NBC4’s Conan Nolan talks with Adel Hagekhalil, the new head of Metropolitan of Water District. The MWD – the largest in the nation –provides water to 20 million customers all over Southern California. Nolan and Hagekhalil discuss the state of water supply and the controversial vote that got Hagekhalil to power.
The drought is here, and agriculture is scrambling.
Water regulators have cut the amount that can be taken from lakes, rivers and streams. Farmers who ordinarily get that water either have to forgo planting some of their fields, or pump water from the ground, or a combination of the two. Farmers dependent on wells are also affected.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has signed off on increased funding for water development projects that state officials regard as critical to meet growing demands. But the state’s plans to secure more water from rivers here are colliding with the hotter, drier climate that’s hammering the Southwest, where Colorado River reservoirs are at record-low levels.
The water spigots on California farms will soon be twisted tighter.
As the state faces a growing threat from drought, an increasing number of water agencies are planning to require flow meters on agricultural wells, part of a landmark effort to measure and constrain pumping that used to be free and unlimited. It’s a controversial step aimed at protecting water supplies that could change cultivation practices in the Golden State’s thirsty fields.
One of the standard tropes we hear from outsiders about Los Angeles is that it is located in a desert — a dry biome that cannot sustain our millions of people without importing water from somewhere (and someone) else.
And the standard retort from folks like us on the Los Angeles Times editorial board is that, no, it’s explicitly not a desert. To get to the desert, we have to leave town. The difference in climate, flora and terrain between L.A. and, say, Palm Springs or Las Vegas is profound. Deserts get less than 10 inches of rain a year. Las Vegas gets just over four. Los Angeles gets nearly 15.
We’re not a desert. We have a Mediterranean climate, like, say, the South of France. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.
DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long (407-kilometer) river that flows from the lake to the Pacific watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water.
Droughts are common in California, but this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them.
The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.
A question has bothered climatologist Park Williams during the decade he’s been probing drought in the Southwest. Like other climate scientists, he knew from research papers and worldwide storm patterns that a warming atmosphere is thirstier and sops up more moisture from oceans and the land.
“But, in the Southwest, we’ve seen the exact opposite happening,” said Williams, an associate professor in the University of California, Los Angeles’ geography department.
Plants growing wild naturally arrange themselves into communities with other plant varieties based on their shared characteristics such as water and nutrient needs. This natural selection extends to interactions with each other, and with other species such as insects, birds, and other animals.
When a wildfire tore through Briceburg nearly two years ago, the tiny community on the edge of Yosemite National Park lost the only power line connecting it to the electrical grid.
Rather than rebuilding poles and wires over increasingly dry hillsides, which could raise the risk of equipment igniting catastrophic fires, the nation’s largest utility decided to give Briceburg a self-reliant power system.
The stand-alone grid made of solar panels, batteries and a backup generator began operating this month. It’s the first of potentially hundreds of its kind as Pacific Gas & Electric works to prevent another deadly fire like the one that forced it to file for bankruptcy in 2019.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
