The long-term drought and effects of climate change means more trouble for the millions of people that depend on the Colorado River.
In a statement released in early April, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, and the Central Arizona Project state that they expect the first-ever shortage declaration for the river in 2022, meaning substantial cuts to Arizona’s share of the water supply.
Scientists have few categories at their disposal to describe droughts, which are more complex than mere shortages of precipitation or surface water. For example, some local shortages can be invisible, as when water is transferred into a dry area from a distant source. Other shortages are chronic, with communities continuously requiring more water than is available, even in wet years. Some water shortages occur when water quality becomes so degraded that even though there may be plenty of water available, little of it is usable. With such variation in conditions, scientists need better language to conceptualize droughts.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s board has directed its staff to explore opportunities to help other water districts weather an emerging drought across California.
The authority said that because of three decades of investment in supply reliability, along with a continued emphasis on water-use efficiency, the San Diego region has sufficient water supplies for multiple dry years.
Those investments include high-priority Colorado River water from the Imperial Valley, seawater desalination, and access to the Semitropic Original Water Bank in Kern County, where the authority has stored about 16,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply more than 30,000 homes for a full year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines last week when he declared a drought emergency for our severely dry state — but only in two of California’s 58 counties, Mendocino and Sonoma. Some farmers in the Central Valley and others with water interests had hoped for a statewide edict.
As yet another season of drought returns to California, the mood has grown increasingly grim across the vast and fertile San Joaquin Valley. Renowned for its bounty of dairies, row crops, grapes, almonds, pistachios and fruit trees, this agricultural heartland is still reeling from the effects of the last punishing drought, which left the region geologically depressed and mentally traumatized. Now, as the valley braces for another dry spell of undetermined duration, some are openly questioning the future of farming here, even as legislative representatives call on Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a drought emergency. Many small, predominantly Latino communities also face the risk of having their wells run dry.
Sonoma County is facing a historic drought after two dry winters and, on Tuesday, county supervisors are expected to proclaim a drought emergency.
“We’re looking, today, at the lowest level our reservoirs have ever been since they were built,” said Brad Sherwood, the spokesman at Sonoma Water.
By the time this column is published, Northern California may be receiving some much-needed rain, and possibly some snow. However, late-season precipitation does not change the reality that California is in one of its periodic droughts after two dry years.
Major Northern California reservoirs are only about half-full due to scanty runoff from mountain snowpacks, farmers are getting tiny percentages of their normal water allotments, and local water agencies are beginning to impose restrictions on household use.
California water officials on Friday issued a draft order telling Nestlé to “cease and desist” taking much of the millions of gallons of water it pipes out of the San Bernardino National Forest to sell as Arrowhead brand bottled water.
The order, which must be approved by the California Water Resources Control Board, caps years of regulatory probes and a public outcry over the company’s water pipeline in the San Bernardino Mountains, where opponents argue that siphoning away water harms spring-fed Strawberry Creek and the wildlife that depends on it.
Longtime Bay Area residents are all too familiar with ground-parching droughts, those years when our hills are late turning green and early turning brown. Now it looks like we’ve entered another dry patch barely four years after emerging from the last one — an ominous sign that our meteorological cycles of boom and bust are picking up speed.
The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000, when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover Dam.
Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39% of capacity. And it’s approaching the threshold of a shortage for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s.
