To: Pasadena Municipal Service Commitee
From: Cynthia J Kurtz, Pasadena Representa�ve on the MET Board of Directors
RE: Report for the Pasadena Municipal Services Commitee Date: January 2024
Because of the Commitee’s busy schedule, I am presen�ng this quarterly report in wri�ng. I look forward to mee�ng with you in person as your schedule allows in March or April 2024.
Water Supply
When I last updated the Commitee, the 2023 winter atmospheric river storms had boosted the State Water Project (SWP) supply resul�ng in twice the snow water equivalent in the Sierras. 2023 was one of the largest snowpacks on record in California. Snowpack in the Colorado River Basin was one of the largest in 30 years. As the Commitee knows, wet weather reduces water sales. Last year the Metropolitan Water District (MET) had the lowest member agency demand for water purchases since electronic records began 44 years ago in 1979. With supplies at almost 3.2 million acre feet (MAF) and demand between 1.2 to 1.5 MAF, the current es�mate is that supply will exceed demand by almost 1.8 MAF.
Compare this to 2022 when Metropolitan pulled 300,000 acer feet (AF) from storage.
This unbalance of supply versus demand allowed for significant increases in storage:
• 416,000 AF was added to Lake Mead providing a good cushion to help meet requirements for reduced Colorado River Water in the future.
• 486,000 AF was added to Reservoirs along the SWP.
• 333,000 AF was added to regional storage (Diamond Valley Lake, Lake Mathews, Lake Skinner and local water basins)
MET currently has a record level of water stored - approximately 3.4 MAF - providing Southern California a substan�al stored water supply to meet member agency future demands regardless of the weather.
Funding Update
When demand is low, sales are low, and revenues are low. MET is projected to withdraw $307.5 million from reserves this year. That will leave the agency with a projected unrestricted reserve of just under $300 million. Reserves are designed to cover low demand years. The Board has already begun discussing how to also take other steps to cut costs and generate new revenues in order to be beter posi�oned in the event there are mul�ple years of low sales.
Future Weather
What everyone wants to know is what the weather will bring this year. So far precipita�on has been below average but long-term weather forecasters are reminding us that last year also started out dry and then became one of the wetest years on record. El Nino condi�ons are predicted to last through March.
The heaviest precipita�on is usually in January, February and March although last year it rained later in the season. El Nino condi�ons pushed the jet stream south last year providing precipita�on in Northern CA and in Southern CA. It has been harder to accurately predict rain fall for Southern CA as historically El Nino has produced average, below average and above average precipita�on for the southern part of the state.
When asked what the weather will be like, a forecaster from the Woodwell Climate Research Center said, “weird with plenty of surprises”. That sounds like an honest forecast.
Pure Water of Southern California
In December the Board received updated cost es�mates for the Southern California Pure Water Project. This is the joint recycling project MET is pursuing with the Los Angeles County Sanita�on District at the Carson treatment facility.
Phase 1 of the project is a 115 million gallon day (mgd) treatment facility with a 42 mile backbone pipeline to the Santa Fe Spreading Grounds. Phase 2 adds an addi�onal 35 mgd treatment capacity. If built to full capacity, it would be the largest recycling facility in the world.
The new cost es�mates brought s�cker shock. Previously, the es�mate had been $3.4 billion for both phases of the project. This has now increased to $8.1 billion in 2028 dollars (midpoint for construc�on). The cost increased were based on a number of factors including a refined design, expanded pipe size to accommodate conveyance of Opera�on Next water from the planned Los Angeles City recycle plant, acquisi�on of property, a new dedicated recharge basin, addi�onal facili�es, infla�on and 35% con�ngency.
It is not an�cipated that MET will need to cover the full cost of the Pure Water Project. There has already been an $80 million grant from the state of California and funding from other interested sources. MET is expec�ng to recover funding from the City of Los Angeles for the increase in pipe diameter to transport water from Opera�on Next. With some other poten�al sources, the cost might be reduced to $2,820 to $3,624 per acre foot. Today, a member agency buys treated MET water for $1,200 per acre foot. With declining imported supply reliability, it is necessary to search for reliable local sources, but they come with a high price tag.
MET is also considering a new business model. Instead of blending the cost of this water with other sources into the MET rate, member agencies might be able to elect to be direct investors to Pure Water providing them a dedicated supply to increase their reliability and off-set future alloca�on reduc�ons in drought years.
The Board has not approved this model but will be considering it in the future.
Colorado River
It has been known for some �me that the Colorado River has a long-term structural deficit. If the upper basin releases the amount of water required in the 1922 compact from Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Mead releases the volume of water necessary to meet all the states full appor�onments as well as the treaty deliveries guaranteed to Mexico, Lake Mead goes down by an average of 1.2 to
1.5 MAF per year.
The system has been handling this structural deficit through regula�ons. The Colorado River is the most regulated river in the world. Each �me a problem was encountered, rules were added. This includes:
1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act
1944 Treaty with Mexico
1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact
1963 Arizona vs Cal li�ga�on
1968 Colorado River Basin Project Act
1970 Long Range Opera�ng Criteria
2001 Surplus Guidelines
2007 Interim guidelines
2019 Colorado River Drought Con�ngency Plan Authoriza�on Act These efforts are not sufficient for the future and new opera�ng guidelines have to be adopted by 2026.
Lower basin states (shown in green on atachment A) are responsible for structural deficit of 1.5 MAF. This level of reduc�on, however, isn’t enough to stabilize the River given the changing hydrology from climate change. The seven upper and lower basin states are mee�ng regularly to try and hammer out a proposal to offer to the Bureau of Reclama�on that will provide a plan for making the necessary further reduc�ons.
The new hydrogeology is also impac�ng power genera�on. Water released from Hoover Dam generates power and more power is created with each acre foot of release. 56% of the power comes to California.
Power genera�on has been declining over the last 2 decades. The blue line on Atachment B is Lake Mead eleva�on. The yellow line is power genera�on.
Hoover is genera�ng millions fewer megawat hours of clean renewable power each year – something each user, including the City of Pasadena, will have to make up in other ways.
State Water Trip
Pasadena shared a State Water Trip with the City of Glendale in November. We visited Oroville Dam, the fish hatchery, traveled through the Delta to see the subsidence and talked about seismic and salinity concerns. The trip included a stop at the loca�on for the proposed Sites Reservoir that has been in the news recently and a stop at San Luis Reservoir.
We also had the opportunity to meet with Joe Del Bosque, 2023 California Farmer of the Year. Joe has been working on ways to farm with less water for decades and has served on the California Water Commission.
The City Manager, General Manager of Water and Power and Assistant General Manager for Water joined the trip.
Because I could not do as good a job as he did, I have atached an ar�cle Jus�n Chapman, District Liaison for District 6, wrote about his experience.
I will let the Commitee members know about future trips and hope your schedules allow you to par�cipate.
I have also provided copies of Metropolitan’s 2023 Water Quality Report and the first report on the Project Labor Agreements for the Commitees informa�on.
These reports are available on the MET website if anyone from the public is interested.
If there are any ques�ons about this report or other MET work, please contact me.