09d

• Board Meeting Date: 3/18/2008
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Although the decline of the Western snowpack over the past few decades has been documented before,
yesterday's study is the most definitive in assigning the blame to human-induced climate change.
A team of researchers used computer models to assess what natural climate variability, sun spots,
volcanoes and climate change could do to the snowpack. The climate-change model best matched the
actual trends of the period from 1950 to 1999.
The chance that the model is incorrect is somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000.
Researchers have also predicted that the Southwest is likely to get less winter rainfall as a result of the
buildup of greenhouse gases. Because the region gets much of its water from the Colorado River -- one of
the rivers affected by the reduced snowpack -- the already-dry area could be losing water from both of its
main sources.
FEDERAL AGENCY QUADRUPLES WATER RELEASED INTO SAN JUAN RIVER -
The Bureau of Reclamation has quadrupled the amount of water that's released from Navajo Reservvoir
into the San Juan River, thanks to heavy snow this winter in Colorado.
The release will compensate for the spring melting of the Colorado snowpack to the north, which had
reached 160 percent of the 30-year average Sunday.
When that snow melts, it will become 1.3 million acre feet of water flowing into Navajo Reservoir. An
acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, which can meet the annual water needs of one to two U.S.
households.
The release will increase per day by about 1,000 cubic feet per second to reach 3,000 cubic feet per
second by Wednesday. The bureau now releases 750 cubic feet per second fi-om Navajo Reservoir.
The last big snowpack occurred during the winter of 2005, but did not affect the reservoir in the same
way that's anticipated this year because the region was coming out of a drought and there was plenty of
room in the resen~oir, Page said.
Unless the hydrology of the San Juan Basin and the estimated inflow change dramatically, the release
will remain at 3,000 cubic feet per second until May, when it will increase to 5,000 cubic feet per
second and remain there for about a month.
The large spring runoff will mean a healthy supply of water for irrigators and municipal water users
downstream.
NEW PROPOSAL FOR CALIFORNIA DESALINATION PLANT -The developer behind
the Bajagua Project LLC, the controversial effort to boost Tijuana's lagging sewage treatment
infrastructure, has come up with a new proposal to build a desalination plant in Baja California.
The proposal from San Marcos businessman Enrique Landa has been dubbed Nevagua. It calls for the city
of Tijuana to use water from a Baja California desalination plant. In exchange, the Mexican government
would give up an equal amount of its annual slice of the water it receives from the Colorado River.
Instead of flowing to Mexico, that swapped water would be stored in Lake Mead, a massive reservoir east
of Las Vegas, where a United States-based urban water agency would tap into it.
~7~