No doubt — it’s been a great month for California.
A more favorable, wet El Niño pattern has finally kicked in after a pathetically dry February. Across the northern half of the state, major cities including San Francisco and Sacramento have already seen more rain in the first 10 days of March than they normally do in the entire month.
The impact of California’s water policies is far-reaching. More than just a question of the length of showers, they directly contribute to high unemployment and poverty. The solution to our water crisis can boost employment and reduce poverty – and it’s high time we get practical about it.
In the last 15 years, I have traveled to 54 of California’s 58 counties. It is heartbreaking to see the effects of our policies in places such as East Porterville, where residents go without water, or the divisions that these policies cause over property rights, reservoirs and dams.
For years now, Gov. Jerry Brown has been telling us that he will save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – the greatest freshwater estuary on this side of the continent – by taking water out of it.
Environmental scientists have hustled out to make his case. Wildlife experts have joined the “Oyez” chorus. And state water managers insist it is our only option. Among the biggest and most enthusiastic backers is the largest irrigation district in the world, Westlands Water District, and the largest urban water supplier in the world, Metropolitan Water District.
On a day that brought with it two inches of rain in Wofford Heights and a quarter inch of rain at Meadows Field, experts gathered to discuss the effect El Niño will have on Kern County this year.
The “El Niño: Miracle or Just Mediocre” discussion was held Tuesday by the Water Association of Kern County, along with KBAK.
The National Weather Service distributed a remarkable photo the other day – a satellite view of California showing just how green it has become after heavy winter rains.
The occasion was St. Patrick’s Day, but the photo’s true meaning was the vernal equinox’s age-old promise of renewal. California is green again, except for its deserts and its snow-covered mountains, and its reservoirs are, for the first time in years, holding healthy amounts of water – so much, in fact, that releases are being increased to make room for melting snow.
Water consumption in San Diego County jumped 5 percent last month compared with February 2013 because of record-setting warm temperatures, the San Diego County Water Authority reported today.
Despite the hike, customers in the region have still cut back their use a total of 21 percent since the state implemented water saving rules last June, according to the Water Authority. The state-mandated goal for San Diego County is a 20 percent reduction from 2013 usage levels.
In the world of California water, there is a saying about how our statewide system is supposed to work: “big gulp, little sip.”
The idea is to pump, move and store water from the mountains and snowpack when Mother Nature makes it available. But when it is dry, rivers run low and fish need the water, the pumps are turned way down. California’s water supply is reasonably generous — we are not an arid state. But it is exceedingly volatile, going from very wet to very dry year to year. This big-gulp strategy is designed with that in mind.
Atop a dirt levee his great-grandfather built in the 1800s to hold back California’s mightiest river, Northern California farmer Russell van Loben Sels looks out over the site of a new water project, one that would be the state’s most ambitious in a half-century.
Promoted by Gov. Jerry Brown, the $15.7 billion project would run giant twin pipes, each four stories high, underground for 35 miles and eventually pull thousands of gallons of water a second from the stretch along the Sacramento River where van Loben Sels farms to cities and farms to the south.
So much rain has fallen in Northern California recently that federal officials have done what would have been unthinkable a year ago. They opened the spill gates at Folsom Lake and let precious water tumble into the American River as a precaution against — of all things — flooding.
A series of storms during this “Miracle March” has caused Folsom and two of its neighbors, Lake Oroville and Shasta Lake, to swell. The massive reservoirs are at above-average levels for the first time since the spring of 2013.
No, California’s drought isn’t over. But this week, the state came to terms with the fact that the series of El Niño-influenced storms has made a dent.
State officials say it’s far too early to declare the drought over — especially given that the rains seem to have focused on Northern California, while Southern California has seen comparatively little rain. But reservoir levels are rising, along with the snowpack. Both are key sources of water for the state.
