I feel compelled to respond to Ms. Green’s May 8, 2012 blog regarding “Rancho Santa Margarita, Meet Calleguas.” Ms. Green has used some local newspaper articles to try to make two points: 1) that CH2M HILL, and specifically that Mr. Terry Foreman, provided bad science and engineering on Calleguas’ Las Posas Basin Aquifer Storage and Recharge (ASR) Project and, 2) that the project was a failure. Both points are false.

On the first point, Mr. Foreman’s projections of the response of the Las Posas Basin groundwater levels to the ASR Project have proven to be very accurate. In 1998 he performed modeling and provided a report to Calleguas which predicted exactly the basin response which was observed a decade later when the ASR Project produced water during a three year drought. We are totally satisfied with his work and have complete confidence in the groundwater analyses and recommendations that he and his firm provided to Calleguas.

On the second point, the ASR Project is not a failure, but a key part of Calleguas’ water supply reliability portfolio. Since the project went into service in 2007, 50,000 acre-feet of groundwater storage has been put in place for use when imported supplies are curtailed for an emergency or other water supply shortfall. Recently, Calleguas repositioned the project to be under local control, rather than a regional project, through acquisition of all facilities from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. We certainly do not consider this a failure of the project.

I hope that this information clears up the misrepresentations made in the May 8th blog.

QUOTE:
“Long-range forecasters, who look many seasons ahead, rarely speak in absolutes; they usually talk in terms of increased odds and probabilities.”

These past couple of decades when it comes to both these weather phenomena, they don’t seem to necessarily behave as in previous historic times past. Like everything else about our planet’s weather, nothing anywhere behaves as it once did. Incredibly, you don’t have to listen to the world’s so-called geniues on the subject to arrive at such conclusions.

I have met numerous immigrants from countries all over the globe here from Asia, Middleeast, Africa and South America and all of them, common folk, have told me the same things. Without refering to Global Warming experts or their GW denying counterparts, all of these people have told me that traditional weather throughout the seasons in their region of the world and home region within their country has not been the same for over a decade. Why would they lie ir what would these humble people have to gain by making up a story ? None of them are Al Gore types looking for fame glitter or glory or obsessed with winning a nobel prize to wave under their competing Peers collective noses.

Clearly things have changed.

On another note. Very few Southern Californians have changed their behavior. The location retail nurseries still seel the water loving exotics and science based chemical systems to maintain them which is nothing more than a sort of artificial life support system which drives the plants to be more and more thirsty. Many of the desert drier points in the west have been strict with their customers, but not So-Cal, or at least that I have personally seen since last visiting.

Another San Diego UT article also brought up the talk of creating a water pipeline from Imperial Valley to San Diego. Apparenly for money from San Diego, Imperial Irigation District is willing to cut off farmers for bigger money out west of them

Yes every year becomes more and more interesting.

“Lest recent spring rains complacent do us lull,
Remember ’tis snowpack doth make our aquifers full…”

Wishing you a happy May Day, enjoy!