Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814 billion gallons of water from under the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2 billion doing so.

 

“Yes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Slater, the 57-year-old chief executive of Cadiz Inc, says as he stands in front of a scale model of the project in the foyer of the company’s office on the 28th and top floor of a LA city centre office block. “It’s worth whatever the community who wants the water is willing to pay for it to meet their demands.”

In the last days of 2015, the Famine Early Warning System Network, a forecasting tool, reported that the deepest drought experienced by South Africa in over a decade could lead to grain shortages and spiking food prices. South Africa’s corn harvest, which normally yields a 3 million metric ton surplus that helps feed other African nations, is projected to finish in April with a 500,000 to 600,000 metric ton deficit.

 

The warning network, an interagency data gathering system established in 1985 by the U.S. Agency for International Development, reported that moisture conditions are even more perilous in mid-continent Africa, where record flooding is occurring in East Africa while the most dangerous drought since the 1960s scorches Ethiopia.

The impacts of this season’s “El Niño” — now tied as the strongest on record — have been felt across the country in the form of record breaking warmth across the Midwest and Northeast, the deadly tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest and Southeast, and now the conveyor belt of storms slamming into southern California.

 

But the El Niño effect isn’t limited to the United States — it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

In South America, for example, heavy rains are to blame for some of the worst flooding in 50 years for parts of Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Lodi City Council unanimously voted to adopt a resolution to form a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) in Lodi city limits.

 

This resolution will ensure that the city of Lodi has declared to form an agency within the 90-day window required under the state Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

Water experts in Yolo County are actively monitoring water wells to measure the groundwater supply.

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“It’s certainly going to have an impact,” said Tim O’Halloran, general manager of Yolo County’s Flood Control and Water Conservation District.

 

O’Halloran monitors 150 wells daily and 11 of them on a real-time basis using remote cameras from his Woodland office.

He said that while the recent rains have helped, many more storms are needed to make a dent in California’s four-year drought.

“The groundwater is depleted,” O’Halloran said.