Diridon: Fight the water thief

Earth’s most valuable asset is potable water. So we store every drop we can capture in massive reservoirs like Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, Hetch Hetchy, Meade and a dozen more. But a thief has been stealing increasingly more amounts of that community wealth every summer for the past half century. That’s like your family income entrusted to a greedy custodian who skims off more each year.

That frightening news was broken by Don Bader of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that manages the reservoirs. Bader declares that during the first nine days of July, 2.2 billion gallons disappeared from Shasta Lake while Trinity and Keswick Lakes had nearly 3 billion gallons stolen — by a very angry Mother Nature who is trying to tell us something.

Global warming caused by climate change, brought on by the accumulation of carbon vapors in the upper atmosphere, has saddled our generations with some of the warmest temperatures in recorded history. Last year was the warmest, with next year projected to be even hotter. Heat records were broken throughout California in July. The obvious result has been a rampant and expanding forest fire season, water rationing, price increases especially impacting the cost of agricultural products and health hazards for all life, notably the oldest and youngest.

Our macro challenge is to eliminate carbon combustion by the mid-2030s, as is the legislative objective of California. Fortunately, solar and wind energy are coming online rapidly enough to replace the need for petroleum and coal generated energy. And the public is realizing that electric cars, busses, trains and in-home electric energy is much less expensive to use and maintain than the dirty carbon-based alternatives. But science declares that maximum societal effort may take decades, even centuries, to normalize back to mid-1900s airborne carbon and temperature averages.

In the interim, life on Earth must survive by protecting water from increasing heat. Ideas that have been discussed are to cover the lakes and expansive canal systems with solar panels. And creating systems to pump water, both winter runoff and added reclamation  — reverse osmosis, added clean water drainage capture, etc. — via a system of piping back into the reservoirs and by natural percolation and direct injection into our depleted underground aquifers.

Covering lakes with solar panels is a technical challenge and runs afoul of the recreation users of those resources. Placing floating solar panels near the dams, where security prohibits public access, might be viable as would covering portions of the vast canal systems that distribute water throughout the state. The revenue from that electricity should allow the program to be self-funded.

The capture of added water and recharge of underground aquifers have potential and are done to a limited extent. As those underground reservoirs are replenished, protected from the heat of the sun, the added water allowed to be taken from that underground storage could be priced to pay for the recharge program.

For certain, our serious need for water in the future cannot allow evaporation to pilfer such a vast and increasing quantity of that pivotal natural resource. We must prove to Mother Nature that, as we finally strive toward the existential ethical imperative of curing ourselves of our carbon addiction, humankind is still worthy of continuing to care for her planet by protecting the most dear of her gifts: life-giving water.

Rod Diridon, Sr. is former chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, chair emeritus of Silicon Valley League of Conservation Voters, chair emeritus of SV Ethics Roundtable and chair emeritus of the California High Speed Rail Authority.