Last week’s climate change workshop in Ventura, put on by the Watersheds Coalition of Ventura County, was well attended by water and flood control and resource management types. At the start of the meeting the audience was asked to discuss what was on their minds with regard to climate change. Here’s some of what people had to say: sea level rise, increasing/more intense fires, more intense storms, less dependable water from the Sierra snowpack, increased sedimentation in reservoirs from larger storms, less reliable groundwater supplies, more severe flooding and the need for significant planning to get prepared, more problems from invasive species, less “stationarity,” higher and lower temperatures, seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, the need for diversifying water supply options so we’re less vulnerable to problems with any one option, we can no longer use the past to predict the future but our models and technical tools are based on the past, and the big problem of getting people and institutions to adjust and adapt quickly to the changing circumstances.
Interestingly, virtually all the issues offered by the audience, until prompted otherwise, fell into the category of “adaption” to the problem; in other words, getting ready for the changes we might expect. “Mitigation,” which generally means efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), is the other important response to climate change. Once prompted, the audience had plenty of ideas about mitigation as well, not the least of which was that something on the order of 18 percent of energy use in the state is from pumping and treating water, so water conservation and reusing water directly help reduce GHGs.
An interesting and worthwhile video about climate change and water resources was shown by the Department of Water Resources speaker, Lauma Jurkevis. The video is online and I recommend checking it out. The portrayal of the situation with the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees was particularly sobering.
Here’s the link. (It takes awhile to load, but then streams really well.)