The West is almost certain to experience a decades-long drought by the end of the century, if greenhouse emissions continue as usual, a new climate study concluded. The chance that the Southwest will experience a megadrought – a dry period lasting 35 years or more – is between 70 and 99 percent by the end of the century, according to the study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, an online, open access academic journal.
A proposition that a prosperous farmer brought to the California ballot would threaten two ambitious water and rail projects that Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing, requiring voters’ OK before launching any state building project requiring $2 billion or more in revenue bonds. Proposition 53, if voters approve it on Nov. 8, could force Brown’s administration to hold statewide votes on funding for two controversial mega-projects that he is trying to get well underway before he leaves office in 2018.
The Southland is well-positioned to weather a sixth year of drought, Metropolitan Water District officials said Monday, but they warned that consumers and business still need to do their share to conserve. “The reality is that California is still in a drought. We’re just not in a state of emergency,” MWD board Chairman Randy Record said. “Heading into 2017, we’re hoping to build on the supply momentum created by Southern California’s ongoing water-saving efforts and improved storage conditions this year.”
“We thought we were doing the right thing to save water,” Staci Terrace Goldfarb, a Southern California homeowner, said late last winter. “I hate looking at it.” It had been a little more than a year since Goldfarb had the small, semicircular lawn in front of her 1960 Cape Cod in the San Fernando Valley replaced with drought-tolerant landscaping. Yet her front yard was a flat patch of gravel, the kind you can buy in bulk at Home Depot. It was the work, she said, of a company called Turf Terminators.
The Southland’s biggest water agency painted a surprisingly upbeat picture Monday of the region’s water supplies. Although the Southland remains stuck in a severe drought, officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California say they are rebuilding depleted storage reserves with imports from the north. They also dismissed concerns about slipping conservation efforts since state regulators eased urban water savings requirements in June. “I was very pleased that the numbers stayed as high as they did,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, the district’s general manager.
It’s a new water year, but nothing has changed as far as the drought is concerned. Metropolitan Water District officials say the Golden State can weather its sixth year of drought, but consumers and businesses still have to do their part to conserve. “The reality is that California is still in a drought. We’re just not in a state of emergency,” MWD board Chairman Randy Record said. “Heading into 2017, we’re hoping to build on the supply momentum created by Southern California’s ongoing water-saving efforts and improved storage conditions this year.”
As California works to improve its official accounting of water for a range of purposes, one major area lacking widely accepted quantification is the consumptive use of water for agriculture, particularly evapotranspiration (ET) from crops. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, such estimates are important, along with other hydrologic flows, for a variety of water rights, operational, and regulatory purposes. Consumptive use is the proportion of water removed that cannot be reused elsewhere in a basin. For crops in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, this is mostly evapotranspiration.
California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith calls on the people of California to help reduce the number of mosquitoes by eliminating standing water, especially in areas that have recently had rain and continue to experience warm temperatures. “Rainy weather can create new breeding grounds for mosquitoes if water is allowed to pool and remain stagnant,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith.
As California continues to experience drought concerns, most of us are probably not thinking about flooding. Yet, the high cost of flooding in our country is something that every taxpayer, sooner or later, will be forced to address. Already in 2016, 20 major flooding disasters have been declared, exceeding $10 billion in estimated costs. Making matters worse, the National Flood Insurance Program is $23 billion in debt. Thankfully, some relief may be in sight.
Evidence of what scientists are calling the planet’s Sixth Mass Extinction is appearing in San Francisco Bay and its estuary, the largest on the Pacific Coast of North and South America, according to a major new study. So little water is flowing from the rivers that feed the estuary, which includes the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Suisun Marsh and the bay, that its ecosystem is collapsing, scientists who conducted the study say.
