According to the World Health Organization, more than 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home. Here in Santa Clara County, we take it for granted that when we turn on the tap, we’ll get fresh, clean water suitable for drinking, cooking, bathing and watering our gardens. But did you ever wonder how that water gets to your home? For most of those living in San Jose, the answer is more complicated than you might expect, and getting more so thanks to new regulations, climate change, and major projects that are currently underway.
For decades, Santa Clara Valley enjoyed the benefits of a generous supply of groundwater – by far the largest reservoir in the County – fed by two watersheds: Guadalupe River on the West, and the Coyote Creek on the East. In fact, supplies were so ample, that attempts were made in the early part of the 20th Century to export water to the growing population in San Francisco, but plans were delayed by legal challenges and charges of payoffs and corruption. But as more and more of the Valley’s groundwater was extracted to support the substantial and famously successful agricultural industry, concerns about the need to preserve and even replenish this supply gave impetus to efforts to form a Water District. After two failed attempts in 1921 and 1925, spurred by reports of saltwater intrusion into wells, voters overwhelmingly approved the formation of the Santa Clara Valley Conservation District in 1929. (Water Resources Development in Santa Clara Valley, California: Insights into the Human-Hydrologic Relationship, by Jesse L. Reynolds and T.N. Narasimhan, June 2000.) In subsequent years, the District constructed the Coyote Dam in 1936, and the Anderson Dam in 1950, in large part to conserve water for agricultural uses and recharge the Valley’s aquifers.
However, the population in Santa Clara Valley exploded with the development of the post-WWII defense industry, with companies such as the Stanford Industrial Park, Sylvania, Philco, Ford, GE, Lockheed, Hewlett Packard, Ames Aerospace, Fairchild, Raytheon, Signetics, National Semiconductor, Intel, and IBM, just to name a few. It was calculated that each individual job brought 8 to 10 new residents, plus another 1.5 non-manufacturing jobs. Farmland gave way to industrial parks. By 1970, Santa Clara County’s population had more than tripled to over a million from around 300,000 in 1950, and would continue to grow. (Santa Clara County, Harvest of Change, Stephen M. Payne, 1987).
In order to provide water for this growth, it became necessary to import water, especially during years when drought or low rainfall reduced supplies stored in the Valley’s several reservoirs. For years, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, aka “Valley Water,” has imported over half of its total water supply. Where Your Water Comes From | Santa Clara Valley Water . While the District continues to “store” water supplies in other locations, such as the San Luis Reservoir and the Kern Water Bank, it recently lost the ability to store water in Anderson Reservoir until it can be fully rebuilt – a process that is schedule to be undertaken in 2025 and will take approximately ten (10) years. Due to concerns over the seismic instability of Anderson Dam, the District has had to reduce storage capacity in Anderson for several years, and in February, 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered the District to reduce this level to “Deadpool” level, meaning a level below the lowest outlet in the reservoir. FERC further ordered the District to proceed to construct a discharge pipe capable of quickly reducing any stored water in the reservoir. This project, known as the Anderson Dam Tunnel Project (ADTP), is currently underway, and the environmental review process for the retrofit and reconstruction of Anderson Dam is wrapping up.
Recently, the State of California initiated a process to figure out how much total groundwater lies beneath the surface. After basically ignoring groundwater in all the legal wrangling over surface water rights going back to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Lux v. Haggin in 1886, which established a priority for riparian vs. appropriation rights, the State Legislature enacted the Sustainability Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014. This legislation initiated a 20-year period by which hundreds of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) around the State are to report on efforts to account for and demonstrate how they plan to manage their underground storage basins.
Further compounding the water supply problem, the severe drought conditions in the Western United States drastically reduced the amount of water in the Colorado River to historic low levels. Allocations from the Colorado River were established by the so-called “Law of the River” amongst seven states in 1922. However, it has been since acknowledged that the original allocations were based on faulty and overly optimistic projections. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (aka the “MET”) – the largest water district in the United States – depends to a large extent on these allocations from the Colorado River, as well as from Northern California through the State Water Project. Consequently, if Colorado River allocations are cut, the MET and the Valley Water District’s current cooperative posture could change to a more competitive one as they both would be even more dependent on Central Valley sources. The problem is further compounded by the fact that some of these sources have been declared “critically overdrafted” and may be subject to probation by the State Water Resources Control Board. (“Tulare Lake farm barons defy calls to cut groundwater pumping” Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2023.)
Solving this extremely wicked problem will take a complex set of extremely expensive and politically challenging solutions. The first step involves increasing awareness of the problem, coupled with a need to gather reliable and relevant information. As with any other crisis, it is essential that everyone do their part to become better informed so that critical decisions can be made in a timely manner.
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