Guest View

Dennis Kennedy’s water article listed Santa Clara Valley Water District’s efforts for weathering the drought. The term “weathering” implies that plentiful times will return. I disagree; I and others believe this is not a cyclical weather phenomenon but a rude awakening of our future of climate change. It is so important that we look at this drought with that ominous perspective.Climate change is here. I visited Glacier National Park in August 2014 and the glaciers are gone. Nine of the 10 hottest summers ever were recorded in the last decade. You have to go to the weather extremes to be visually impacted by its effects. Yet what happens outside Morgan Hill can and will affect our needs and it is not limited to just water.At the moment SCVWD relies on 55 percent of its water from sources outside our county. When those resources dry up (literally), you might have to buy water from as far as Canada, and even arctic glaciers under the Golden Gate Bridge. There are even considerations to build a dam under the bridge just to prevent delta salt water incursion as the oceans rise.The City of Morgan Hill is paving over farmlands for housing and considering adding 30,000 new residents in a mega effort of urban sprawl. We will add more residents to Morgan Hill in the upcoming decade than we did in the previous century. Where will you get the water to support that growth and the growth throughout the county when we don’t have water to sustain what we have? Sure you can build salt water desalination plants but those require great amounts of electricity. And where does California get 33 percent of its electricity? We get it from the sierra snowpack in the form of hydroelectric power. That snowpack is gone and unlikely to return to previous levels for any sustainable time.This drought does not mean that we temporarily water our lawns less or import our water from other resources such as Bakersfield as Dennis Kennedy suggests. It requires an entirely new approach to water conservation and management. It is going to require a change in our lifestyles, values, public policies, and a major investment in new projects and infrastructure. It requires a different way of thinking, a new mandate with different people leading that effort.To begin, we need an Adaptation and Mitigation Plan (AMP), which almost no one has or even understands. The AMP identifies how climate change will affect our region and city. It is not just greenhouses gases or a look at higher temperatures but a comprehensive view of all the effects from our economy and jobs to the invasions of insects and diseases which will prey upon heavily distressed flora and fauna. The plan helps us to understand and deal with the devastating effects of climate change. We can’t prevent it but we can adapt and mitigate its effects if we act now.Our elected officials are lost in translation and rely on myopic approaches with pleas of conservation and higher water rates. Doing more of what we are already doing is not going to solve this problem because it is not solvable. It is a new way of life. Adding 30,000 new residents to Morgan Hill in a sprawl approach would only exacerbate the effects of climate change. This is a foolish growth policy by the Morgan Hill City Council. A policy based on hope that rains will return is just as foolish. Hope is not a strategy, and urban sprawl that destabilizes our community is irresponsible leadership. Mark Grzan is a longtime Morgan Hill resident, former City Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tem.

With Memorial Day just a few weeks ago and Independence Day right around the corner, this time of year we often think about those who have gone before us and the legacies that they left behind. We often reflect back on those who have...

Here in Santa Clara County, more than half the water we use is “imported,” meaning it’s conveyed to us from other parts of the state.Most of that water starts out as snow in the Sierra Nevada. When it melts, it makes its way into large reservoirs like lakes Oroville and Shasta.From these reservoirs, the water flows in rivers to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where it is then conveyed through state and federally run infrastructure known as the State Water Project and Central Valley Project to us and other southern, central and coastal parts of the state.That close to half the water we use in Santa Clara County comes through the Delta means the health of the Delta is extremely important to us and should be a concern to everyone. But the Delta is quavering under pressure from aging levees, sea level rise and human and environmental demands. So we have been working with other water agencies, state and federal agencies, and other stakeholders to evaluate options.There have been a number of plans throughout the years to improve the health of the Delta and to try to meet the demands of urban and agricultural users and the environment. The latest is a pair of proposals by the state, called California WaterFix and California EcoRestore. The WaterFix plan aims to change the way water moves south through the Delta in an effort to safeguard drinking water and improve water flows for the environment. The EcoRestore plan aims to restore at least 30,000 acres of habitat by 2020 to benefit the Delta environment.The Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors is poised to make a decision on whether to support the WaterFix plan and whether to participate in it sometime this year. But before we can do that, we want to be sure we—and the public—fully understand it.That’s why we held a special workshop Jan. 26, where we invited representatives from the state Department of Water Resources, the California Natural Resources Agency and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to present more information on this plan for the Delta. If you missed it, our board meetings are webcast and archived online for later viewing.Board members asked a number of questions, ranging from cost to governance to environmental impact, and we also heard from members of the community who voiced concerns and asked questions. This is an important part of the process, and we have more workshops and committee meetings planned to learn much more about this proposal and what benefits or challenges it could pose to our county, as well as how much it would cost to participate. These workshops and meetings are open to the public, and we invite you to attend so you too can learn more and provide input. The state of our water concerns everybody.Our next discussion of the plan is scheduled for a Feb. 22 meeting of our BDCP Ad Hoc Committee. Check back at valleywater.org for final dates and times. You can submit feedback to [email protected] Varela is Vice Chairman and District 1 Director of the Board of Directors for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. For further information, contact Varela [email protected].

This guest view is the first in a periodic series of upcoming op-eds on tips to prepare for wildfire season, which officially starts May 1 in Santa Clara County.Most people believe that wildfires ignite homes through direct contact with flames, but it is rare to have a home ignite this way. Thanks to effective defensible space campaigns, very few homes are in direct contact with traditional wildland fuel models (e.g., uninterrupted fields of seasonal grass, flammable brush or tree canopies). The collective experience of our wildland firefighters suggests that homes most commonly ignite from airborne flaming brands and embers.Flaming brands and embers can travel a mile or more ahead of the active front of a wildfire. Scientific research finds that up to 60 percent of wildland/urban interface home ignitions result from embers landing on flammable materials such as roofing or landscaping materials, or ember penetration into concealed spaces through vents and other structural openings.Most of the activity that makes a home less vulnerable to ignition focuses on the home and its immediately surroundings. Defensible space preparations are part of the equation, but they do not address the ember threat. Our Ember Aware campaign is intended to educate people on the risks of ember cast and the actions they can take to reduce those risks, to encourage residents to harden their homes against embers and/or to maintain those ember-resistant features, and to practice ember-safe housekeeping and landscaping. You can learn more at emberaware.com.In the coming weeks, we will provide a series of articles and tips on the topic. Make changes now to reduce the ember threat to your home. Tip number one: Stop shaking.• The most reliable way to predict which houses will survive a wildfire and which will be destroyed is by looking at the roof.• Houses with wood shake or shingle roofs are many times more likely to be destroyed during a wildfire. Using wood shakes or shingles for roofs in high fire hazard areas is like stacking hundreds of pounds of kindling on top of your home. During the hot summer months, the shakes or shingles can be nearly bone dry and easily ignited by embers. The embers come from pieces of burning material that can be lofted high into the air during a wildfire and travel a mile or more from the actual fire.• Unfortunately, there is no effective, inexpensive long-term solution to the ember threat to wood roofs. We recommend replacing wood shake or shingle roofs with a rated, fire-resistant roofing material, such as asphalt composition shingles, metal, or concrete or clay tile. Although this can be expensive, it may well be the one thing that saves your home when the embers arrive.Fire Marshal Dwight Good serves the Morgan Hill Fire Department and South Santa Clara County Fire Protection District and the CalFire Santa Clara Unit. He has 24 years of fire service experience. He can be contacted at [email protected].