Californians in a new statewide survey cite drought and water supply issues as their chief environmental concern for the third year in a row.
Thirty percent of respondents ranked water as the most pressing issue — topping wildfires and climate change, which garnered 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively, in the poll, released by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The city of Antioch sits right next to the largest source of fresh water in Northern California. But it’s facing a water supply crisis because of changes to the Delta, both natural and man-made.
As a result, the city is taking extraordinary measures to increase supply in a way that has the rest of the state watching.
Before the Colorado River was tamed by dams and dikes it was a free flowing, flooding river that often changed course, sometimes dramatically. Though it typically flowed south to the Gulf of California, in years of powerful floods it would flow into the Salton Sea Basin, and fill it up to form what we call Lake Cahuilla.
Since about 612 B.C. Lake Cahuilla has filled up seven times, the last time in 1733.
As a native of the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs where it hardly ever rains, Joaquin Esquivel has always known that water is precious.
His uncle often took him to the Salton Sea, and he had family served by a well.
He carries that respect for the resource as chair of California’s State Water Resources Control Board. “Growing up in the desert, you are very aware of water,” he said.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema introduced a new water advisory council at Hoover Dam on Monday to discuss how to spend $4 billion in water and drought aid included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The $4 billion is meant to stave off the worst effects of drought across the Colorado River system, which is suffering from overuse and two decades of drought exacerbated by climate change.
The prospect of being sent to California’s “groundwater cop” strikes dread in the hearts of most water managers.
But for John Vidovich, having the Tulare Lake subbasin come under the glare of the State Water Resources Control Board may be the only way to end an irrigation practice by the J.G. Boswell Company that he says is wasteful, abusive and contributing to the sinking of an entire town.
The megadrought California is enduring right now is the worst in more than a millennium.
In the last two decades, we have only sporadically not been in a state of drought, and the first three months of 2022 were the driest on record. Now, nearly every inch of California is experiencing severe or extreme drought, or even worse: A thick, donut-shaped ring in the Central Valley is in an exceptional drought — the highest drought designation the U.S. Drought Monitor gives.
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s largest agricultural region, but it’s facing an uncertain future. A combination of persistent drought and the rollout of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will increase regional water scarcity in the coming decades. Water scarcity will have a major effect on land use: At least half a million acres are projected to come out of irrigated production in the San Joaquin Valley by 2040.
The massive climate and healthcare package that passed Sunday in the Senate includes $4 billion to help shore up the rapidly dwindling Colorado River and its massive reservoirs.
California officials who are pushing to meet an August deadline for huge water savings in Lake Mead and Lake Powell praised the bill’s passage.
