Spindrift February 17, 2022
LIVE MEETING
George Lesley offered a prayer for those threatened by the Laguna Beach fires and prayed for good health for our club members. Shirley Lashmett led us in the pledge.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Joe Brown inquired about the status of Mike Campbell, Harlan Pauley, Bill Bechtel, and Normvon Herzen.
Mike Campbell and Harlan Pauley
Bill Bechtel and Norm von Herzen
George Lesley noted that he saw Mike a few days ago and they chatted, that Mike is still a bit reluctant over COVID. Wood noted that , Campbell and Pauley are paid up, that Bill has resigned, as has von Herzen, who is full-time caretaker for his daughter. He has paid what he owes to the Club.
Richard Swinney and Dave Robins
Richard Swinney collected the money for the Super Bowl test questions, following the Robins tradition.
Rick Kettley and Roger Summers
Rick Kettley was introduced as Roger Summer’s guest, a Newport Harbor graduate some years ago, with a 20-year son and 3 other sons. His photo is above.
PROGRAM
Introduced by George Lesley, who told us that the speaker today is “interesting, smart and we ought to listen to what he says.” Peter Swan, Director of the Irvine Ranch Water District, was our speaker. Originally from Massachusetts, he came here in 1964 after spending five years in the military, went to OCC, UCLA, and has a BA and MS from Cal State Fullerton.
The subject was water! He has been involved in water for six years here, and other years with the Metropolitan Water District (MWD), for whom his father worked for 40 years! He saw multiple charts about water from his father’s records over the years.
California is a “water-rich” state. The way you can tell is that >50% of the water flows into the ocean. However the years are “feast or famine.” But, on average, we get 190 million acre-feet (AF) annually, of which 110 million evaporates, leaving us with 80 million AF.
This water is not distributed evenly over the state, since 80% falls in the North and we get 20% in the South. Unfortunately, the distribution of people is opposite. The people use ten million AF, leaving us with 70 million AF, of which 30 million AF go to agriculture.
The MWD, headquartered in Ventura, serves all the way to San Diego, and gets their water from the Colorado River. They built these facilities, have 3.2 million AF, and use only 1.7 million annually. These numbers are the same as in 1984, except we are using less than what we used in 1984. Sales are down!
What about Orange County? We use about 350K AF/year pumped to the users. MWD started with lots of water in storage: we have two years of storage in the basin at this time. There is some increased use in South Orange County. However, a wet year fills up all the storage.
The City and Irvine Ranch Water District are involved in some new construction relating to recycling wastewater. Irvine paid $500K to buy land with senior water rights. Recycling costs can be about 1800 kw/AF. Bottom line: cheap water is always available.
President Mike and Peter Swan
Should we consider making a desalinization plant? Bottom line: there is no need for it. We merely need to fix our existing problems, largely driven by environmental regulation. We can fix everything. Irvine is growing and has the lowest price for water.
If we get more rain, we’re not able to save it, since we have no place to catch it. It flows to the ocean.
Peter Swan, thanks for coming to share your perspective on water in Southern California!
WHAT IS COMING?
With your help, VP Mitch Mitchell can announce the speakers planned on page 1.
After this week’s business meeting, we have the following week a silver medalist and the week after that a presentation by the Chief of the Los Angeles Port Police. If you see a good speaker, plan on getting their business card and turning it over to Mitch. He’ll do the rest.
Cheers, Bob Wood Editor
UPCOMING EVENTS
DATE/SPEAKER/SUBJECT
Feb 17 - Business Meeting, no guests please.
Feb 24 - Olympic Silver Medalist Julie Swail,
Mike Gertner
“Path to Olympic Water Polo and transition to the Olympic Triathlon Team”
Mar 3 - Tom Gazi, Chief of Los Angeles Port Police,“How the Busiest Container Port in North America Operates”
This week we will be at Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club. Lunch will be served at 12:20 pm. You will be emailed an invitation two days before the meeting. Please notify Richard Swinney by this Wed 2 PM if you are planning on attending.