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that groundwater is no longer usable, or there will be other impacts, like subsidence which is already wreaking havoc in a lot of places in the state.


Pitzer: Martha, you’re in an area that depends on imported water supplies. Southern California has always done a fantastic job of making do with less.


Martha Davis: Absolutely. And it’s making do with less, but not in a hard sense. It’s really about better manage- ment of those existing water supplies and having a better understanding of the assets that we have in our own backyard that have been underappreci- ated, undervalued, underutilized or not adequately protected. It’s interesting because I agree on the bigger picture of the groundwater deficit, particularly in the Central Valley. And yet, when you stand back and look at how California is managing its water supplies, you see areas where we assumed that popula- tion growth would mean that we would need more water. But it hasn’t. Look at Los Angeles. Then you look at some of the water development opportuni-


L to R: Gary Pitzer, Anthony Saracino, Sue McClurg, Martha Davis, Ellen Hanak and Stuart Leavenworth.


ties that have occurred in Southern California. The Santa Ana Watershed is a wonderful example of groundwater supplies that were being depleted and in some respects underappreciated where we were contaminating our groundwater supplies and therefore rendering part of it useless. We’ve turned it around and put together management plans that are sustainable. We’re making investment in water quality treatment. We’re generating additional recycled water and ground- water supplies. We’re figuring out how to do a better job of capturing and using stormwater so that we actually have taken an unsustainable situation and flipped it completely around where we’re talking about how we can better use those groundwater resources to have more storage and more sustain- able and reliable water supplies that will be available during the droughts. So now you’re beginning to talk about how you manage water supplies not just in the absolute sense for the end of year, but how you’re carrying over the water into the drought periods when we have greater demands. It’s all about water management in the end. And so do I think in the bigger picture that we have adequate water, yes, I do. The real issue is how we make choices about how we manage it.


Pitzer: Sacramento is at the intersection of two rivers where some think we have this bountiful, endless supply of water. Stuart, do you think the mindset in the Sacramento area is to take water for granted?


Stuart Leavenworth: It’s clear there’s this weird sense of entitlement in Sacramento to water and it’s true in some other valley towns where you haven’t metered it. I would say, though, that that’s just a rather small amount of water that’s used in California.


And in response to your original question, do we have enough water for our current needs? The other question would be do we have enough water for our current wants. We clearly don’t have enough water for our current wants, but those wants include things such as wanting to expand the number of almonds we grow in the San Joaquin Valley or having a huge dairy industry. And the question becomes is that something that California really needs? Is that our economic priority for the state to have a bigger dairy industry than Wisconsin or to compete globally on almonds? It might be. But we’re not really making those decisions as a state. Individual water users are making those decisions and that causes strain on an already limited system.


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Western Water


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