California water agencies that use Colorado River water indicated Wednesday they’d be willing to cut 400,000 acre-feet of water use annually starting next year and running through 2025 — a move a top Upper Basin water official cast as a promising development in the negotiations over the future of the river.
Underneath pavement, parks and lawns, a web of pipes carry the water that fuels urban life from the companies that distribute it to the people who consume it. Many Americans never think twice about how much water might be leaking from that system. And water providers haven’t always been required to contain the leaks.
With California’s water supply shrinking and the drought dragging on, Bay Area water agencies are getting serious about persuading their customers to use water responsibly.
California is most likely heading into a fourth consecutive year of drought.
The state’s water year ends tomorrow, which has prompted predictions about what’s in store for the next 12 months. (California’s water year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, so that the winter rainy season falls within a single water year.)
Before Rick Lemos and the other directors of the Shasta River Water Association broke the law, they made a decision that under most circumstances might be considered unusual: they sent a letter to authorities spelling out exactly what they intended to do.
California’s reservoirs will enter fall in a slightly better position than last year, but the Golden State should prepare for more dryness, extreme weather events and water quality hazards in 2023, officials say. The latest climate forecasting update from the Department of Water Resources came Wednesday, just days before the end of the water year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 in California.
Most Californians are feeling the effects of the drought. But in areas of the state where people rely on groundwater, such as the San Joaquin Valley, the pain of this drought is especially severe. Wells are going dry and there’s intense competition to find and pull more water from underground.
We are so technologically advanced, that we can send messages to people thousands of miles away in mere seconds; we have access to a world of knowledge with a few computer keystrokes, cars can drive themselves and phones are mini computers that we carry in our pockets.
Despite all the strides the human race has made to make life more convenient, we still struggle with things like drought, climate change and water shortages.
Californians sweated it out amid a record-breaking heat wave entering its 10th day Friday that has helped fuel deadly wildfires and pushed energy supplies to the brink of daily power outages.
More than 97 percent of California is under at least “severe” drought conditions, raising the specter of difficult agricultural decisions in a state that produces a quarter of U.S. food.
