Calming the waters around Santa Barbara

As a member of the American Geophysical Union, I receive Physics Today. The March 2009 issue (page 52 ) contains James Fleming’s review of The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Brian Fagan. I have not had an opportunity to read the book, but the review was quite interesting.

Wearing my other hat as water commissioner of the City of Santa Barbara, I must question the review’s second-to-last paragraph, which cites the “water authority in [Fagan’s] home city of Santa Barbara as it pursues a diversified plan of stockpiling, looting, recycling, and desalinating its own liquid gold—seawater.” In the past we have been accused of acts such as dyeing our lawns green and being equivalent to “Nazi Germany,” but this is the first I have heard of our being looters.

Although what Fleming wrote may be true of much of California, it is not applicable to the City of Santa Barbara, where we have worked hard for years and with good success to establish water resources within our local control. The city’s water supply is sustainable and, in fact, only uses imported water at a contractually required minimum level.

The city is undergoing a state environmental review of long-term planning, in which our water supply and its dependability are being scrutinized, so having that kind of term appear in print, in any publication, concerns me. If we could get “unaccused” of “looting,” I would be very appreciative.