The next U.S. president will have to act quickly to chart a course so the Colorado River can continue supplying water to millions of city-dwellers, farmers, Indian tribes and recreational users in the Southwest, according to a University of Colorado research study made public Monday. A survey of policy- and decision-makers by the University of Colorado concluded that the next president could almost immediately face the prospect of Colorado River water supply cuts to Arizona and Nevada in January 2018.

 

As the debate rages over the election of the next President, it seems that another debate with significant implications for California has yet to take place. It concerns the one commodity which our state and the planet cannot do without—water. As California enters its sixth year of a historic drought, the solutions from Sacramento have been short in coming and predictions that there will be continuing water shortages are as solid as the belief that the sun will always come up again.

Scientists have begun to account for the topsy-turvy carbon cycle of the Colorado River delta — once a massive green estuary of grassland, marshes and cottonwood, now desiccated dead land. “We’ve done a lot in the United States to alter water systems, to dam them. The river irrigates our crops and makes energy. What we really don’t understand is how our poor water management is affecting other natural systems — in this case, carbon cycling,” said Cornell’s Jansen Smith, a doctoral candidate in earth and atmospheric sciences.

On the day it became official that this was the wettest October in Redding in more than 50 years, the state released water conservation numbers for September. Redding conserved 7 percent based on its 2013 baseline usage. That was down from the more than 20 percent the city saved in September 2015. Still, Redding earlier this year chose not to reduce residents’ water usage from 2013 based on its 100 percent allotment. So the 7 percent reduction was an improvement over zero conservation.

 

Seven of the 10 worst cities in America for air pollution are in California, per the American Lung Association. The two worst—Bakersfield and the Visalia-Porterville-Hanford metro area—are trending down. The two bear much of the attack that California’s drought is waging on the state’s air quality. Their location at the southern tip of the Central Valley, where the sun beats down unobstructed, creates an “inversion layer” of warm air, trapping industrial chemicals beneath it.