 30 years to hit the goal. I think we’re on a good path.”

Former lawmaker Bruce Whitehead said he remains concerned, particularly about the ongoing disconnect between land used for new growth and water conservation plans.

He also thinks the pressure to conserve will continue to rise. And because Colorado sits at the top of the drought-stressed Colorado River system, the state needs to be able to demonstrate to its neighbors to the south that it can use each drop well.

“We need to know what’s actually taking place,” Whitehead said. “If we’re looking at taking additional water from the Colorado River [as some Colorado cities are], we should be doing everything we can statewide to put conservation practices in place.”

Data journalist Burt Hubbard contributed to this report.

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

This story originally appeared on Fresh Water News, an independent, non-partisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Its editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

Why aren’t solar water heaters more popular in the U.S., even in solar-friendly states like California?

By

Ensia

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November 4, 2020

Solar water heaters on a residential roof. (Stephen Rees, Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Dina Berenbaum and Manoshi Datta

For Gershon Grossman and Ed Murray, 1978 was a big year. Grossman, then a solar energy pioneer at the Technion, Israel’s premier technological institute, was launching the first International Conference on the Application of Solar Energy. Murray, an idealist attending college, joined an upstart solar heating company in Sacramento, California’s capital, drawn by a prescient concern about climate change and, as he puts it, an impulse to “save the world.” For both, the excitement was palpable. Solar water heaters were surging into the market, solar thermal energy showed broad potential, and the two were riding the wave.

Four decades later, however, they live in two different worlds. In Israel, 85% of households get hot water from a dud shemesh, or “sun boiler.” But in the U.S., despite decades of advocacy by Murray and others, the number of households that have a solar water heater is less than 1%. In California, many people don’t even know the technology exists.

America’s solar water heating deficit is often portrayed as a historical accident driven by the vagaries of politics and comparatively cheap fossil fuels. However, interviews with academic and commercial players on the front lines of the solar thermal industry, and a recent in-depth report on the now-expired California Solar Initiative–Thermal (CSI-T) program, suggest that the desire for simple, “magic bullet” solutions to climate change has also played a significant role in relegating this practical technology to the sidelines.

A Mandate, an Election and Two Roads Diverged

Heating water accounts for 25% of residential energy use worldwide, mostly achieved by burning fossil fuels. Solar water heaters do the job without combustion. Unlike solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, which convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal systems collect solar energy as heat. Solar water heaters transfer this heat to water in a holding tank. Other energy sources, such as natural gas or electricity from a power grid, serve as a backup for cloudy days.

By tapping the sun, solar water heaters can reduce a household’s water heating fuel consumption 50% to 70%. And Israel is just one of dozens of countries with a variety of climates where this technology has been deployed. Solid performance and wide applicability have made the technology one of Project Drawdown’s top 50 climate change solutions.

So why did solar thermal technology soar in Israel and sputter in California, setting Grossman and Murray on such different life paths? A pair of political decisions in the 1970s and 1980s had dramatic impact.

The Yom Kippur War of 1973 and subsequent oil embargo made energy independence a matter of national security worldwide, but the pinch was particularly painful in countries lacking oil production. For Israel, the threat was existential; as former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously quipped, “[Moses] took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.” In 1976, Israel mandated solar water heaters for all new residential buildings up to eight stories tall — a mandate that was extended to all residential buildings in December 2019.

For Grossman, now a professor emeritus at the Technion and head of the Energy Forum at the Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, mandating solar water heaters made sense environmentally, even beyond Israel’s political agenda. “You just can’t argue with the numbers on how much [energy] you can save using solar water heating instead of electrical heating.”

The United States also felt the jolt of the oil embargo and feared running out of domestic oil. Supported by President Jimmy Carter’s 1978 federal tax credits for renewable energy, Americans installed nearly 1 million solar thermal systems by 1990, supplied by more than 200 U.S. manufacturers, including leading corporations such as Grumman Aerospace Corporation and Sears Roebuck.

Solar water heaters in Jerusalem, Israel. — Solar water heaters on buildings in Jerusalem, Israel. (zeevveez, Flickr CC BY 2.0)

However, in contrast to Israel, America’s commitment to renewable energy proved ephemeral. Under President Ronald Reagan, the federal incentives lapsed, dealing the solar thermal industry a body-blow. “We went from 650 companies in California that were installing solar [water heaters] to about 37 overnight,” recalls Murray, who is currently the president and CEO of two California companies dedicated to manufacturing, distributing and installing solar thermal systems, as well as president of the California Solar and Storage Association.

Recent attempts to revive the residential solar water heater industry have had limited success. The CSI-T program, begun in 2010 as a larger push to incentivize solar installations statewide, aimed to add 200,000 systems, but received only 6,237 applications for residential retrofits in 10 years, according to the program’s December 2019 report. “I could put a sign over the front door of my office that says ‘free solar water heating,’ and they’d probably still stay away in droves,” Murray says with a wry laugh.

Larger installations for apartment complexes, hotels and universities, and home pool heating have helped keep Murray’s solar thermal businesses afloat despite the lack of other residential demand. Ironically, the commercial sector isn’t as robust in Israel because the country’s original mandate only applied to residential properties — a move Grossman views as a significant oversight. Indeed, Grossman believes that an industrial mandate could increase Israel’s renewables usage up to fivefold.

The Limiting Psychology of Renewables

The woes of the American solar water heater industry go far beyond politics, however. The industry also suffers a more insidious challenge: For the average consumer, “going solar” means just one thing: solar PV.

Solar thermal technologies, including solar water heating, provide a direct, thermodynamically efficient and cost-effective method for decarbonizing heating. And for households in mild climates with low electricity bills, “solar water heating can be one of the simplest ways … to use renewable energy and save on energy bills,” says the CSI-T report.

But it’s solar PV that has exploded into the global electricity sector, thanks to manufacturing innovations and strong government support. Leveraging economies of scale, the price of solar PV panels has dropped by over an order of magnitude in the past decade. In California, additional boosts came from government-instituted solar feed-in tariffs, cheap financing plans and private-sector investments. And, in a major coup for the industry, California mandated solar PV on new residences up to three stories starting 2020.

On the other hand, California’s residential solar water heater industry finds itself in a vicious cycle of low consumer demand and high prices. As the CSI-T report notes, “In contrast to conventional gas and electric water heaters, which are typically installed by plumbers, solar water heaters are installed by a range of firms and public entities.” In other words, consumers must actively seek out solar water heaters by relying on nonstandard sales channels.

This additional friction reduces consumer demand among all but the most motivated consumers, leading to higher marketing costs that drive up the customer’s bottom line. Prices in California are further exacerbated by past industry failures, which have led to strong, self-imposed regulations in the name of consumer satisfaction, says Murray. For example, after many cheaper solar water heating systems froze during the unprecedented 1990 freeze in California, only more expensive systems were allowed through the CSI-T program.

All told, the cost of the average solar water heater sold in California through the CSI-T program was US$7,400, compared to less than US$1,000 for a fossil fuel alternative. By contrast, a solar water heater in Israel can cost as little as US$700.

Rather than embracing the growing portfolio of technologies available to solve the carbon emissions problem, going all-in on one satisfies the very human need for “magic bullets.”

Today, drumming up excitement for solar thermal remains difficult. According to CSI-T report interviews with solar water heater adopters, “Some interviewees remarked that it seemed tough to get others interested, theorizing that PV was so dominant in neighbors’ minds that solar water heating hardly registered.”

“It’s just the sizzling, sexy PV [that] really captivates the audience,” says Murray.

Portfolios, Not Magic Bullets

Entrepreneurs routinely caution, “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” In this case, the problem is carbon emissions, and, against entrepreneurial advice, individual governments have tended to fall in love with just one solution. For Israel, Cyprus, Hawaii and others, solar water heaters were that solution. For California, it’s solar PV.

By committing to a specific technology, governments fall prey to a conceptual error that science journalist Ed Yong recently referred to as a “monogamy of solutions.” (Interestingly, he argues this fallacy also shapes the government’s response to Covid-19.) Rather than embracing the growing portfolio of technologies available to solve the carbon emissions problem, going all-in on one satisfies the very human need for “magic bullets.”

Europe’s Green Deal may model such a “portfolio” approach for the rest of the world, according to Bärbel Epp, a German physicist-turned-journalist with nearly two decades of experience studying the global solar thermal market. According to Epp, representatives from the European solar thermal market have lobbied the European Commission for over a decade to use solar thermal technologies to decarbonize the heating sector. “It took [the solar thermal industry] I don’t know how many years, at least 10, of just continuously repeating the sentence that heat is 50% of our final energy consumption in Europe. … It was hard to lobby in Europe, but it’s now obvious that we have to do something for heat.” Whether these efforts will succeed in providing solar thermal a seat at the table remains to be seen.

To Grossman, solar water heaters are the first piece of Israel’s portfolio. As Israel struggles to meet its Paris Agreement goals, Grossman says he believes solar PV panels will take their place alongside solar water heaters on Israel’s rooftops.

Back in Sacramento, Murray is still battling for solar thermal. This year, he’s lobbied the California legislature to extend the state’s recently expired solar thermal subsidy program for one more year, citing Covid-19 as a barrier. The legislature hasn’t budged, but Murray vows he’ll keep going. He may be a lot older than he was in 1978, but the idealism is still alive.

This story originally appeared on Ensia and was published through the Institute for Nonprofit News network. Published at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, Ensia is a solutions-focused nonprofit media outlet reporting on our changing planet.

Editor’s note: Dina Berenbaum and Manoshi Datta wrote this story as participants in the Ensia Mentor Program. The mentor for the project was Peter Fairley.
Editor’s note, 11/3/20: This story was updated to give more information about Gershon Grossman’s current role.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

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Pervasive Chemicals

Wildfire Connection

Melting Plastics, Losing Pressure

Historical Threats

Regulatory Lessons

Cleaning Up

The heat is on

The atmosphere taketh away

The flow is low

The underlying factor

Game changer

Compact call

West Slope says yes

Water funding on the Front Range

Keeping up with the crowds

Ruedi on the frontlines

Most boaters are cooperative — and officials want to keep it that way

Conservation as buffer

The struggle to conserve

Uphill battles

The winning formula

Will Colorado reach its goal?

Technical finesse

A Mandate, an Election and Two Roads Diverged

The Limiting Psychology of Renewables

Portfolios, Not Magic Bullets

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