The news over the next few months will be inundated with stories, editorials, and debate on the minutiae of a desalination plant. No serious participant in this contest of scientists, engineers, planners, and visionaries, however, is arguing that we have enough water. That is good, because we don’t. Our capacity to ensure employers and investors that there will be sufficient, certain, affordable water will establish a ceiling on the gross domestic product (GDP) of Santa Cruz County – and the jobs, investments, public services, and quality of life that are defined by that GDP.
There was a time when some of the more Spartan-survivalist cadre of anti-desal advocates argued that we did have enough water. This has not been true for years in the Soquel Creek Water District, which has been in overdraft for several years and is beginning to experience degradation of their aquifers from salt-water intrusion.
The Santa Cruz City water district arguably had enough water in rainy years. In drought years, it did not, and during the inevitable multi-year drought periods the District knew it was seriously short of even curtailed demand. The “comfort” of experiencing only periodic water crises dissolved, however, when the state and federal fish and game administrators announced that they expected to reduce the Santa Cruz Water Department’s draw from rivers and streams (the source of nearly all of the City’s water supply) by 25%.
Water will increasingly define not only our economic capacity and competitiveness, but that of local and regional economies around the world. A good case study is the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation study done by USC on the impacts of a partial, temporary loss of water resulting from the disruption of LA’s water supply – for instance loss of water from the California Aqueduct.
The USC study found that the impacts of a short term disruption (6 months) could be accommodated without serious economic impact but, for instance, a 24 month shut down of the California Aqueduct (about 12% of LA County’s total water supply) was estimated to result in losses of $75 billion in GDP, $133 billion in sales revenue for LA County businesses, and 742,000 job-years of employment. If the reduction of water supply lasted for 36 months the loss of GDP and jobs nearly doubled.
These are big numbers, but LA is big. The 24-month loss represents “only” a 4.2% decrease in GDP and a 4% decrease in employment. A back-of-the-envelope extrapolation for the affected areas of Santa Cruz County is difficult… the projected reduction of the Santa Cruz Water Department’s capacity in the case of a two year drought is about 35%… about 3x the LA studies projection. And, in the absence of a desalination option, the Soquel Creek district proposes an immediate, twenty-year reduction of water use by 37%. Moreover, the per capita water use in these two districts is already about half of the state average, which means that many of the conservation adaptations are not available, likely significantly increasing the economic impacts of further reductions. Suffice it to say the local numbers would be very large.
So, while experts and special interests banter about fish larvae, the sufficiency of carbon offsets, and the cost of building a desalination plant (about 20% of the cost of widening Highway 1 from Morrissey to Aptos), don’t forget the very significant economic costs of not doing something about water supply.