In the Summer of 2021, after a very low rainfall during the past 12 months Southern Marin County (just north of San Francisco) faced an imminent water crisis with potentially less than 12 months left of water supply. I contacted our local water utility, the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD), to obtain historical data regarding rainfall. And, I provided to them this attached analysis.
Drought Analysis
The MMWD Board indicated that this water crisis was due to unexpected historically low rainfall during the preceding 12 months. Granted, the rainfall was the second lowest in the over 100-year history of the data. Along, the same line they wrote in local paper editorials that this was due to abrupt change in the climate that they could not have foreseen.
My analysis indicated that this explanation was flawed. Since our local rainfall when viewed over several years had actually been much more abundant in recent times vs. during our local dry period that ended in the early 1950s.
Thus, the current water supply crisis is not due to climate change and increasingly dry conditions (drought over several years). Instead, this water supply crisis is due to a water supply-management crisis. The MMWD Board has failed to plan for any water supply backup in any form. Every other week, the MMWD Board writes an editorial in our local paper of how we should conserve more, let our gardens die, take shorter showers, etc. At time of this writing, they have finally considered redeveloping a pipeline that would allow the MMWD to import and purchase more water. But, before this pipeline is even implemented, they are already considering how to dismantle it once "we don't need it anymore." Note that this absurd lack of planning is not unique. MMWD had built this same pipeline during a severe drought in the 1970s, only to dismantle it in the early 1980s ("when it was not needed anymore"). Granted at the time, MMWD was in part motivated by CALTRANS to do so. But, you would have hoped that rational minds at the time could have easily convinced CALTRANS to not request dismantling this critically needed back up source of water.
Many other solutions have been suggested to the MMWD Board to shore up our back up water supply, including different variations of desalination. Invariably, the Board turns those suggestions down as too expensive. Meanwhile, they have successfully implemented desalination operations in many other localities in California including Santa Barbara and San Diego. And, I bet their respective water rates are much lower than the ones from MMWD.
The MMWD lack of vision reminds me of the prescient book by Jared Diamond "Collapse." This famous anthropologist reviews throughout history how civilizations have disappeared. Among the several key conditions associated with such "collapses", he mentioned: a) water scarcity and related mismanagement; and b) population growth exhausting resources.
The MMWD Board has pretty much worked hard on both dimensions to make our little local civilization collapse. While, they have chronically refused to plan and implement permanent water supply back up, as of this writing they still have not restricted new water hook ups to allow more residents to move in the area and exhaust our limited water supply faster.
