As Californians can tell by the already beige hills, the early fire weather warnings and the dusty umbrellas sitting deep inside closets, it’s been drier than usual this winter.
And according to decades worth of precipitation data, that’s the new normal.
You can’t water your lawn more than twice a week in the city or Sacramento during summer, and never on Thursday or Friday. For thousands of Sacramento County residents, the limit is three days a week. In Roseville, there’s no watering between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Customers of the San Juan Water District have five days to fix leaks, and hosing down the driveway or sidewalk is off-limits in Elk Grove. Long before Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for the Sacramento region — and much of the rest of California — area residents were already dealing with an assortment of restrictions on water consumption, depending on their supplier.
Don’t be fooled. Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to declare drought in most of California, including here, is no reason for most farmers in Stanislaus County to break out the party hats.
They know full well that words on a declaration will not generate an extra drop of water for their orchards and row crops.
An entire run of endangered winter-run chinook salmon, as well as the fall-run salmon that make up the core of the California fishery, are in danger of being wiped out this year if the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation keeps diverting water to farmers at its current rate. With state water resources constrained by the extreme drought, that’s the alarm that environmental, fishing and tribal groups are sounding after reports show the Sacramento River will reach dangerous temperatures during spawning season, based on federal scientific scenarios that analyze the bureau’s planned water releases. They warn of a massive die-off as bad as during the last drought, when 95% of winter-run chinook salmon eggs and young fish were wiped out in 2014 and 2015.
With the uncertainty of water, some Central Valley farmers are destroying their crops ahead of the summer season in order to survive. It’s impacting jobs and soon possibly the grocery shelves. Every crop at Del Bosque Farms is planted meticulously, and every drop of water is a precious commodity. Joe Del Bosque started the family farm in 1985. He grows melons, asparagus, cherries, almonds, and corn, but the drought brings a flood of concern “Hundreds and thousands of acres that are not going to be planted,” said Del Bosque. Unlike past droughts, Del Bosque says this year is different.
Tiny specks of degraded plastics have been documented in the snowpack around Lake Tahoe — and in the lake itself. They have been found in the Las Vegas Wash. The phenomenon is not unique to Nevada. Microplastics, the end product of our plastic consumption, have been found in ecosystems across the world, even in remote areas.
Microplastics are small — less than 5 millimeters — but they are not uniform. They can have different shapes and vary in size. Microplastics from clothing can appear as synthetic fibers, whereas degraded plastic from bags or water bottles might take on a different composition.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial water source for California’s cities and farms, has already dwindled to next to nothing this year, adding to the state’s worsening drought situation.
The latest data from the state Department of Water Resources on Tuesday showed California’s snowpack was just 6% of normal for May 11, and 4% of the normal average for April 1. That date is typically when California’s snowpack is the deepest and has the highest snow water equivalent — the depth of water that would result if the snow melted upon falling.
A drought emergency has been declared in California and even expanded upon as of Monday, May 10, 2021 to cover a total of 41 of California’s 58 counties.
Water is on the forefront of state leaders’ minds.
It’s no surprise water supply would be impacted in a drought situation, especially as California is now in its second year of drought. Plus, drought concerns have not just spanned the last two years. California also experienced a long stretch of drought from 2012 to 2016.
On April 11, 2020, a band of fighters stormed and seized a water control station in the Libyan Sahara. Taking employees prisoner, they occupied a key nexus that helps move 1.2 million cubic meters (317 million gallons) of water per day — 480 Olympic-sized swimming pools — from freshwater aquifers beneath the desert down to the coast. The raiders flipped a switch and at a stroke, 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, in the capital Tripoli, 2 million people’s taps went dry. One of many such attacks, this battle in the intensifying global water wars has dire portent for Libya and the world. The country’s water system had once been a crown jewel of 20th century hydraulic engineering, part of a global constellation of megaprojects that allowed cities in water-starved regions to grow into the millions.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is signaling the way climate change could play out across the western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring, farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds over water in Upper Klamath Lake.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,” while the rest of Oregon is experiencing some level of drought or abnormal dryness.
