I was reading a local post by a homeowner in Bear Valley that read,
"Water. Does anyone else experience water anxiety when you think about our future in Cali ? It can’t just be me worrying about this I was told by a friend in Bfl that when the Tehachapi assistant city manager gave a talk to the Bfl Assoc of Realtors promoting our area he told them “I can guarantee you Tehachapi will never run out of water” That’s quite a bold statement I wish it were true, but I do have doubts."
I'd like to address a bit of this concern. Your doubts are good judgement. Tehachapi has two basic sources of water.
Groundwater from the basin that is part of the Native Safe Yield (see my earlier blog on this. I will refer to this water as "NSY" and we have 8,990 AF of this water across the three basins. The source of this water is local precipitation.
Imported Water from the State Water Project. I will refer to this water as "SWP". The SWP supply varies annually based on the snow pack in Northern California (most specifically Lake Oroville). The Tehachapi Cummings County Water District (TCCWD) has the ability to pump up to 10,000 AF of water up the mountain each year IF the water is available, but our current 10 year average from the SWP has been approximately 6,500 AF of water so lets just consider this or less to be a possible "normal" considering that the Governor saying that the State of CA expects this to reduce by another 10% by 2040.
Groundwater
The local groundwater basins provide residents, landowners, and farmers with an ongoing annual groundwater supply that is consistent year by year and can be counted on for many years into the future as a fixed annually quantity. The Tehachapi Cummings County Water District keeps track of the amount of this water pumped by way of meters and estimates that make sure each water basin does not exceed the NSY. Due to this regulation by the TCCWD, these basins should remain healthy into perpetuity, but that does not mean we have an endless supply of water. The majority of the NSY is used from each basin each year with the exception of the Tehachapi Basin which has a good number of water rights that are not exercised annually. These water rights are a reasonable source of water for growth to the area of Tehachapi overlying the Tehachapi Basin. Each basin has a significant store of water below it's current level and this is what defines each of these basins as "healthy". While we could borrow from these stores in an emergency, the ideology behind maintaining basin health is that we continue to maintain the existing water levels as high as possible without spilling water from the basin.
Imported Water from the State Water Project
The imported State Water Project (SWP) supply, in contrast to the NSY, is a highly variable source of water that has historically had variations from 5% to 100% of the allocation for each water district that is a member to the project. For Tehachapi, this means that we have imported as little at 1,000 AF (approx) of water up the hill and as much as 10,000 AF (approx system max pumping capacity) up the hill. Due to the variable nature of this supply, it is not wise to use this water for any significant portion of our fixed demand in the area (homes, industry, and other uses typically classified as M&I), but we can count on a certain amount as being "reliable". How reliable? From 2003-2012, the SWP supplied enough water for TCCWD that it could have provided close to 10,000 AF of imported water annually for most years (if the demand was there) while even being able to store some water down the hill as carryover for the future, but the last 10 years from 2013-2022 we have seen numerous drought years and the average supply available has dropped to about 6,500 AF of water with three of those ten years supplying less than 1,000 AF.
Water Use
There are many uses of water in Tehachapi but the long standing history of our valley has been to use a significant amount of water for agriculture and as time has passed the agricultural footprint has diminished to accommodate growth of the city and surrounding communities. This is where we need to be careful. Due to our highly variable SWP supply of water and a longterm trend of this water quantity declining, we should be very careful about how much we are willing to depend on this water for growth that requires a fixed demand into the future. Currently, agriculture is a good use of a portion of this variable supply as it's the most flexible in years of drought. People won't die from thirst or starvation if agriculture takes a temporary 33% cut in planted acres, as they did this year, but this can't go on for any period of time without destroying these business entities so we need to keep the long term balance in place.
The balance here is agriculture mixed with M&I use, where each is utilized to the point that they can keep the other healthy; balancing our land use, economy, local culture, and lifestyle. This is where all of the arguments start. Some believe that it's safe to utilize more imported water for fixed use projects such as homes and industry (M&I use), where others believe that we need to maintain a more traditional approach to letting agriculture be the absorbing spring that keeps our water in balance. Most societies around the world use 66-80% of their water for agriculture simply because that's what it takes to grow and process the food that a population will consume, but this also feeds a healthy ecosystem of water in these areas. Tehachapi is well below this balance already and as we head into the future, the growth in our area will be at the direct cost of removing more and more of the agriculture you see in the area. This goes back to local culture, lifestyle, values, and what the people who live here choose for their surroundings. Farms have a range of flexibility to expand and contract with the water supply, while recharging the basins with clean water, providing useful open space, and creating a sustainable ecosystem for the overall area. Homes and development create a fixed annual requirement for water that is no longer flexible so this sort of water use is far more permanent. A balance must be found, but human nature seems to have trouble finding this balance because this argument is about as polarized as our national politics.
So lets get back to the quote that started this:
"...the Tehachapi assistant city manager gave a talk to the Bfl Assoc of Realtors promoting our area he told them “I can guarantee you Tehachapi will never run out of water”
That is a bold statement and extremely vague, but it has some truth while also being an absolute lie.
The Truth of the Statement
The truth in the quote above is that the Tehachapi Cummings County Water District will not let Tehachapi run out of groundwater because it's their job to maintain the basins in balance, so for someone to say that they can "guarantee that Tehachapi will never run out of water" is probably true as long as we can continue to import SWP water in reasonably reliable annual quantities or limit growth of the area to be fully sustainable on the NSY even when or if the SWP supply fails. The problem with this truth is that the SWP supply has declined by nearly 50% right in front of us over the last ten years and the only reason the residents don't run out of water is because the farmers have continued to decrease their overall footprint and leave ground fallow. From the perspective of a farmer, is this a truth?
The Lie in the Statement
The lie is that we are already "out of water" when it comes to the imported SWP water because every drop is already accounted for without any additional growth. People will say that there's PLENTY of water, but that's only the case if you are willing to take it away from someone else. How has Tehachapi grown through the years? As I stated earlier, the farming footprint has been declining for years to accommodate the growth of the area and once the water is allocated to an M&I use then it never returns to farms. The growth of Tehachapi that becomes dependent on SWP water is slowly taking away water from our existing land owners, farmers, ranches, agri-tourism, and other rural uses of water. The rural footprint is the most flexible and the changes are slow so most people don't even realize that we are already out of water and growth in one area is simply the removal of water from another, unless that growth took place directly on top of land that was already using the water.
The Answer
The long term answer is that the water agencies, local land owners, people who live here, farmers, business owners, etc will at some point have to come to the table and realize that they all depend on each other. A compromise will have to be made if the water supply continues to be squeezed as it has been for the last ten years. The SWP water serves over 266,000 acres and while it does not reach every parcel or home it does provide local economic, social, and cultural benefits to all who live here. Farms should be prioritized in the balance and this could mean that growth or additional homes may at one point have to be limited unless new forms of water can be acquired (water recycling, additional imported supplies, etc). There are still many solutions for new growth. There are unused water rights in Tehachapi basin and each of the other basins has some room for growth by way of utilizing the NSY for modest expansion.
The Risk
What is your risk tolerance? The City of Tehachapi once asked me this question when they were referring to the use of water for a project. I did not see the solution as being sustainable, so I was not in support of the proposal. If you think of our water as being something that must last into perpetuity, then my answer to this question is that my risk tolerance is low and that is exactly what my answer was that day. The decisions that must be made for the future of Tehachapi need to stand the test of time beyond when we retire. We have an obligation to hand over something that works properly to the next generation and if we fail in that endeavor then we have failed as a generation and those that follow us will be paying for our mistakes. We see this happening in politics time and time again. Tehachapi is currently in a good place for water, but the system is fragile. I encourage people to keep paying attention and to realize that the Water System is much bigger then what just happens in your house, in your yard, and at the local park. In order to stand the test of time, we must have a balance for the human race. Right now, Tehachapi is in balance, but the threat is real and your concerns are valid.
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