Water Use

1
Water Use
Source PBS Television (http//www.kteh.org/cadill
acdesert/episode4d.html)
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Water Use

• Water should always be allocated to the highest
  and best beneficial use.
• There are always allocation choices, and what is
  the most beneficial use for a given unit of water
  is a subjective issue.

3
Water Use

• What do we mean by use? It depends on the
  semantic context.
• Writers commonly interchange use, demand and
  consumption, sometimes confusingly.
• Use as in demand the volume of water withdrawn
  from a water delivery system or directly from a
  natural source by a particular entity in a
  particular unit of time.

4
Consumption

• Consumption in the personal sense - as in volume
  of drinking water (e.g. 2 l per day).
• Consumption in the household (etc.) sense - as in
  volume of water recorded daily on a household
  meter(e.g. 1600 l per day).
• Consumption in the hydrological sense - as in
  volume withdrawn from a water body that is not
  returned to that body.

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Consumptive uses and withdrawals

• Hydrologists talk of consumptive and
  non-consumptive uses of water.
• Hydrologists also talk of withdrawals and
  in-stream uses.
• Consumptive uses require withdrawals, but not all
  withdrawals are consumptive.
• In-stream uses are non-consumptive and require
  the water to be used in-situ within the water
  body.
• A special class of in-stream uses are often
  termed environmental water demand.

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In-stream uses

• In-stream uses are those that utilize water
  in-situ as it resides in or moves through the
  water body itself.
• Examples include navigation, wildlife protection,
  scenic values, recreation (e.g. rafting), waste
  dilution and assimilation.
• In many water bodies, minimum in-stream
  requirements are specified which may have highest
  (inalienable) priority within the water rights
  system.

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Waste disposal

• Waste disposal is a significant and common use to
  which rivers, streams and aquifers are put.
• How much waste can be safely handled depends on
  many factors including water body ambient quality
  and capacity to dilute/neutralize, as well as on
  waste volume and concentration.

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Non-consumptive withdrawals

• Some water uses merely borrow the water for its
  mechanical or thermal properties and release it
  back to the body close to the point of
  abstraction.
• Hydropower is the classic example of a
  non-consumptive withdrawal.
• Many cooling systems return only part of the
  water withdrawn due to evaporative losses.

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Temporary withdrawals

• Although not consumed, temporary withdrawal may
  physically or chemically alter the water in the
  process (temperature, contamination).
• The rerouting of water may create major
  environmental changes.
• The returning water may have different properties
  as a result of its withdrawal.

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Hydropower withdrawals

• Example Hydropower generation
• Water is usually dammed then rerouted through a
  tunnel and turbine.
• Damming changes water quality (temperature,
  oxygen, sediment load).
• The dam is a physical barrier to fish,
  navigation, etc.

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Consumptive withdrawals

• Water is withdrawn for uses which ultimately
  result in its evaporation and return to the
  beginning of the water cycle as atmospheric vapor
  (classic example is irrigation water).
• Water is withdrawn and transferred to a different
  water body via a variety of mechanisms (e.g. in a
  bottle, in a product, via a pipeline, through
  seepage, etc.).
• Not all consumptive withdrawals are actually
  evaporated and are partially returned to the
  originating body somewhere in the system.

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Complicating Factors

• Transferred water that is not evaporated must be
  added to the water balance of the water body into
  whos system it is released.
• Many withdrawals are intra-watershed with respect
  to a given water body and any unevaporated water
  released back into the system must be accounted
  for (these are called return flows).
• Classic return flows include irrigation water
  seepage losses and runoff and sewage effluent
  discharge.

13
Understanding water use

• Disaggregated data is very useful to water
  planners.
• Effective demand forecasting, drought management
  and water conservation planning require
  comprehensive information on how customers
  actually use their water.
• Such information is also a key element of billing
  wastewater treatment fees.

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Accounting for water use

• Measuring demand requires using pipeline meters,
  flow sensors or pumping data.
• In urban areas, water meters allow providers to
  bill users based on volume.
• Assigning codes to accounts allow providers to
  aggregate demand by type of user.
• Further disaggregation of demand by type of use
  requires more detailed information that requires
  some form of audit study.

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Urban demand for water

• Depends on the character and relative number of
  customers in different classes, and their water
  use habits.
• Urban customer classes are usually industrial,
  commercial, governmental, residential (single
  family, multi-family), landscape.
• A key concern in many urban areas is the
  proportion of demand uselessly lost during
  delivery as opposed to used productively.

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Unaccounted for Water

• Distribution system losses evaporation, seepage,
  leakage from mains upstream of customer meters
  (ruptures, breaks), leaks from valves, hydrants
  and meters, leakage and overflow from tanks and
  reservoirs, backwash, etc. from treatment plants.
• Metering and other losses source meter errors,
  supply meter errors, unauthorized consumption
  (illegal connections, illegal bypasses),
  meter-reading errors (temporary,
  self-correcting), unmetered flushing and
  fire-fighting use.

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Accounted for losses

• Customer losses (note that these will be billed
  as legitimate uses where meters are installed)
  broken pipes, leaking valves, leaking faucets,
  bleeding toilet tanks.
• Customer inefficiencies (note that these will be
  billed as legitimate uses where meters are
  installed) unnecessary or inefficient water use
  practices (e.g. irrigating in a rainstorm).

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Residential water uses

• Generally landscaping (33), interior use (66).
• Interior uses - toilets (36), bathing (28),
  laundry (20), misc. faucet use (13),
  dishwashing (3).
• California average is around 120 gallons per
  capita per day (gcd), 80 gcd inside, 40 gcd
  outside.

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Industrial and commercial

• Indoor process (industry-dependent), HVAC
  (boiler make-up, evaporative cooling),
  sanitation, worker hygiene, janitorial, fire
  control, catering.
• Outdoor irrigation, dust-suppression,
  hosing-down, fire control.
• Industrial demand is highly skewed and
  frequently, 90 of the total use will be
  accounted for by around 10 of the users within a
  given distribution system.

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Agricultural and Public Sector

• Agricultural Irrigation, processing (sluicing,
  grading, washing, etc.), hosing-down, livestock
  watering, worker and animal hygiene, pesticide
  applications, etc.
• Public Industrial and commercial-type uses (as
  appropriate), irrigation (parks, dividers, etc.),
  water main and sewer main flushing,
  fire-fighting, swimming pools, water feature
  make-up, etc.

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Agricultural demand for water

• The demand for agriculture is principally a
  function of area of land cultivated, crop types,
  type of farming system, irrigation technology,
  irrigation efficiency, climate and soil type.
• In CA, around 9 of irrigated agriculture is by
  drip, 24 sprinkler and 77 furrow or flooding.

22
Environmental water demand

• Wild and scenic river requirements
• Fishery and wildlife preservation
  (freshwater-saline water balances, temperature
  regimes, turbidity levels, flooding patterns, and
  current velocities and directions)
• Recreational needs.

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Demand variations

• Demand can vary by time of day, day of the week,
  season, and over a period of years in response to
  trends in water use, population, etc.
• Agricultural demand is highest during the day in
  the summer growing period.
• Urban demand is highest during the day on summer
  weekdays.

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Demand variations

• Environmental water demand is generally very site
  specific.
• For example, in California it is highest during
  the Fall, coinciding with the Chinook Salmon run.
• It depends on when the critical conditions occur
  for endangered species life-cycles and habitat
  preservation.

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Conflicts over water

• In-stream v Consumptive withdrawals e.g. over
  Sacramento/San Joaquin salmon v irrigated farm
  production.
• Consumptive upstream v. consumptive downstream
  e.g. Guadalupe River, TX., Jordan River, Tigris
  Euphrates.
• Instream v Non-consumptive withdrawals e.g. CA
  hydroelectric dams v migrating fish.

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More irrigation

• Currently, irrigated agriculture produces around
  40 of the worlds food supply and uses about 70
  of water supplies.
• World food production will only keep pace with
  population growth if more irrigation occurs, thus
  requiring more water to be allocated to
  agriculture.

27
Growing cities

• By 2025, the number of world cities with over 1 m
  people will double to over 600.
• The vastly increased demand for high quality
  water for domestic, commercial and industrial use
  will cause even greater allocation conflicts
  between farmers and the cities and
  environmentalists.

28
Water ownership

• Water laws and regulations have grown out of
  complex water use situations such as the conflict
  over water during gold rush times in the Sierra
  Nevada.

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Who owns water?

• Water in nature is generally usufructuary -
  individuals only have the right to use it, not to
  own it.
• In most cases, water is owned by the nation or
  the state, which recognizes or assigns an
  individuals rights to beneficially use the
  water.

30
Riparian rights

• These are the rights to use water as a result of
  the ownership of property that abuts a natural
  water body.
• The riparian water right is said to be part and
  parcel of the land, unless expressly and legally
  excluded from the land title.

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Riparian rights considerations

• All riparian rights are considered equal.
• Riparian rights are often unadjudicated (they are
  not quantified).
• Riparian rights are usually superior to all other
  water rights.
• Sub-division of riparian lands or acquisition of
  adjacent non-riparian lands creates tricky legal
  issues.

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Riparian rights example

• Which lands are riparian lands?
• ____________
• Which lands are non-riparian lands?
• ____________
• Could Farmer B take more water if she acquired
  land D?

A
River Blue
C
E
B
G
D
F
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Appropriative rights

• These are the rights to divert and use a specific
  quantity of water for reasonable beneficial use
  in a specific non-riparian location.
• They are governed by the first-in-time,
  first-in-right doctrine.
• Most appropriative rights systems use the use-it
  or lose-it principle.

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Appropriative rights adjudication

• In theory, in times of scarcity, senior rights
  holders get priority for available water
  supplies.
• In practice, courts have used the public trust
  doctrine to give junior rights holders an equal
  share during drought years.

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Appropriative rights history (Ca)

• The CA. Supreme Court codified the appropriative
  rights doctrine in 1855 in the case of Irwin v
  Phillips, protecting the sources of water of the
  early miners from Johnny-come-latelies.
• All appropriative rights granted after 1914
  received a permit listing the location of the
  diversion, the place of use and the quantity to
  be diverted.

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Correlative rights

• These are the groundwater equivalent to riparian
  rights.
• If there is water below your land, it is yours to
  use.
• If the groundwater basin is adjudicated, you will
  be limited to a specific share of the aquifers
  sustainable yield. If not, you can take all you
  want.
• Lack of adjudication can lead to many conflicts.

37
California water rights

• Article X, Section 2 of the California
  Constitution applies to all water rights,
  prohibits waste of water, and requires
  reasonableness of use.
• The State Water Resources Control Board grants
  permits, and adjudicates water rights and water
  rights disputes.
• Water rights disputes are common and complex
  (Twain - whiskey is for drinkin, water is for
  fightin)

38
Water regulations

• In most countries, there is usually a complex set
  of federal, regional (state) and local
  regulations concerning water.
• Different legislative branches that have
  responsibility for different sectors - the
  environment, public health, forestry, transport,
  mining, etc. - set policy and draft laws that
  affect water resources.

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US regulations - CWA

• Clean Water Act of 1977. Developed out of the
  Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, it
  prevents pollution of surface water sources from
  point pollutants and, more recently, from
  non-point pollutants found in stormwater.

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US regulations - SDWA, WSRA

• Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 prevents the
  supply of contaminated drinking water to the
  American Public.
• Wild Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 maintains the
  natural beauty, biology and wildness of American
  rivers threatened by the construction of dams,
  diversions, canalization, etc.

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US regulations - ESA

• Endangered Species Act of 1973 prevents the
  extinction of mostly native animals and plants
  through the destruction of important habitat,
  particularly aquatic habitat (hence has key role
  in water resource management).

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US regulations- NEPA

• National Environmental Policy Act of 1970
  mandates requirements for efficient resource use
  that avoids general degradation, risk to health
  and safety, or other negative consequences of
  development, and requires the performance of
  Environmental Impact Statements (CA equivalent is
  CEQA).

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Regulations at the State level

• In many cases, laws enacted at the federal level
  are delegated to the States whos own
  authorities, such as the CA State Water Resources
  Control Board, are responsible for
  implementation, e.g. the Clean Water Act in CA is
  enforced through the CA Porter-Cologne Water
  Quality Control Act of 1969.

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California water regulations

• In CA, water use and supply are controlled under
  a complex system of intermeshing federal and
  state laws, common case laws, federal and state
  statutes, constitutional amendments, court
  rulings and contract agreements that in some way
  govern and regulate how water is developed,
  allocated or used.

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CA sources of information

• CA has perhaps more water legislation on the
  books than any other State.
• A complete summary of water laws can be seen in
  Volume 1, Chapter 2 of the CA Water Plan (160-94)
  with more recent updates tackled in Volume 1,
  Chapter 2 of the (160-98) Plan.
• Information can also be obtained on the web at
  various sites such as http//ceres.ca.gov/topic/e
  nv_law/water/
• An excellent book on the subject is California
  Water by Littleworth and Garner, 1995.

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Important federal agencies

• The primary federal agencies for water resources
  development and protection include Environmental
  Protection Agency, US Army Corps of Engineers, US
  Bureau of Reclamation, US Geological Survey, US
  Department of Agriculture and the US Fish and
  Wildlife Service.

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Important CA agencies

• Important CA State agencies for setting or
  enforcing water-related regulations include the
  CA State Legislature, CA Supreme Court, State
  Water Resources Control Board, CA Resources
  Agency (esp. CA Dept. of Fish and Game CA Dept.
  of Water Resources), and the CA Dept. of Health
  Services,

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Important CA govt. agencies

• An interesting and important new player in CA is
  the CAL-FED Program.
• A state-federal partnership, its role is to
  develop a comprehensive solution to provide more
  reliable water supplies while stabilizing the
  Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and SF Bay
  ecosystems for fish and wildlife.