Bodies of water all over North America are drying up as a result of drought and a decrease in precipitation, experts told ABC News.
Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the 22-year megadrought affecting the West would not only intensify but also move eastward.
As California endures its worst drought in 1,200 years, San Diego County’s water industry has developed diversified sources and accelerated conservation practices to secure its water supply for the future.
The City of Escondido’s innovative water treatment and saving methods offers a model for other drought-stricken cities. Escondido has led the San Diego region on climate change mitigation and was recently ranked first in San Diego County for its performance and progress on its Climate Action Plan.
“Not only is Escondido leading in water conservation, but the quality of our water is also noteworthy,” said Christopher McKinney, City of Escondido Director of Water Utilities. “Our advanced water treatment plants ensure our drinking water meets or exceeds all state and federal health standards for water quality as noted in the 2021 Water Quality Report. We also took a more ambitious approach to incorporate new and more stringent quality control processes over the last two years, making the Escondido Water Quality Lab one of only two California labs already compliant with new accreditation standards.”
Local farmers formed the Escondido Irrigation District in 1888 to ensure both residents and the booming agricultural sector had steady water access. Photo: City of Escondido
When Escondido was incorporated as a city in 1888, the influx of families moving to the area quickly pressured the water supply. Within a year, local farmers formed the Escondido Irrigation District to ensure both residents and the booming agricultural sector had steady water access.
The City of Escondido, and San Diego County as a whole, has invested significant energy and resources into meeting new water measures, such as:
“Escondido has a long history of being ahead of the curve on sustainable practices,” said Jennifer Schoeneck, City of Escondido Deputy Director of Economic Development. “Our proactive and comprehensive strategy to water conservation has made our city an enviable locale for innovative companies and new and novel water-saving solutions.”
Innovative water-saving techniques in Escondido are driven in part by the city’s agricultural sector and commitment to regenerative practices. Photo: City of Escondido
Innovative water-saving techniques in Escondido are driven in part by the city’s agricultural sector and commitment to regenerative practices. The city takes a multifaceted approach when it comes to effective water conservation methods.
The City of Escondido will put its new water filtration system into operation in 2023. The water filtration system takes treated water up to the recycled water standard and makes it usable for agriculture irrigation, supporting area growers, and farmers. The recycled water program will reduce the cost of water by as much as 40 % and produce a reliable, drought-proof supply.
For residents, the City of Escondido offers water-wise workshops, classes, programs, and contests to implement drought-tolerating landscaping. Since 1991, fourth graders in the Escondido water district have participated in an annual poster contest, illustrating the value of water resources.
Residents and businesses who invest in water-saving solutions can participate in a variety of rebate programs.
“We take regenerative practices seriously in Escondido,” said Escondido City Manager Sean McGlynn. “Shifting towards water and energy independence, zero waste, and clean technologies is a top priority for the City.”
(Editor’s Note: The City of Escondido is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies that deliver water across the metropolitan San Diego region.)
In forests throughout the Golden State, trees are turning a dark shade of rust, succumbing to the impacts of the drought in a well-documented phenomenon known to forest scientists as tree mortality.
The problem first peaked in 2016 when the U.S. Forest Service released images from a statewide aerial survey, estimating 62 million trees died that year.
Reports of low water levels at a few big hydropower plants in the West over the last few years have made it seem like hydropower is becoming less reliable. Last summer, officials in California were forced to shut down the Edward Hyatt Powerplant when water levels in Lake Oroville, the reservoir that feeds the plant, dropped below the intake pipes that send water into its turbines.
A research study just published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment provides new information about how much the planet has warmed and what warming we may expect in the coming decades. This study is important because it motivates us to take actions to mitigate and respond to climate change. It shows what will happen if we don’t take action to slow global warming.
About 15 miles north of Fresno sits Millerton Lake, a reservoir created in the 1930s when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River. The dam provides irrigation water for fields and groves in much of the San Joaquin Valley, but it wiped out the Chinook salmon migration that had existed on the river for tens of thousands of years.
It also threatened the rights of landowners to divert naturally flowing San Joaquin River water for their fields. Instead of losing their rights, though, farmers who had land near the river agreed to trade their water to the federal dam project in exchange for “substitute water,” delivered to them from the Sacramento River.
Like anything else, water is great in moderation—urbanites need it to survive, but downpours can flood streets and homes. And as you might have noticed, climate change isn’t good at moderation. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, supercharging storms to dump more water quicker, which can overwhelm municipal sewer systems built for the climate of long ago. Thus you get the biblical flooding that’s been drowning cities around the world, from Zhengzhou, China, to Seoul, South Korea, to Cologne, Germany, to New York City.
In response, urban planners are increasingly thinking of cities less as rain jackets—designed to whisk water away as fast as possible before it has a chance to accumulate—and more as sponges. By deploying thirsty green spaces and digging huge dirt bowls where water can gather and percolate into underlying aquifers, “sponge cities” are making rain an asset to be exploited instead of expelled.
Water managers are preparing for a warm winter, a worse drought and a chance of biblical floods. As California discovered last year, the weather can swing wildly from one extreme to the next each month—offering little reliability for farmers planting winter crops or planning for the next irrigation season.
Conditions are lining up for a rare third year of La Niña, which tends to bring heavier precipitation to the Pacific Northwest and drier weather to most of California. Last year two atmospheric rivers delivered the bulk of the water supply in October and December, with total precipitation adding up to 76% of average for the water year that ended last month. But the last two winters have demonstrated that an adequate snowpack can disappear in just weeks under spring heat waves.
The Kyrene Water Reclamation Facility, built in the late 1980s and closed by budget cuts in 2010, is being brought back online as a part of Tempe’s response to the ongoing drought. The plant will collect and recycle wastewater, used mainly to recharge aquifers beneath the city.
The announcement comes as Arizona experiences abnormally dry conditions, with 23% of the state in severe drought, a term used to describe conditions where water and feed are inadequate for livestock, fire danger is high and little forage remains for wildlife, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. In fact, the drought that has gripped Arizona since 2000 has been the driest in more than 1,200 years, and it’s expected to persist in the near future, according to a study by Nature Climate Change.
Internationally, the polar bear may be the climate-change canary in a coal mine.
Locally, it could be the avocado.
The fruit so identified with San Diego County agriculture has been on the decline for years. Severe weather, water availability and rising water prices — at least in part attributed to climate change — have reduced the yield of the crop and the revenue it generates.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
