California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Monday to safeguard his state’s water supplies from the effects of extreme weather.
The order will help expand California’s capacity to capture storm runoff during wet years by accelerating groundwater recharge projects, according to the governor’s office.
Push is coming to shove on the West’s most important river.
The seven states that share water from the Colorado River are as close to open conflict over dwindling supplies as they’ve ever been. Six of them ganged up on California last week, arguing that it should bear the brunt of supply cuts because a greater share of the water evaporates before it gets that far downriver.
California is bristling at the proposal. “We didn’t just learn last year that water evaporates,” said J.B. Hamby, the chair of the Colorado River Board of California.
Another top California water official, Jim Madaffer, vice chair of the Colorado River Board of California, who represents the San Diego County Water Authority, said California has a blueprint for other states — a multi-agency, multi-year process that California used to rein in its water use two decades ago.
“California has done its part and is willing to do more, but it’s time for the other states to step up,” Madaffer said in an email.
It may feel like California is flush with water at the moment, after a winter of historic storms that replenished drought-starved lakes and left the Sierra Nevada snowpack at the deepest it’s been in 28 years. But follow the Colorado River, which supplies 15% of California’s water, back to bottomed-out reservoirs like Nevada’s Lake Mead, and it becomes clear the future of water in the Golden State is still very much in flux.
Lake Oroville, a key component of California’s water supply, looks noticeably fuller after a series of January storms.
The atmospheric rivers dumped trillions of gallons of moisture on the state, spurring widespread flooding and destruction but also providing a healthy boost to snowpack and drought-sapped reservoirs.
Deep underneath the sodden soils and the berms of snow that now coat California, fuels for fire are waiting to sprout. Grasses and other quick-growing vegetation, spurred by the downpours that saturated the state at the start of the year, quickly turn to kindling as the weather warms.
“When that rain comes – and it came last month – that results in significant fuel load increases,” said Isaac Sanchez, a CalFire battalion chief.
Forty percent or more of all water use in western US cities goes to outdoor watering of lawns, gardens, pools, and golf courses. One of the most effective urban water conservation strategies is to reduce the area of irrigated landscaping, or switching to less water-intensive vegetation.
My research group spent three years collecting water data and other information from 28 water utilities that serve a total of 23 million people in the American Southwest. The task wasn’t easy: 39 researchers were involved in collecting data from 45 different utility employees. Each of these utilities we surveyed is dependent on the Colorado River for some portion or all of their water supplies.
Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley may be able to blunt a sharp decline in the years ahead if policymakers and the industry can come together on a series of strategies for reducing demand for irrigation while also increasing water supply, according to a new assessment from a prominent policy organization.
The report this month from the Public Policy Institute of California examined the biggest challenge confronting the state’s ag industry then recommended softening the impact by loosening water-trading rules, incentivizing farmland reuse and investing in storage, including groundwater recharge.
The first week of February brought only modest amounts of rain and snow but despite that, California’s snowpack and many of the state’s largest reservoirs are in good shape.
According to data tracked by California’s Department of Water Resources, the statewide snowpack is at 135% of the average peak. Typically the snowpack peaks in late March to early April.
As we entered the fall of 2022 in California, news headlines read of a 1,200-year drought and state agencies warned the current drought from 2020 to 2022 was the driest on record.
In a matter of weeks, stories changed to talk of flooding, mudslides, and record rainfall. The New Year brought one of the wettest months on record in California. This set of evolving headlines is nothing new.
New data show a snowy start to 2023 for the Colorado River basin. Inflows into Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reservoir, are currently projected to be 117% of average during spring runoff thanks to heavy winter precipitation in the Rocky Mountains.
The beleaguered river is shrinking due to climate change and steady demand. Scientists say this winter’s snow may provide a temporary boost to major reservoirs, but will not provide enough water to fix the Southwest’s supply-demand imbalance.
