Sitting in a pickup truck on his almond farm 100 miles north of San Francisco, Tom Butler pointed to a withered grove he has been planning to bulldoze in order to save his little remaining water for younger trees.
“It’s not a decision any farmer wants to make,” the 42-year-old said last week. “We’re in survival mode.”
In the Bay Area, most people get their water from big utilities that have lots of water, even during a drought. Your tap is not at risk of running dry.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and East Bay Municipal Water District, two of the region’s largest suppliers, have already said they’re likely to get by this summer without the need for water restrictions. They’re still urging conservation, however.
This year, New Mexican officials have a message for farmers who depend on irrigation water from the Rio Grande and other rivers: Unless you absolutely have to plant this year, don’t.
Years of warming temperatures, a failed rainy season last summer and low snowpack this winter have combined to reduce the state’s rivers to a relative trickle. The agency that controls irrigation flows on the Rio Grande forced the issue. To conserve water, it opened its gates a month later than usual.
Severe drought — largely connected to climate change — is ravaging not only New Mexico but the entire Western half of the United States, from the Pacific Coast, across the Great Basin and desert Southwest, and up through the Rockies to the Northern Plains.
In California, wells are drying up, forcing some homeowners to drill new ones that are deeper and costlier. Lake Mead, on the border of Arizona and Nevada, is so drained of Colorado River water that the two states are facing the eventual possibility of cuts in their supply.
In the latest chapter of California’s unfolding drought, state officials are planning to build a giant rock wall across a river in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to save the vital freshwater estuary from San Francisco Bay’s saltwater.
Even as California moves toward a full reopening from pandemic restrictions next month, many counties are still in danger.
From drought.
Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended emergency drought orders to 41 counties across the state. According to the United States Drought Monitor, 84 percent of the West is now in drought conditions, with 47 percent rated as “severe” or “extreme.” In California, 73 percent of the state falls into those categories. And if the recent Palisades fire in western Los Angeles is any indication, an active wildfire season could already be here.
Amid deepening anxieties over worsening drought conditions throughout California, Marin County officials declared a state of emergency Tuesday.
The unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors makes the county eligible for state funding and other resources as residents brace for a hot, dry summer.
Parched conditions are already “severely affecting” West Marin farms, the county said, where officials have described the situation as “grim and deteriorating.”
As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of dollars to address critical water needs. In the “May revise”—an update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5 billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years. The revised budget lays out a number of water-related priorities: providing access to safe drinking water; building water-supply reliability and improving flood protection; immediate drought support; enabling improved data collection and monitoring; and restoring fish and wildlife habitat, reconnecting wildlife corridors and removing barriers to fish passage.
As the drought deepens throughout California, San Diego County has postured itself to make it through dry spell conditions as a result of planning and mitigation efforts.
After experiencing a severe drought in the early 1990s, San Diego County officials went to work on diversifying its water supply. At the time, the region was hit with 50% supply reductions because it relied almost entirely on a single source. Since then, however, the San Diego County Water Authority has taken a varied approach. According to the authority, the region has added a new transfer of conserved agriculture water from Imperial Valley and completed the All-American and Coachella Canal lining projects to receive conserved water from the Colorado River.
“The Water Authority’s draft 2020 Urban Water Management Plan shows that regional investments in a ‘water portfolio approach’ to supply management and a sustained emphasis on water-use efficiency mean that San Diego County will continue to have sufficient water supplies through the 2045 planning horizon – so the region’s residents and economy remain safe even during multiple dry years,” the authority told 10News.
With most of the state gripped by extreme dryness, some conditions are better, some worse, than the last record-breaking drought. Over-pumping of wells hasn’t stopped. But urban residents haven’t lapsed back into water-wasting lifestyles. “We are in worse shape than we were before the last drought, and we are going to be in even worse shape after this one,” said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at University of California at Davis.
New climate research, which was done mostly in San Diego, finds that a study of land temperatures during the last ice age confirms some widely held thoughts about climate change.
Lead author Alan Seltzer, a paleoclimatologist at the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute, studied ancient water as a way to gain insight into previously unrecorded planetary temperatures.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
