You are now in California and the U.S. category.

A new $4.7 billion proposal from the Sites Project Authority to build up to 11 new dams and two reservoirs in the Sacramento Valley presents a threat to the salmon on the Trinity and Klamath Rivers, and years of decisions to provide them water. The new proposed Sites and Holthouse Reservoirs in Northern California could store up to 1.8 million acre feet of water, making them almost half the size of Shasta Reservoir and twice the size of Folsom Reservoir.

When I first moved to California from Ohio in the 1990s, I spotted a postcard in a gift shop that noted the state’s four seasons: wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and riots. The postcard wasn’t entirely wrong. Outside of drought years, the state does suffer through a regular cycle of fires, slides and earthquakes, although the riots aren’t actually a seasonal thing. Californians are accustomed to the state’s weather disasters the same way a Kansan is accustomed to tornado drills.

 

From this vantage point, the deck of a cargo ship skims by above, beyond the fragile levee wall that holds back the mighty San Joaquin River. It passes effortlessly through the wide flat river that, due to the levee and the perspective, is completely out of view on a crisp winter morning. With the ship’s submerged propeller probably somewhere around forehead-level, this perspective would normally require immersion in the relevant body of water — no place for a few wetland engineers and scientists like us.

Memories of perpetual blue sky and months on end without rain faded quickly after last winter’s drought-busting storms. But with a bone-dry December and a good chance of sunshine well into the New Year, many Californians are getting flashbacks.

The worst drought in California’s history ended in April when Gov. Jerry Brown declared it officially over after an especially wet winter. But one city isn’t backing down on water conservation. Santa Monica, a progressive town on the Southern California coast, is proceeding as if the drought were still under way, and it still requires residents to meet water conservation targets.