California Water and Infrastructure Report For March 11, 2021 - PR

California Water and Infrastructure Report For March 11, 2021

by Patrick Ruckert Published weekly since July, 2014 An archive of all these weekly reports can be found at both links below: http://www.californiadroughtupdate.org https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDroughtUpdate patruckert@hotmail.com “We should then recognize that the development of basic economic infrastructure had always been a needed creation of what is required as an ‘habitable’ development of a ‘synthetic,’ rather than a presumably ‘natural’ environment for the enhancement, or even the possibility of human life and practice at some time in the existence of our human species.… Man as a creator in the likeness of the great Creator, is expressed by humanity's creation of the ‘artificial environments’ we sometimes call ‘infrastructure,’ on which both the progress, and even the merely continued existence of civilized society depends.”

–

Lyndon LaRouche, “What Your Accountant Never Understood: The Secret Economy,” April 17, 2010.

A Note To Readers Two themes are developed this week. The first is the increasing alarm expressed by water managers, climatologists, and some journalists that the southwestern states are not only in extreme drought conditions now, but that the entire region has entered what is called a megadrought.

Megadroughts are defined as intense droughts that last for decades or longer. Over the past 20,000 years megadroughts have regularly occurred in the west, with some lasting as long as a century. I reviewed the book, “The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow,” by B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam, in 2014, which provides a good overview of the phenomenon.

The authors begin the book with this, “The climate history of the past 20,000 years reveals that the American West has been plagued by deep and prolonged droughts, as well as by enormous floods, on a fairly regular basis.”

And this, “The history of climatic change over the past 20,000 years presented here highlights pioneering studies that reconstruct past precipitation, temperature, stream flows, flood events and wildfires. Clues for these events are found in tree rings, in landforms, and in the sediments and fossils buried beneath lakes, estuaries, marshes, and the coastal ocean.”

My review, “Are We Controlled by the Whims of Nature, or Will We Create Our Future?” can be found here: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/eirv41n19-20140509/48-52_4119.pdf The second theme of this report is the first of a series of reports on what must be done to ensure the West, and more broadly, the entire continent of North America, a water supply that will suffice for the coming century, a century that must be one of a reindustrialization of the nation, the massive building of infrastructure and a growing population. That section will begin with a short history of water management, beginning many thousands of years ago. Also included will be an introduction to the “North American Water and Power Alliance” project put forth more than 50 years ago, but abandoned as the nation turned its back on the idea of progress and development.

As my colleague Ben Davidson writes in a new article to be published shortly, “The value of infrastructure--such as large-scale water management, for example--is measured by its transformative effect on the productive process, and on the power of labor, as a function of the new infrastructure platform.” And more broadly, “The most developed scientific framework for understanding the source of economic growth (or decline) is that developed by Lyndon LaRouche.”

I. Drought, Megadrought and More U.S Drought Monitor The West Much of the region was dry this week with only areas of western Montana, northern California, southwest Oregon, and northwest Washington recording above-normal precipitation. Coastal areas were generally below normal for temperatures and most of the rest of the West was 3-6 degrees above

normal. Water conservation measures are already beginning, with the Klamath County commissioners declaring a drought on the Klamath Basin as inflows into Upper Klamath Lake were some of the lowest in decades. As current snow data came in for December through February, some improvements were made in those areas with good seasonal snow accumulations and where the other indicators supported it. In Montana, moderate drought was improved in the southwest and south central portions of the state while severe drought was pushed farther to the west in the eastern portion of the state. Wyoming had improvements to moderate, severe, and extreme drought over the northern portions of the state. The Taos region of New Mexico also had improvements to the extreme and exceptional drought based upon the good snows in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Severe drought was pushed farther west along the California and Nevada border. North central Nevada also had some improvement to the extreme drought over the region based on the current water year data while portions of the severe drought in northeast Oregon also were improved based upon the current water year.

U.S Drought Monitor for California

Week

Date Current 2021-03-09 Last Week 2021-03-02 3 Months Ago 2020-12-08 Start of Calendar Year 2020-12-29 Start of Water Year 2020-09-29 One Year Ago 2020-03-10

None 0.75 0.75 0.00 0.00 15.35 21.50

D0-D4 99.25 99.25 100.00 100.00 84.65 78.50

D1-D4 90.89 90.89 95.17 95.17 67.65 48.09

D2-D4 58.59 56.98 66.79 74.34 35.62 0.00

D3-D4 29.54 29.54 21.30 33.75 12.74 0.00

D4 DSCI 3.75 3.75 0.00 1.19 0.00 0.00

Persistent dryness in the West is exacerbating region's 'megadrought' Doyle Rice USA TODAY March 4, 2021 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/04/drought-megadrought-worsens-western-u-scalifornia/4579544001/ • The Southwest is the area of most concern due to the drought.

• In California, about 90% of the state is in a drought.

• The nearly-20-year drought is almost as bad or worse than any in the past 1,200 years, scientists say.

The Southwest is the area of most concern because of the drought. "Coming off record-breaking or near-record-breaking heat and dryness in 2020, the winter has not provided much relief at all and we see the most widespread exceptional drought in this region," he said. Exceptional drought is the worst level of drought.

Much of the western U.S. continues to endure a long-term drought, one that threatens the region's water supplies and agriculture and could worsen wildfires this year.

In fact, some scientists are calling the dryness in the West a "megadrought," defined as an intense drought that lasts for decades or longer.

Overall, about 90% of the West is now either abnormally dry or in a drought, which is among the highest percentages in the past 20 years, according to this week's U.S. Drought Monitor.

"By intensity, it would be about as bad as the U.S. Drought Monitor has shown in the last 20 years," climatologist Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center told USA TODAY.

"I would include Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Colorado as the states with the most concerns going into the summer," Fuchs said.

In California, about 90% of the state is in a drought, a worrisome statistic that comes a year after its most destructive wildfire season on record.

"Much of California is enduring its second consecutive dry winter, with most areas below 75% of normal snowpack for this time of year," the Monitor said.

In a study published last year, scientists said a “megadrought” appears to be emerging in the western U.S., one that's being worsened by human-caused climate change. In fact, the nearly-20-year drought is almost as bad or worse than any in the past 1,200 years, scientists say.

"By definition, we are approaching what is defined as a megadrought, where conditions have been that way for at least two decades," Fuchs said.

'Megadrought' emerging in the western US might be worse than any in 1,200 years Doyle Rice USA TODAY April 16, 2020 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/16/drought-worst-western-megadrought-herestudy-says/5145929002/ • Scientists say that about half of this historic drought can be blamed on man-made global warming.

• The study covers an area stretching across nine U.S. states from Oregon down to New Mexico.

• Naturally-occurring western megadroughts have occurred many times before.

Fueled in part by human-caused climate change, a “megadrought” appears to be emerging in the western U.S., a study published Thursday suggests.

In fact, the nearly-20-year drought is almost as bad or worse than any in the past 1,200 years, scientists say.

Megadroughts – defined as intense droughts that last for decades or longer – once plagued the Desert Southwest. Thanks to global warming, an especially fierce one appears to be coming back: "We now have enough observations of current drought and tree-ring records of past drought to say that we're on the same trajectory as the worst prehistoric droughts," said study lead author A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University, in a statement. This is “a drought bigger than what modern society has seen."

The study covers an area stretching across nine U.S. states from Oregon and Montana down through California, New Mexico and part of northern Mexico.

Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who wasn’t part of the study, called the research important because it provides evidence “that human-caused climate change transformed what might have otherwise been a moderate long-term drought into a severe event comparable to the ‘megadroughts’ of centuries past.”

Williams said the region could stay dry for centuries. "That's not my prediction right now, but it's possible."

Naturally occurring western megadroughts have taken place many times before. In fact, most of the USA's droughts of the past century, even the 1930s Dust Bowl that forced migrations of Oklahomans and others from the Plains, "were exceeded in severity and duration multiple times by droughts during the preceding 2,000 years," the National Climate Assessment said.

The difference now, of course, is the western USA is home to more than 70 million people who weren't here for the previous medieval megadroughts. The implications are far more daunting.

University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck, who studies southwestern climate and was not part of the study, calls this drought “the first observed multidecadal megadrought in recorded U.S. history.”

To identify past droughts, scientists studied thousands of tree rings to find out how much – or little – rain fell hundreds of years ago. Scientists used historical data in combination with several computer model simulations to reach their conclusions.

One additional worrisome fact from the study was that the 20th century was the wettest century in the entire 1,200-year record. It was during that time that the population boomed in the western U.S., and that has continued.

"The 20th century gave us an overly optimistic view of how much water is potentially available," said study co-author Benjamin Cook, a NASA climate scientist, in a statement.

The Colorado River Basin’s Worsening Dryness In Five Numbers Feb 22, 2021

by Luke Runyon https://knpr.org/knpr/2021-02/colorado-river-basin-s-worsening-dryness-five-numbers

(Luke Runyon/KUNC) Lake Mead is currently projected to be at its lowest level since filling within the next year, possibly triggering the first federal shortage declaration on the river that supplies water to 40 million across seven U.S. States.

Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the American Southwest.

As the latest round of federal forecasts for the river’s flow shows, it’s plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year.

Understanding and explaining the depth of the dryness is up to climate scientists throughout the basin.

We called several of them and asked for discrete numbers that capture the current state of the Colorado River basin.

1. 84% of Upper Basin in extreme to exceptional drought 84% of the Upper Colorado River watershed is currently experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions, the highest percentage since 2002. (U.S. Drought Monitor) This is the highest percentage of land in the river’s Upper Basin since 2002, which stands as the region’s driest year on record. The Lower Basin fares worse, with 93% of the land area in those categories.

2. Three exceptional droughts in 20 years Exceptional drought is a category that is supposed to capture the severity and frequency of an extended dry period. Climate scientists call it D4. For context, on the scale of “no drought” to “worst drought,” there’s no category that captures conditions more dry than exceptional.

“The D4 category is something that is only supposed to be designated when you're seeing conditions that are so extreme they're only happening once every 50 to once every 100 years,” said Becky Bolinger, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist.

The Colorado River basin has experienced three D4 droughts in the last 20 years, including the current one. 2002, 2018 and 2021 are the most intense dry periods on record for the basin.

3. A 12-inch deficit Coming out of its driest year on record, Utah soils are seeing staggering moisture deficits. In parts of the state more than a foot of precipitation would be needed to saturate them, or roughly an entire year of rain and snowfall.

The dryness is currently off the charts in parts of the watershed. Both Utah and Nevada experienced their driest years on record in 2020. Every other state in the watershed had one of its top five driest years on record.

4. Colorado River reservoirs at 46% capacity The Colorado River's two biggest reservoirs -- Lakes Powell and Mead -- are headed toward their combined lowest storage amount since they were both filled.

The Colorado River system’s reservoirs combined are currently less than half full. Because of the record dry soils and lagging snowpack, they’re likely headed to their lowest levels since they were filled decades ago.

“These reservoirs are as empty now as when they started filling Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s,” said John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexico’s water resources program.

5. A deadline in 2026 With the reservoirs approaching their lowest levels in modern history, that brings us to our final number: 2026.

That year is the deadline for water users to negotiate a new set of managing guidelines for the Colorado River.

Then and now: A 'megadrought' in California

By Mark Kinver

Environment reporter March 4, 2021 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56225862 This year is likely to be critically dry for California. Winter storms that dumped heavy snow and rain across the state are not expected to be substantial enough to counterbalance drought conditions.

At Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, “agency scientists added that the data suggested a "megadrought" might already be underway in this region - and that it could last for decades.

“The latest update from the US Drought Monitor in December 2020, showed that much of the country's western states were gripped by extreme or exceptional drought, with Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, Colorado and western Texas being the worst affected.”

Multiyear drought builds in western US with little relief in sight

By Chad Myers and Monica Garrett, CNN Meteorologists March 8, 2021 https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/08/weather/western-us-drought-snowpack-lack-of-rain/index.html (CNN)While much has been written this year about atmospheric rivers, avalanche warnings and even flash flooding, the western half of the United States is experiencing a crushing drought.

The weather patterns have left parts of the Northwest soggy. Still, 80% of the land in the western states face some official category of drought.

That is nearly half of the entire continental US, or put another way, the size of New York State times 25.

The drought is affecting more than 70 million people.

Lack of rain sets records The scope of the western drought is chilling. All of Nevada, Utah and New Mexico are in drought, according to the US Drought Monitor. Close behind are Arizona at 98.9% and Colorado at 98.6%.

More disturbing is the size of what's called the "exceptional drought" area, according to the US Drought Monitor. Parts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Texas classified as exceptional drought, total 265,200 square miles. For comparison, that is nearly equivalent

to the size of Texas.

There are four categories of drought defined by the US Drought Monitor ranging from moderate to exceptional. Exceptional drought areas have defoliated trees and shrubs, the grass is brown or dead and lakes and streams are extremely low or dried up completely.

Drought is not just a lack of rainfall, it is a prolonged precipitation deficit that can and will affect all things. Even a desert can be under drought conditions. In an area that averages 6 inches of rainfall per year, plants and animals thrive. If the rain stops, the consequences will be deadly.

"The Four Corners [Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah] is the epicenter of this drought," said Brian Fuchs, climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska.

"When droughts like this happened long ago, the people living there just had to move."

Mountain snowpack is not enough to dent the drought In the West, winter snowpack can be more effective at relieving drought than summer thunderstorms, the snowpack melts slowly and doesn't just runoff the parched soil.

The snowpack for the 2020-2021 winter season has not been well distributed, with parts of Washington state at 140% of normal to places in New Mexico under 10% of normal. Unfortunately, those regions with the worst drought are also those with the least amount of snowpack.

Much of the central Rockies are at 70% to nearly 90% of normal. That doesn't sound so terrible, but when you factor in how depleted the water system is, even a 100% normal snowpack won't be enough to end the drought.

"Moving forward, the large area of drought covering much of the western half of the country is expected to generally persist, with areas of intensification possible," the CPC forecasts through the end of May. Droughts have been intensifying, especially in the West and Southwest US, according to the latest National Climate Assessment. Combined with the reduced snowpack and a larger of percentage of precipitation falling in short, heavy downpours (that doesn't allow for as much penetration into the soil), climate change is playing a key role in the scarcity of water in the West.

Western states chart diverging paths as water shortages loom Legislation in Utah is raising concerns as seven Western states prepare to negotiate how to sustain a river that supplies 40 million people and a massive agricultural industry

By SOPHIA EPPOLITO and FELICIA FONSECA Associated Press/Report for America March 10, 2021, 10:44 AM https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/western-states-chart-diverging-paths-water-shortages-loom76365864 SALT LAKE CITY -- As persistent drought and climate change threaten the Colorado River, several states that rely on the water acknowledge they likely won't get what they were promised a century ago.

But not Utah.

Republican lawmakers approved an entity that could push for more of Utah's share of water as seven Western states prepare to negotiate how to sustain a river serving 40 million people. Critics say the legislation, which the governor still must sign, could strengthen Utah's effort to complete a billiondollar pipeline from a dwindling reservoir that's a key indicator of the river’s health.

Other states have had similar entities for decades, but Utah's timing raised questions about its commitment to conservation and finding a more equitable way of surviving with less.

Lake Mead

The river supplies Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Mexico as well as a $5 billion-a-year agricultural industry. As the states face a dire environmental future and negotiations over a new plan to protect the waterway from drought, it's forced a shift in thinking.

Water experts worry Utah, which experienced its driest year ever in 2020, is banking on water that might not be available and could further deplete Lake Powell. Utah is one of the so-called upper basin states that get their share of water based on percentages of what's available but historically haven't used it all. The lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — get specific amounts that are subject to cuts.

Utah plans to tap 400,000 acre-feet of water on top of the 1 million acre-feet it typically uses. An acrefoot is enough to serve one to two average households a year.

“Using more out of the Colorado River system might be on some piece of paper somewhere and a legal entitlement, but it is not a practical reality in the system that we’ve got today,” said James Eklund, former director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate agency that doles out water.

II. To Plan the Future, Begin by Studying the Past This section begins with a short history of mankind's development of managing our species creative ability to provide us with the water needed for drinking, agriculture, transportation and industry.

It then includes some material to introduce the reader to a project put forth during the Presidency of John Kennedy that, had it been built, would have made the experience of drought a virtually forgotten threat. That project was the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA).

A Very, Very Short History of Water Management Had we humans taken the advice of the extremists like Prince Charles, and just left the Earth in its “pristine” natural state, then the first humans using a stick to dig a channel from a stream to their primitive agricultural fields, would still be hiding in caves from predators.

But, we decided that we must fulfill God's injunction to man in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth.

Yes, the mere diversion of a stream to field was the beginning of mankind's management of the streams, rivers, and lakes that provide the water required for drinking, manufacturing and agriculture.

Through the millennia we humans have always changed the flow, the direction, and even the impoundment of that water.

Think of the aqueducts that the Romans and Spaniards and others built to bring water to their cities.

Recall the canals built more than 2,000 years ago in China, and those built by Charlemagne twelve centuries ago. They not only brought water to where it was needed, but also provided an efficient means of transportation of raw materials, goods and people.

Beginning before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin helped to plan canals in both Britain and the colonies; canals that began the industrial revolution. Going back even further in history water ways were diverted to use water power to replace human and animal power for grain grinding.

Especially beginning in the 19th century, the wide spread building of dams and aqueducts began moving large volumes of water for widespread irrigation for agriculture. The Central Valley Project of California was originally planned in the late 1800s, and realized by the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt drove dam building throughout the 1930s and early 1940s in the most aggressive building of dams throughout the country, with the Tennessee Valley Authority exemplified by the multi-purpose TVA project of flood control, power generation, recreation and irrigation.

Beginning in California in the Roosevelt era and continued with Governor Pat Brown's administration in the 1960s, a new era of the combining of separate river systems into one water management complex took mankind's control of water to a new platform. The California water management system then, and for the next 70 years, was the most complex and largest such system in the world. Only with the Move South Water North project in China did the California system fall to second place. Prior to this development, each river system and watershed was a self-contained project.

As early as the 1960s during the John Kennedy presidency, it was recognized that the full development of all the potential rivers, lakes and streams would never provide the water required by the people of the U.S. forever, even though, like President Roosevelt, Kennedy initiated and sponsored large numbers of water projects, including joining with Governor Pat Brown of California in building the California State Water Project. That project took water from the Sacramento River more than 500 miles to Southern California. Thus, two projects were initiated then. First was the building of nuclear-powered desalination plants, which by the early 1970s had gotten so far that an actual contract to build the first one on the coast of southern California was signed by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The second project was to expand the process of combining river systems into one complex and larger system all the way to the scale of a continental system. That project was mapped out and the initial detailed engineering was completed by the Parsons Engineering Company of Pasadena, California. The project was named the North American Water and Power Alliance NAWAPA), and through the 1960s and early 1970s legislation in the U.S. Congress was put forward with broad support, including from Robert Kennedy and especially by Utah Senator Frank Moss. But, with the Vietnam War and the emergence of the environmentalist movement, the project slowly died away, as did the project for building nuclear-powered desalination plants.

This week we shall introduce a series of reports on NAWAPA, for this is one project that can answer the growing water crisis for the southwest states as the Colorado River is nearing the point of forced rationing for the 40 million people who depend upon its waters. In the mid-west, the Ogalla Aquifer that multiple states depend upon for water also is increasingly stressed as wells are required to be

drilled deeper and deeper.

North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) On the Colorado River, twenty years of drought conditions are raising the alarm that the region has entered a megadrought, as has occurred many times over the past thousand years or more. Some of those megadroughts in the southwest have lasted for decades. As the water managers of the six states and Mexico that depend upon the river attempt to come to agreements on managing the declining waters of the river make clear, rationing and conservation, in the end, is a dead end. Merely dividing up a shrinking flow of water for the rapidly growing population of the region is nothing less than attempting the labors of Sisyphus.

The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) The 1960s proposed North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) is about ten times larger than the entire California water management system, which itself, until the recent Chinese “Move South Water North” project, was the largest and most complex system in the world. That is the NAWAPA project is ten times larger in terms of water delivered and land area affected. The NAWAPA project will create a North American continental water management system, stretching from Alaska to Mexico and California to the Great Lakes. Again, from my colleague Ben Davidson's new article, “this beautiful project was designed to balance the great water discrepancy between the northern vs southern regions of the western half of the continent. In the northern regions of Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia, coastal precipitation supports major river systems which dump large amounts of freshwater back into the ocean. NAWAPA would redirect 10% to 20% of this fresh water south, bringing the equivalent of four or five new Colorado rivers to feed the water-starved regions of the Canadian and American Great Plains, the American West and Southwest, and Northern Mexico.

Again, from Ben Davidson: NAWAPA wouldn’t merely alleviate the current “exceptional” drought conditions currently plaguing 20% of the American West (with 75% of the western land in some level of drought), it would provide a new infrastructure platform, transforming the biospheric and economic territory of the entire western half of the continent.

The “environment” in which production occurs would be transformed. The costs of existing production would be lowered, bottlenecks hindering expansion removed, and potentials created for developing new industries, new resource bases, and new territories. Additionally, it would be an overall benefit to the biosphere, increasing the total green plant production of the content by a more efficient use of the water cycle (potentially tripling total plant growth in the southwest, without lowering plant growth in the northwest).

Real, true economic value would be created--not fake, monetary “value,” such as “profits” from market speculation, or minimum wages or basic incomes disconnected from any reference to productive work.

“We should then recognize that the development of basic economic infrastructure had always

been a needed creation of what is required as an ‘habitable’ development of a ‘synthetic,’ rather than a presumably ‘natural’ environment for the enhancement, or even the possibility of human life and practice at some time in the existence of our human species.… Man as a creator in the likeness of the great Creator, is expressed by humanity's creation of the ‘artificial environments’ we sometimes call ‘infrastructure,’ on which both the progress, and even the merely continued existence of civilized society depends.”

–

Lyndon LaRouche, “What Your Accountant Never Understood: The Secret Economy,” April 17, 2010.

–

https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2010/eirv37n21-20100528/eirv37n2120100528_014-what_your_accountant_never_under-lar.pdf

Some Links for more background on NAWAPA The following links are for you to read and watch. Next week, we will develop here certain elements of the project.

North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/economy/phys_econ/nawapa.html#intro

Nuclear NAWAPA X XI, Desalination, and The New Economy https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2013/eirv40n38-20130927/04-19_4038.pdf

The Extended NAWAPA: World Rail and Nuclear Power https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2013/eirv40n29-20130726/58-64_4029.pdf

LaRouche PAC Team Announces Release of Interactive Animated Map of NAWAPA https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/economy/phys_econ/2010/nawapa_interactive_map_pr.html

The Outline of NAWAPA, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html

NAWAPA from the Standpoint of Biospheric Development https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/economy/phys_econ/2010/nawapa_biospheric_development.h tml