The California Water Crisis: What It Means For YOU

California faces a monumental challenge in meeting the water demands of its current and projected population. Climate change, drought in California and the Colorado River Basin, legal mitigation in the Owens Valley and Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, and a rapidly growing population have created severe water shortages that will affect every person and business in California this year, particularly Southern Californians. As a result of this, we will all face significant increases in water rates and water rationing programs instituted by water districts across the state.

Here are the issues in more detail:

Population growth –

In a 2005 US Census study, it was projected that by 2030, California’s population will increase to more than 46 million people, an increase of 37% over the population measured in 2000. 46 million people would also make it the most populous state in the US. Most of this growth is forecast to land in the central valley and southern California. (Where the demand for water is already high!)

Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado are projected to be among the top 15 countries with the highest population growth as a percentage compared to their 2000 numbers. In particular, Nevada and Arizona are expected to increase their population by more than 100%. It is important to note that these four states depend on the Colorado River, which is already strained, for water.

Drought-

After experiencing two years of drought and the driest spring in recorded history, California’s water reserves are extremely low. This led Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER in June 2008 to proclaim a drought condition for the entire state of California.

Precipitation across the state has been below normal in 2007 and 2008, with many communities in Southern California receiving only 20 percent of normal precipitation in 2007, and Northern California this year experiencing the driest spring on record with most communities receiving less than 20 percent of normal precipitation from March through May 2008.

This has also led to critically dry water conditions in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins. The state runoff forecast for 2008 is estimated to be 41 percent below average.

The Colorado River Basin, a major source of water for many Southwestern states including California, has also experienced a record eight-year drought, causing current reservoir storage throughout the river system to drop to just over 50 percent of total storage capacity.

El Dorado, Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Diego counties witnessed and were victims of these record dry conditions after last year’s devastating wildfires, which resulted in millions of dollars in damage.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta –

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is located in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area at the confluence of the Sacramento-San Joaquin rivers. The Delta encompasses 738,000 acres and extends inland for nearly 50 miles. Five rivers flow into the Delta area, accounting for almost half of the snowmelt and runoff for the entire state. More than two-thirds of the state’s population receives a portion of their drinking water from the Delta.

The Delta is also home to a multitude of fish, wildlife, and migratory waterfowl. It is the largest estuary on the West Coast and a major stop on the Pacific Flyway. However, water project operations have affected native fish populations, and the delta smelt, once the most populous fish in the estuary, is now on the brink of extinction.

In an attempt to protect the remaining smelt population, Judge Wanger, a federal court judge, ruled in August 2007 that both the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project were operating in violation of the Endangered Species Act and ordered reductions in the amount of water exported from the Delta. It is estimated that this court order reduced the amount of water that could be extracted from the delta by 50%, compared to previous years.

Climate Change – Drier droughts, wetter winters…

Global warming is a misnomer in the sense that it implies something that is uniform in nature. What is happening to the global climate is very uneven geographically.

As we increase global average temperatures and the land warms, more evaporation from the ground will be triggered. So regions that are already naturally dry will tend to get drier. At the same time, higher rates of evaporation, due to global warming, will spew more water vapor into the atmosphere, and therefore areas that are close to large bodies of water or in locations where atmospheric dynamics already favor higher rates of precipitation will tend to become wetter, increasing the chances of downstream flooding.

The more dramatic the changes, the more we need to depend on reserves and efficient water supply systems to survive.

Environmental Mitigation in the Owens Valley –

In 1913, the City of Los Angeles completed an aqueduct from the Owens Valley to the city. Once a productive agricultural area, the Owens Valley was decimated one by one, the owners eventually selling to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and moving on. Owens Lake was dry in the 1930s when creeks, springs, and the Lower Owens River that flow into it dried up. Excessive pumping of groundwater in the 1970s further lowered the water table, killing native vegetation and turning much of the region into a dry, dusty desert.

However, the recent court-ordered restoration of Mono Lake and the Lower Owens River, as well as the continued abatement of dust in the dry bed of Owens Lake, legislators have mandated that more water must remain in the Owens Valley for “in-valley” use than was previously exported to Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Aqueduct transported just 115,091 acre-feet of water south of the city in 2007-08, which accounted for just 17 percent of the city’s water supply, compared with 62 percent from the Eastern Sierra in 2006, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s final Owens Valley operations plan for the 2007 runoff year. 08.

This has created another area where the state’s water supply has been reduced. Meanwhile, the demand for water continues to grow…

What can we do?

The problem of not having enough water to meet everyone’s needs is not going to go away, neither with rain nor with some government bailout. It is a natural resource that we have severely depleted. With that constraint, our goal should be to try to live within the lowest level of water allotment that we are given, both for the cost of our monthly water bill and for our overall situation.

BUT, I am optimistic on this subject and I know there is A LOT we can all do. Improved efficiency and increased conservation are the cheapest, easiest, and least destructive ways to meet California’s future water needs. It is estimated that California can save 30% of its current urban water use with cost-effective water-saving solutions.

Existing technologies are available to greatly reduce urban water use without reducing the goods and services we desire. Our mission at MyWaterFuture.com is to help everyone find ways to reduce water and money through education and offering the best water conservation technologies on the market.