Still More On
Mitigation Ratios
“Mitigation”
is the BWD’s latest buzzword. It means
to moderate or reduce the overdraft by requiring any one proposing a project,
e.g., a housing development, to provide
a means of saving at least the amount of water to be used by the project (a
ratio of one to one (1:1)) - most commonly by purchasing and fallowing land
that is being farmed. A ratio of 1:1 may
slow the rate of increase in the overdraft; but only a ratio greater than one
to one will actually reduce it.
AAWARE has suggested that we
implement a 1:1 mitigation requirement in order to “approach this problem [the overdraft] in
incremental steps while we seek more comprehensive long-term solutions”
Whatever is done with respect to mitigation, however, no matter how
ineffective, will be touted by
- interest groups that wish to delay, do little,
and do damage to effective, near-term measures for reducing the overdraft,
and
- those desperate to avoid, and seemingly
incapable of discharging, their official responsibility for doing so
as the best and only solution, and used as an excuse
for not taking more effective action.
Such a stepwise, incremental
approach will have the deliberately intended effect of deluding people into
believing the overdraft is being dealt with when it clearly is not. It is merely another cynical, transparent ploy
to derail measures that would actually reduce the overdraft; in exactly the
same way as conjunctive use is already being made to serve that end by those
who favor and profit from the status quo.
Conjunctive use, i.e.,
storing water in our aquifer in wet years and pumping it out in dry years, is a
case in point. Conjunctive use may be a
very long-term solution. It should be
explored. It is also highly speculative and faces a great many known and
unknown obstacles, any number of which may well prove to be insurmountable. The concept is nonetheless being
disingenuously promoted as the solution of choice for the overdraft to stop
implementation of, or avoid implementing, other effective, near-term solutions.
A 1:1 mitigation requirement
would be deployed in exactly the same way. It will be spun to mislead a
gullible public into believing the overdraft is being reduced when, in fact, it
is not.
We have arrived at the sorry state we are in by failing to acknowledge and take meaningful action to mitigate the overdraft for decades. As a consequence, what is required now is bold, aggressive action that will quickly begin to bring water use into balance with supply. Confusing the issue with meaningless, counter-productive gestures such as a 1:1 mitigation policy will do nothing of the kind. They will, in fact, only make it that much more difficult – if not impossible – to actually address the existing overdraft. For all of these reasons, it is simply a bad idea. The BWD must, therefore, include a 3:1 mitigation requirement in its policy on new development if we are to have any hope of saving our aquifer.
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