California has long had a mismatch. “Where the waterfalls and where the people are. Much of the water, about two-thirds, fall in the Sierra Nevada, but most of the population is in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, along the coast or in Southern California,” said Carrie Buckman, Environmental Program Manager with Delta Conveyance.
Drought has engulfed large swaths of the country, threatening parts of the nation’s food and power supply. And it’s getting worse.
More than 80 percent of the continental U.S. is experiencing unusually dry conditions or full-on drought, which is the largest proportion since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began tracking 20 years ago.
Snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin is more than double the average normally seen at this time of the year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s website.
A snapshot of the water situation shows above-average precipitation levels at five of the nine regions that make up the basin, and overall snowpack at 229% of average as of Oct. 24. Overall, precipitation is at 83% of average.
Two months later, the tribe became the first major Arizona player to take the feds up on a new offer to voluntarily leave water in the lake.
What changed?
California farms grow about a quarter of U.S. food, and that takes a lot of water. Many farmers rely on water pumped from the ground. But over time, pumping is depleting the aquifers. And severe droughts are making the problem worse.
“Eventually, you’re going to run out of water,” says Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch in California’s Central Valley.
To help protect the ranch, he’s been working for years to replenish groundwater supplies.
The Marin Water District has a new plan to deal with California’s worsening drought.
As of Oct. 24, Marin reservoirs have more water than normal, but the county said they’re not waiting for things to get worse.
Marin’s seven reservoirs hold 80,000 acre feet of water, the new plan would kick in when levels fall below 70,000 acre feet. The prior conservation plan didn’t go into effect until levels fell to 50,000.
The destructive algal bloom that struck San Francisco Bay this summer has researchers looking at both causes and solutions. But now, several environmental groups are demanding action on a similar challenge miles upstream from the Bay. They’re focused on a toxic bloom that’s become almost a yearly occurrence in and around the Delta.
Amid a tidal wave of bad news – from inflation and the war in Ukraine to climate change and divisive politics – there is one story that might trump all others in importance, and yet it receives the least sustained global attention: water.
As an environmental scientist, Roger Viadero had to scratch his head over news reports last summer of the thirsty demand in Palm Springs and Las Vegas, among other western cities, for water from the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.
The letters pages of the Palm Springs Desert Sun newspaper broke their own records for online traffic last June with readers’ proposals to siphon some 22 billion gallons of water per day from the Midwest. To solve the Southwest’s water crisis, the desert denizens wrote, a series of canals and reservoirs could pipe water from the flood-prone Mississippi River to the Colorado River, a supposed win-win for everyone.
Western states gripped by persistent drought are unlikely to see any relief in the coming months, as a third year of La Niña weather patterns reduces precipitation in that region, NOAA scientists predicted Thursday.
According to the agency’s 2022-23 Winter Outlook, below-average rainfall and snowpack are expected in a wide stretch of the United States including Southern California, the Southwest, the southern Rockies, the southern Plains, the Gulf Coast and much of the South.
