Let It Snow

A Sunday driver or nature enthusiast visiting the peaks near Mt. Wilson a few weeks ago would have seen snow that had built up along the sides of Angeles Crest Highway slowly melting into mountainside streams. In time, after the water has percolated into the ground and is pumped up through a city-operated well, that same person may be drinking it.

With Pasadena's underground water supply at historic lows last year, this winter's rain clouds and mountain snowfall were comforting signs for Shan Kwan, director of water services for Pasadena Water and Power.

"We're a little better off, but we need five or six years of above-average rain and snowfall until we see some real improvement," said Kwan, who explained that in wet years, the city's water supply can rise by as much as 7 percent.

The complex ecosystem that connects the San Gabriel Mountains to the Arroyo Seco to your kitchen sink is the subject of a $2.68 million, two-year study by the Army Corps of Engineers on how to better harness area rain and snow while possibly tearing up sections of the concrete flood channel that passes underneath the Colorado Street Bridge.

Restoring water courses to a more natural state, said Kwan, will allow more water to percolate into the ground rather than flow into the Los Angeles River and spill into the Pacific Ocean. Currently, the city maximizes percolation by maintaining decades-old spreading basins below Devil's Gate Dam. Spreading basins are essentially large ponds that slow runoff, Kwan explained.

Other projects under consideration for Pasadena include covered channels and naturalized stream-courses through Brookside Golf Course and paved parking areas of the Rose Bowl that once existed as wetland areas.

The study covers a 47-square-mile watershed that includes parts of Pasadena, Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Los Angeles and South Pasadena. In February, Pasadena City Council members agreed to contribute $312,700 to the effort.

Capturing precipitation to augment the area's native water supply is becoming more important than ever as resources continue to dry up elsewhere, said Kwan.

To satisfy the city's thirst, Pasadena Water and Power must purchase 60 percent of the water it serves from the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California's largest water contractor. And less than two weeks before council members approved funding for the watershed study, the MWD announced a new water supply allocation plan in response to imminent shortages.

Though that plan is unlikely to take effect this year, now is the best time to prepare for shortfalls, said Tim Brick, Pasadena's longtime representative on the MWD's Board of Directors and its current chairman.

"To even consider the fact that we might not have adequate supplies is a very tough thing to contemplate. This, however, is the time to do it," said Brick.

Water that comes to Pasadena through the MWD originates from the Colorado River and the Sacramento-area San Joaquin Delta, said Kwan. Residents of Los Angeles and other communities are also dependent on the Sierra Nevada Mountain snowpack and Owens Valley areas.

Although a recent analysis of Sierra Nevada Mountain snowpack depth and composition by the state Department of Water Resources found it to be 13 percent better than average, the future of that supply is uncertain. In recent years, snowpack measurements have not shown any consistent pattern. Furthermore, that supply and others may be stretched past its limits by 2050, when the state's population is expected to be double its current 36 million.

A 2007 federal court order to slow pumping from the San Joaquin Delta to places like Pasadena gives the MWD another good reason to predict water shortages. The order calls for an 11 to 30 percent reduction in delta pumping in order to protect the delta smelt, a slender-bodied fish that reaches an adult size of only 2 to 3 inches and is currently an endangered species found only in that estuary area. Smelt frequently get sucked into water pumps and have been disappearing rapidly for that reason, explained state Department of Water Resources spokesman Don Strickland.

Water contractors such as the MWD make annual requests of the DWR based on the specific water needs of the areas they serve. This year, the DWR has allocated only 35 percent of the water requested by agencies, forcing many to tap into historic reserves. "We'd be closer to 50 percent of the allocation if not for the court order on delta pumping," said MWD spokesman Bob Muir.

Decreased water levels in the Colorado River will also reduce the amount of available water. Although pumping has reduced some stretches of the waterway to little more than a trickle through desiccated marshland, the Colorado River is Southern California's second greatest source of imported water.

"California has historically overused its Colorado River allocation," said Strickland, "and other Southwestern states are not going to tolerate it anymore."

For all of these reasons, the San Gabriel Mountain snowpack may be more important for Pasadena than ever before. The historic groundwater lows produced by several years of drought triggered water-level drops of as much as 40 feet below normal, and this year's closer-to-average rainfall replenished only 10 to 15 feet of what was lost, explained Brad Boman, an engineering manager with Pasadena Water and Power.

To mitigate shortages, the MWD has encouraged the use of "gray water" (such as that already used for showers, dishwashing and laundry machines) for landscape irrigation and is studying possibilities for desalinization of ocean water, said Muir.

Ultimately, the success of conservation efforts lies in the hands of water users, he explained.

Although it may not seem like there's much any one person can do, "One shower multiplied by 36 million people is a lot of water," said Muir.

The agency offers conservation tips at www.bewaterwise.com.