California residents are using about 8 fewer gallons of water per day than they did during the last drought emergency, according to newly released state data. Between April 2023 and last April, urban water users consumed an average of 77 gallons per person per day. That comes out to a 9% decrease since the drought emergency ended in March 2023.
In a normal year, about 40% of California’s water supply is stored groundwater, and more than 80% of Californians use it, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
Groundwater is the water that is a buffer in the years the state is in drought. For the first time since 2019, the agency reports groundwater storage increased during the 2023 water year, which is great, but the state’s groundwater is still in deficit.
California Governor Gavin Newsom fast-tracked a massive reservoir project Monday using a law he signed this past summer to accelerate construction.
The Sites Reservoir Project near the town of Maxwell, about 81 miles northwest of Sacramento, is slated to hold up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water — enough for 3 million households for a year. Once complete, it’ll increase Northern California’s water capacity by up to 15%.
California’s reservoirs may be as full as they’ve been in years thanks to recent rainfall, but it’s still not enough water to meet the state’s demands — and it will never be if the state doesn’t invest in new ways to capture all that precious water.
Not enough of the state’s heavy rainfall is draining into California’s underground reservoirs to keep us sated, even through the next summer.
Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created problems far beneath the Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily addressed.
Groundwater — found in underground layers containing sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and sustaining farms.
The storms that rolled across the Bay Area and much of California on Sunday and Monday delivered some of the highest rainfall totals of the calendar year so far, as meteorologists predicted — but that still isn’t much, they said Tuesday.
“On a bigger picture, this is one of the biggest storms we’ve had of 2022,” said Matt Mehle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “But we’ve only had a handful of systems actually bring any precipitation to the Bay Area in January and February.”
