Long Beach has a plan to handle a three-year drought, despite the recent heavy rains, by using several methods, according to the Long Beach Water Department.
“This rainfall is a drop in the bucket,” said Namika Raby, a Cal State Long Beach anthropology lecturer and member of the U.N./World Bank Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.
This year’s total rainfall fell below the average of 10.15 inches to 8.57 inches, Raby said. This is because California has had two back-to-back dry years between 2006 and 2008, according to the LBWD October 2008 media release.
The most recent rains were not enough to solve California’s drought, Raby said.
The snow pack from the Sierra Mountains is now 75 percent of the normal average, and California depends on that snow for water. Even from the above-normal snow storms last March, only 40 percent of snow water went into the rivers and reservoirs due to global warming effects and parched grounds, Raby said.
A city of 492,642, Long Beach uses 121 gallons of water per individual per day, supplied through groundwater and purchased from the Metropolitan Water Department, according to the LBWD November 2008 media release. Additionally, the rapid population growth in Long Beach contributes to the shortage of groundwater, Raby said.
However, Long Beach is the best at both conserving water and water recycling compared to other parts of Southern California, according to the LBWD.
“Long Beach is still under Extraordinary Mandatory Water Conservation,” Raby said.
The Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners (LBBWC) has already implemented a list of water use prohibitions, including prohibiting restaurants from serving water to customers unless they request some and regulating times residents can water lawns.
Another method has been using recycled water for landscaping, produced by the Long Beach Water Reclamation Plant and operated by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. Currently about 4,000 acres are given recycled water and the water department hopes to see 9,000 acres use recycled water when the expansion project is completed, according to the LBWD.
Almost 40 percent of our drinking water comes from groundwater here in the city, according to LBWD website. High-powered pumps collect groundwater from 28 LBWD-owned wells.
The MWD supplies Long Beach with water imported from the Colorado River, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin Delta. The latter two are part of the State Water Project. The Colorado River also provides water for Arizona, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Mexico, Raby said.
The MWD treats all of Long Beach’s imported water in its five treatment plants. Currently the dams and reservoirs at these locations are low, so Long Beach is not getting as much water allocated by the State Water Project as it did in fall 2007. The LBBWC declared an imminent water shortage in September 2007.
“We have been using storage water from state and federal reservoirs and they are at the lowest since 1977,” Raby said.
The board set up three water conservation measures after declaring the shortage: stop landscape over-watering, reduce shower time and stop all water leaks, according to the LBWD.
Yet this is not the end of the work to conserve water because according to the LBWD, the ocean gives us hope for the future.
Starting in 2015, more of the drinking water will come from the ocean by the process of desalination, or removing salt and purifying the water. The LBWD has been working with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation since October 2001 on this pilot project, according to the LBWD.
The LBWD developed the Long Beach method to convert seawater to drinking water, which is 20 to 30 percent more energy efficient than traditional methods because it uses less pressure filtering out the “junk” out of seawater, according to LBWD’s website. LBWD hopes to receive a U.S. patent on the Long Beach method soon.