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Downtown San Jose sank 13 feet between 1910 and 1970 from excessive groundwater pumping. Repairs to sewers, roads, and bridges, plus the construction of levees to protect land below high tide from flooding, cost the area at least $750 million in 2013 dollars. The Santa Clara Valley region would still be sinking at a rapid rate if it weren’t for the foresight of the Santa Clara Valley Water District and supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In the 1960s, the State Water project started delivering Delta water to the Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California. 

Our wet winter increased the state’s water supply and filled many of our reservoirs. But in many ways, the much-needed relief exposed the failure of the current water system and the lack of a cohesive federal and state plan to secure water for California residents and businesses. Unlike the commonly used phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” our state’s water system is widely recognized as broken, in dire need of a fix.

Shortly before state water officials announced today that most urban water providers will no longer be subject to mandatory conservation targets, three environmental groups pleaded with the same panel for emergency flows through the Delta to prevent extinction of the smelt. It’s normal for some smelt to die off this time of year as juveniles mature into adults, Jon Rosenfield, a conservation biologist with The Bay Institute, told the State Water Resources Control Board. But something must be done to help a larger share of those babies make it to adulthood this year, he said.

Amid punishing drought, federal water managers projected Tuesday that — by a very narrow margin— the crucial Lake Mead reservoir on the Colorado River won’t have enough water to make full deliveries to Nevada and Arizona in 2018. A federal report shows the surface level of the lake behind Hoover Dam is expected to remain high enough this year to avoid a shortage declaration in 2017. But it’ll still be a mere 4 feet above a 1,075-foot elevation action point. For 2018, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects the lake level could fall short — by less than 1 foot.

The vast majority of California’s urban water districts report they have enough supplies to withstand three more years of drought, clearing them from an imminent return to state-mandated cutbacks under a new program of locally controlled conservation. The State Water Resources Control Board in May dropped a statewide mandate to cut urban water use by 25% from 2013 levels, after California got a reprieve from its five-year drought by more abundant rain and snow this past winter.