Every water agency in Marin County faces severe shortages of water. If next year is like this one, more than one agency could literally run out of water.
We seem to have entered a new, unknown and very dangerous era of drought and heat induced by climate change. This is a deadly combination when it comes to water use and supply.
The Marin Municipal Water District has some reservoir storage, but not enough to survive back-to-back extremely dry years. MMWD and North Marin Water District have supplies from Sonoma County, but this year’s drought is cutting deeply into those supplies and reducing their reliability.
During normal times, the West Marin community of Inverness has only enough water stored in tanks to serve its customers for about a week. The storage tanks are fed continuously by small streams, but streamflow is rapidly diminishing in this critically dry year.
As a whole, Marin needs a new strategy to survive long-term severe droughts. It is time for the water districts to work together collaboratively as “One Marin Water” to help the entire county survive the coming droughts in the near future. What we need now is a unified effort by all agencies to help Marin residents, businesses and agriculture get through this drought, and prepare for the next one.
In 1977, MMWD, East Bay Municipal Utility District and San Francisco officials worked out a water exchange to move water to Marin in an emergency pipeline built on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
To prepare for a dry future, and to enable nearly all Marin water districts to survive a punishing drought, the water districts must work together to firm up their supplies and create drought resiliency.
One way to do this is to acquire a dry-year water supply from farmers in the Sacramento Valley, which is what MMWD leaders are now evaluating. The farmers already sell water in dry years to a wide variety of urban water agencies, and they have more to sell, even in the driest of years. This would not seriously disrupt their agricultural economies, nor negatively impact the environment.
Moving water from lower-value agricultural uses to higher-value urban uses in a critically dry year makes sense. EBMUD can divert this water from the Sacramento River. To get the water to nearly all Marin agencies, a permanent pipeline (to be used only in critically dry years) should be built underneath the bridge. Both MMWD and North Marin Water District could receive water under this plan.
Water districts serving Inverness, Muir Beach and Point Reyes would help pay for this project and receive water through a water exchange. MMWD would take some water from the pipeline (intended for and paid for by West Marin water agencies) and release the same volume of water from its reservoirs on Lagunitas Creek. This water would be diverted near Point Reyes by the North Marin Water District and distributed to Point Reyes and Inverness.
Flows necessary for salmon survival would be maintained or even enhanced. To get water to the Muir Beach community, water would have to be pumped into Fern Creek from Lake Lagunitas. Fortunately, Muir Beach uses very little water.
Is water conservation alone sufficient to get Marin through any conceivable drought? Perhaps, if very severe rationing were put into place and strictly enforced. But there is no need to put Marin County residents and businesses through such an economically impactful and trying multiyear situation.
Does bringing in new water mean new houses and growth? Marin County almost certainly will have to accommodate at least some new residents, and water districts are an awkward tool for regulating growth. They were created to supply water, not limit it. Marin County and its cities need to deal with this issue directly.
Land management agencies (including MMWD) have created One Tam to manage Mount Tamalpais lands. Nearly all fire districts are working together in the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority. We need the water districts to do the same as One Marin Water.
Jerry Meral, of Inverness, is the former deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources and former executive director of the Planning and Conservation League.
