The drought continues to grip the west with no signs of letting up.
One of the hardest hit places is the Colorado River, which serves about 40 million people, including right here in the Coachella Valley.
But action is being taken.
The question persists even though it shouldn’t: Can California conserve its way out of this drought?
The answer is clearly no. But then again, if water policy in California were as clear as water itself, Jake Gittes would never have been told to “forget it.”
As we enter some of the hottest and driest months in a historic drought, local water officials have asked the state to allocate more water to the area surrounding Malibu to help mitigate wildfire risk. Unfortunately, that request has been denied.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District that services the Santa Monica Mountains unincorporated Malibu area, Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Hidden Hills, in partnership with the Metropolitan Water District, made the request to the State Water Project citing the area designated as “very high fire hazard severity zones.”
We’ve been stuck with La Niña for a long time – and, according to the latest National Weather Service outlook, we’re not getting rid of her just yet. There’s an 80% probability La Niña conditions persist between September and November, which will have an impact on fall weather in California.
La Niña usually splits California into two halves: bringing wetter conditions to the northern part of the state and drier conditions to the south.
Western states that rely on the Colorado River Basin for their water supplies face a Tuesday deadline to tell the Bureau of Reclamation how they plan to cut back during the crushing drought that has shrunk the river. But as that date nears, the consequences for failure remain a key unknown.
Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton announced in June that states in the Colorado River Basin need to propose how to conserve between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water before a mid-August deadline, when the agency releases its 24-month projections for water levels in lakes Powell and Mead.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom today unveiled a broad strategy for bolstering the state’s water supply that includes targets to recycle more water, expand reservoir storage and collect more data on the amounts farmers use.
Newsom warned that new strategies are essential because California’s water supply will shrink by 10% as climate change brings warmer, drier conditions throughout the state.
California should invest tens of billions of dollars in water recycling, storage and desalination over the next two decades to shore up its supply as the state gets drier and hotter, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a proposal released Thursday.
It comes as drought continues to grip the U.S. West and the state prepares to lose 10% of its water supply by 2040, according to projections by the Department of Water Resources.
When Sen. Joe Manchin III and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer landed a surprise agreement on a healthcare, climate and tax bill last month, all but one Senate Democrat accepted the deal rather than risk collapse with further negotiation.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the inscrutable Arizona Democrat who has at times voted against her party’s demands, staked her vote on two changes. Most attention focused on her push to eliminate a proposed tax on wealthy investors.
San Diegans get more than half their water from the Colorado River. So why haven’t local leaders rung alarm bells as Lake Mead has shrunk to record-low levels?
