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.
Much of the Colorado River’s water is diverted from reservoirs and transported in canals to the farmlands and cities of the desert Southwest. But some of the water also ends up going elsewhere — vanishing into thin air.
Water lost to evaporation has become a central point of contention in the disagreement between California and six other states over how to divide reductions in water use.
As California has struggled with drought, Governor Gavin Newsom’s fundamental solution: find more water by diversifying the state’s public water supply. Because of the proximity of the Pacific Ocean, one of the most frequently mentioned sources is seawater desalination. A few communities are trying it, despite environmental concerns.
But another potential source gets less public attention, even though water providers are showing increasing interest thanks to its early successes: reuse.
With the Colorado River in crisis, there is still no agreement over which states and regions should have their water allocations cut back and how soon those cuts should go into effect.
Seven states in the western United States take water from the Colorado River, and although six of them have agreed on a framework, the lone holdout is the largest user of Colorado River water in the county: California.
As Lake Mead and Lake Powell levels inch closer to dead pool, states in the lower Colorado River basin are proposing more solutions that could lend to the reservoirs’ recoveries.
Required water cuts have already been implemented and increased in severity this year for Arizona and Nevada.
California’s mountain snowpack is the largest it’s been in decades, thanks to a barrage of atmospheric rivers in late December into January. The snow is a boon for the state’s water supply but could also pose a flood risk as the season progresses.
Measurements completed last week show that Sierra Nevada snow water content is rivaling or outpacing the 1982-83 season, the biggest snow year in the past 40 years. Up to two feet of additional snow fell on the region this weekend.
Arizona was girding for war with California over the Colorado River.
The year was 1934 and the place was the construction site of Parker Dam, downstream from the nearly completed Hoover Dam.
Arizona Gov. Benjamin Baker Moeur, irked that a federally approved interstate compact had awarded California more water from the Colorado than he thought it deserved, dispatched a squad of National Guard troops to the river on a ferryboat to block the new dam’s construction.
The city of Ukiah has received a $53.7 million grant to expand its water recycling project across multiple schools and parks, enabling the city to offset 50% of its average water use with treated wastewater by fall of 2024.
Ukiah’s program falls under an overall goal by the State Water Resources Control Board to increase California’s use of recycled water, which according to the Volumetric Annual Report of Wastewater and Recycled Water stood at 731,586 acre-feet per year in 2021.
