California water shortage and the ESA

I'm an east coaster (bias?), so I don't know much about this.  Maybe our west coast water correspondent can help me out:

California's state government is forming a "water bank" to buy water for local water agencies at risk of shortages next year should a current drought persist, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Thursday.

Schwarzenegger in June declared the most populous U.S. state to officially be in drought and declared nine counties in its farm-rich Central Valley to be in a state of emergency because water supplies were so low after two years of below-average rainfall.

California's water shortages have been compounded by a federal court order to limit pumping water from the state's San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to protect a species of fish.

At the expense of a specie of humans?

Comments

[Bob Morris]

That fish, to mangle metaphors, is the canary in the gold mine. If it dies off or the population becomes greatly reduced, then that means the water quality has taken a major turn for the worse.

Virtually every one, including Schwarznegger, agrees about this.

[Don]

How can conserving a small fraction of the flow for fish and other environmental values be "at the expense of a specie (sic) of humans"?

[Tim Haab]

Don,

By 'expense', I mean higher cost.

And 'specie' was a bad attempt at humor (specie is sometimes mistaken as the singular of species).

[odograph]

The California desert species? Golfus Addictus?

[David Zetland]

Hey -- I'm getting to this story (work!), but the bank will be better than nothing in terms of reallocating water. (Unfortunately, it seems that they are imposing many moral and bureaucratic constraints on who can buy and sell what, etc.) Last time there was a bank (1992?), it suffered from miscalibration -- setting the wrong price. Here we go again...

Re: fish -- they are indeed the canary AND the enviros are using it (ESA) to stop water exports to SoCal. The Peripheral canal is the solution, IMO: http://aguanomics.com/2008/08/yes-on-peripheral-canal.html

[Scott]

I certainly expect it is at higher cost, although probably not much as it represents a relatively small faction of our water usage. Most Californians, at least us liberal coastsiders are willing to pay for maintaining a health environment. And some of us think that by paying a bit more for water we might actually be avoiding even higher costs resulting from allowing to degrade from over-use.

[odograph]

My nephew did his science project on salt water swimming pools and the aggregate savings for so-cal. If I remember correctly it is a significant savings, and salt water pools are supposed to be nice in other ways(?).

[odograph]

(Perhaps the word "evaporation" would have been useful in the post above.)

[Wy]

As a southern californian, I disagree. The real problem is that central valley farmers get water at very subsidized rates compared to other users.

The fish v. human argument is a red herring (no pun intended)... The fish there are an indicator species for the health of the entire ecosystem there, which can account for LOTS of money wrt to fishing, recreational uses (and non-monetized values, blah blah blah) ... IF there was a cost benefit arguement the fish / sacramento river delta system will win. Also, since it's non-replacable, it's better just treating it as a flat constraint on the total amount of water drawn out of the delta system.

Perhiphery canal is a stupid idea.

Charge all users the same rate for the amount of available water, or allow auction style purchases, good idea.