Los Angeles today is using water at the same rate it did in the early 1970s, despite having increased its size by one million people. How is this accomplished? Through individual conservation efforts, such as careful water use in the home; through community-distributed appropriate technology, such as ultra-low flush toilets and low-flow showerheads; and through large scale engineered solutions, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (DWP) West Basin water recycling facility, which, at full capacity, will be able to turn 100 million gallons of wastewater into a clean supply for industrial and irrigation use. Today the facility is converting 17.5 million gallons per day.

Mono Lake benefits from every one of these conservation measures. In fact, thanks to 20 years of work by the Mono Lake Committee, much of this water conservation is taking place because of Mono Lake. Water saved through DWP’s participation in water recycling is credited to Mono Lake. When Mono Lake reaches its Water Board-ordered management level, Los Angeles will have used money designated for the protection of Mono Lake to create a drought-proof water supply for Los Angeles that replaces over 200% of the water returned to the lake.

The model is so simple, you wonder where in California it will be applied next. Water saved equals water for environmental protection. But if the current Bay-Delta planning process continues down the track it is on, we will all be wondering that for a long time to come.

The Bay-Delta, or CalFed, planning process is supposed to make 30-year plans for the management and protection of the Bay Delta ecosystem and the water that supplies the needs of 22 million people in the State. All types of water users—agricultural users, urban water agencies, environmental groups—have been working with state, federal, and local agencies to craft a solution. Complex models have been designed to support the process and reams of data have been gathered.

But for all this work, the underlying assumptions about the demand for water over the next 30 years does not take into account the nearly 800,000 acre-feet of water per year conserved in Southern California during the last decade—almost equivalent to the amount set aside by Congress to protect the Bay-Delta. This raises two concerns. First, by overstating the base-year demand, the projected water needs for 2020 are overstated as well, leading to a crisis scenario that appears to support the need for more investment in dams when—in reality—such expensive facilities are not likely to be needed. Second, the incorrect numbers skew the analysis of who should pay for these costly new facilities, suggesting that the public needs to pay for the development of more water for the environment and other purposes when—in reality—this water is available through existing conservation and water efficiency programs.

While there is a direct connection between water conservation in Los Angeles and water used for the restoration of the Mono Basin, there is not such a credit system set up for CalFed conservation and the Bay-Delta. Even worse, if the water isn’t being used in Southern California, it is not even receiving credit from CalFed for benefiting the low-status water contracts being filled with water in the San Joaquin Valley—contracts which were written long ago on a vastly over-allocated water supply system. This system of re-allocating "surplus" water from Los Angeles to other users south of the Delta pumps provides little incentive for water conservation in the San Joaquin Valley and virtually no benefit to the State’s environment.

Los Angeles community groups, for example, have contributed greatly to Mono Lake’s protections by executing one of the city’s most successful water conservation programs, the distribution of ultra-low flow toilets. But by the CalFed model, these groups—and their counterparts throughout the state—can do nothing for the betterment of the California environment with their work in conservation. Under CalFed, the water communities may save just gets delivered to another water contractor in the Central Valley. Wouldn’t it be better to link public investments in conservation, water recycling, and watershed management to more water for the Delta ecosystem?

CalFed can be the comprehensive planning process this state needs to address water resource management, but we shouldn’t expect benefits to the environment to result until the process itself take conservation seriously. Wouldn’t we all be willing to do a little more if we knew that conservation was directly connected with environmental protection? Through letters and public participation, it is up to each of us to insist that CalFed credit conserved water back the to the places most Californians want to see protected: the Bay Delta, our great Sierra rivers, and magical Mono Lake.