“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need,” Rolling Stones (1969, Let It Bleed album)
The ongoing California drought has many lessons for water managers and policy-makers. Perhaps the greatest lesson is how unimportant a drought can be if we manage water well.
Imperial Valley farmers who have senior water rights on the severely depleted Colorado River say emergency water delivery cuts ordered last week by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation do not go far enough to achieve the agency’s goal of conserving water for the river’s future sustainability.
The new restrictions aren’t directed at agriculture in the Imperial Valley. Yet fears mount that farmers, who are already cutting back their water use, could lose critical irrigation supplies if an accord on 2023 water diversions isn’t reached for multiple states and agencies relying on the river.
What’s considered officially “dangerous heat” in coming decades will probably hit much of the world at least three times more often as climate change worsens, according to a new study.
In much of Earth’s wealthy mid-latitudes, spiking temperatures and humidity that feel like 103 degrees or higher — now an occasional summer shock — statistically should happen 20 to 50 times a year by mid-century, said a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
There was the submarine pipeline from Alaska to California. Towing Antarctic icebergs to make up for shortfalls in drinking water supplies. A pipeline from Lake Superior to Wyoming.
And that one plan that more or less required an invasion of Canada.
On an afternoon in late June, the San Luis Reservoir – a nine-mile lake about an hour southeast of San Jose, California – shimmered in 102-degree heat. A dusty, winding trail led down into flatlands newly created by the shrinking waterline. Seven deer, including a pair of fawns, grazed on tall grasses that, in wetter times, would have been at least partially underwater. On a distant ridge, wind turbines turned languidly.
That day, the reservoir, California’s sixth-largest and a source of water for millions of people, was just 40% full. Minerals deposited by the receding waters had turned the reservoir’s lower banks white, like the rings on a bathtub. Discarded clothing, empty bottles, and a lone shoe sat scattered across the newly exposed, parched ground. An interactive graphic in the visitor’s center reported that this year’s snowpack – which provides the water that travels from the Sacramento River Delta into the reservoir itself – was zero percent of the yearly average.
Major Colorado River cuts must be made, one way or another. The only looming questions are when and on what terms, with negotiators scheduled to resume interstate meetings this week.
The Colorado River remains in an unfolding and worsening crisis. Demand far exceeds supply. Long-term drought, worsened by climate change, has meant less water refilling the river’s large reservoirs as water users have continued to overtap them. Lake Mead, outside of Las Vegas, is the grim evidence, where, at 27 percent full, old boats have washed ashore in what can feel like an apocalyptic scene. The math is unavoidable: Without cuts, the reservoir will keep dropping.
California lawmakers are ratcheting up calls for “urgent action” by the U.S. Justice Department to investigate potential water crimes as the state battles “dire” supply shortages and drought.
The bipartisan group told U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland that, along with ongoing concern about possible “drought profiteering” and water theft, worry is building that “fraud and market manipulation” is constraining already severely limited water availability.
Most Californians agree the state’s drought situation is very serious, but only a minority of voters say they and their families have been significantly affected by the current water shortage, according to a new poll.
The survey of more than 9,000 voters statewide found that 71% said the state’s water shortage is “extremely serious,” while 23% described it as somewhat serious.
The western United States is, famously, in the grips of its worst megadrought in a millennium. The Colorado River, which supplies water to more than 40 million Americans and supports food production for the rest of the country, is in imminent peril. The levels in the nation’s largest freshwater reservoir, Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam and a fulcrum of the Colorado River basin, have dropped to around 25% of capacity.
As Mexico and the seven western states that rely on water from the Colorado River Basin struggle to contend with current repercussions of a more than two-decade drought—including federally imposed cuts to water supply in the coming year—they must also plan for a drier future exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
