Despite a wet winter, California’s historic drought continues to spark fierce – even bitter – debate over how the state’s water needs should be met in the future.
The core issue is whether we should primarily rely on conservation of what may be a permanently diminished water supply, or make more energetic efforts to increase the supply with new dams and reservoirs, desalination plants, etc.
Many headlines in recent days have touched on the ongoing drought and California’s response to it.
Each of these developments relates to a facet of the Golden State’s complicated relationship with water and how we as Californians will move forward.
While there has been some pretty good news to celebrate after years of extremely dry times, there’s plenty of nuance here that should have all proceeding with caution when it comes to our use of this most precious resource.
It was 22 degrees and snowing Tuesday morning. State snow surveyor Frank Gehrke slowly crossed a blanketed field.
He periodically jabbed a hollow pole into the snow and then hung it from a portable scale, reading nature to draw a bead on where, exactly, the California drought is heading.
Q: Is it feasible to run washing machine water onto the grass? I remember my father doing this and it kept our grass green in the hot San Fernando Valley.
A: Homeowners don’t need permits for recycling graywater from washing machines to irrigate certain types of landscaping such as grass when leach-line systems comply with rules set by local agencies (such as the cities of Oceanside or San Diego). Graywater also includes wastewater from bathtubs, showers and sinks, but recycling water from those sources requires a permit. Graywater does not include water from toilets and other sources that could spread pathogens.
Except for a series of storms the first week of January, the forecasts calling for a Super El Niño for Southern California this winter have not lived up to the predictions – yet.
With California in the midst of a four year drought, the forecasts last fall of a Super El Niño and an above average rainy season (October – March) were most welcome news. Weather forecasters and respected climatologists were all in agreement that there was a 95 percent chance of a “Super El Niño” bringing heavy rain storms and soaking all of California through the spring of 2016.
Planners working on the preservation of the Salton Sea envision a smaller version surviving indefinitely, with some of the costs for its maintenance recovered by economic development which may include geothermal, the harvest of algae, or something else, officials said during a conference at the UC Riverside.
“It’s not popular with residents in the area (of the Salton Sea), but it won’t be brought back to the way it was in the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s,” said Bruce Wilcox, who Gov. Jerry Brown appointed in May as secretary for Salton Sea Policy at the California Department of Natural Resources.
For the first time in 68 years, the Laguna Beach County Water District will no longer be 100% reliant on imported water from the Colorado River and Northern California.
An agreement with the Orange County Water District ensures that more than half of Laguna’s water supply will come from groundwater in the Santa Ana River Basin, according to a news release issued Wednesday.
The San Diego County Water Authority has such an oversupply of drinking water that it just dumped half a billion gallons into a lake. The Sierra snowpack is 130 percent of normal, its greatest total in five years. And rainstorms will continue to drench parts of California off and on for months.
But now is not the time to ease up on water conservation efforts, in San Diego or elsewhere.
So we applaud this week’s sensible action by the State Water Resources Control Board. The agency extended the state’s emergency conservation mandate through October while easing restrictions on water suppliers to account for regional differences in climate, population growth and new supplies in places such as San Diego County, where a desalination plant just opened in Carlsbad.
State water regulators voted Tuesday to extend emergency conservation measures because of a drought, even though an increase in rain and snow this winter has improved California’s snowpack.
But with the drought still severe, conservations efforts fell off in December. Officials said residents used 18 percent less water than in December 2013, but that was the worst showing in seven months of tracking and fell well short of Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of 25 percent.
Higher-than-normal rainfall associated with El Niño has diminished the risk of wildfires in California for the next four months, according to a national fire agency report.
However, those same rains ultimately could trigger an uptick in grass fires at lower elevations because of a heavy grass crop expected in late spring, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center. The NICC helps oversee wildfire response efforts.
