California authorities face renewed pressure to preserve the valuable salty waters of the Mono Lake — as despite recent rainfall, a historic drought and demands from the Los Angeles area have depleted it.
In a workshop Wednesday, the state Water Resources Control Board discussed Mono Lake’s current conditions amid the impacts of severe drought and ongoing diversions.
Against the backdrop of a severe drought linked with global warming, conservation advocates and Native Americans in California are calling for a temporary emergency stop to all surface water diversions from Mono Lake, contending that continuing to drain the watershed, along with the long-term drought, threaten critical ecosystems, as well as the Kootzaduka’a tribe’s cultural connection with the lake.
California and other southwestern states have been in the grip of a megadrought for the past two decades.
Scientists say that, despite recent storms, these drought-stricken states won’t be relieved from the hot and dry weather for a long time, and not without large amounts of rain.
Weeks of historic rainfall in California won’t be enough to end a severe drought, but it will provide public water agencies serving 27 million people with much more water than the suppliers had been told to expect a month ago, state officials announced Thursday.
The Department of Water Resources said public water agencies will now get 30% of what they had asked for, up from the 5% officials had previously announced in December.
It’s difficult to capture the scale of the drought facing the western U.S., the worst the region has seen in 1,200 years.
The dry period began around 2000 and shows no signs of slowing down, with tens of millions Americans facing shrinking reservoirs and potential power outages amid extreme heat. The most-affected area stretches from Texas to Oregon.
About a quarter of the nation’s food is produced in California’s Central Valley. And for decades, people have come to the region to find jobs in agriculture.
State senator Melissa Hurtado says her parents immigrated there from Mexico.
“They came to the Central Valley in search of the American dream. What they had heard is that the Central Valley was the place where you can make that happen,” she says. “And this region provided that to them.”
New but relatively minor restrictions went into place immediately this week with the adoption of a new water shortage declaration unanimously adopted Tuesday night by the Newport Beach City Council.
Automated sprinkler use in Newport Beach is now limited to three days a week, and residents will be asked to decrease their household water usage to where it was in 2020.
Unprecedented dryness across the western United States is meeting with increasingly warm temperatures to create climate conditions so extreme that the landscape of California could permanently and profoundly change, a growing number of scientists say.
The Golden State’s great drying has already begun to reduce snowpack, worsen wildfires and dry out soils, and researchers say that trend will likely continue, along with the widespread loss of trees and other significant shifts.
The Marin Municipal Water District has failed to adequately prepare for severe drought and should create a four-year water supply, the Marin civil grand jury said in a new report.
Last year, the district faced depleting local reservoir supplies as soon as summer 2022. While rains in late 2021 nearly refilled reservoirs, the drought “exposed serious shortcomings” in the district’s ability to offer a reliable water supply and has shaken public confidence in the district’s leadership, the report states.
Water restrictions began Wednesday for 6 million residents in Southern California, as the state enters its third year of severe drought and what water officials say is the state’s driest year on record.
Residents and businesses must limit their outdoor watering to one or two days per week or to a set volume of water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
