When I sat down a year ago to pen a guest Where I Stand column, the water situation on the Colorado River looked very different. The previous winter had brought no relief to the drought-stricken region and the reservoirs were threatening to drop to catastrophic levels with the very real possibility that our neighbors south of us could be cut off from river water entirely.
Luis Ramirez leapt onto the roof of his bright blue water truck to fill the plastic tank that by day’s end would empty into an assortment of buckets, barrels and cisterns in 100 homes.
It was barely 11 a.m. and Ramirez had many more stops to make on the hilly, grey fringes of Tijuana, a sprawling, industrial border city in northwestern Mexico where trucks or “pipas” like Ramirez’s provide the only drinking water for many people.
“Each time, it gets farther and farther where we have to go,” he said, blaming the city’s water problems on drought and population growth, before jumping into the driver’s seat next to 16-year-old assistant Daniel Alvarez.
Among the last cities downstream to receive water from the shrinking Colorado River, Tijuana is staring down a water crisis driven also by aging, inefficient infrastructure and successive governments that have done little to prepare the city for diminishing water in the region.
State officials from across the Colorado River Basin seized on a single message as they gathered here to discuss the future of the struggling waterway last week: The river is in a state of emergency that will very soon reach a crisis for the 40 million people who rely on it, affecting agriculture and municipalities alike. But faced with doomsday projections from the Bureau of Reclamation about major reservoirs, officials agreed that harmony has not yet extended to how best to address the shortfalls triggered by more than two decades of drought, which have dramatically constricted both the river’s flows and water storage.
Noemi Barrera has spent four months without running water for herself and her four children and is among many people in California living without it as wells across the state run dry. Like most in the 184-person agricultural community of Tooleville, nestled by the Tulare County foothills, Barrera can hear the county’s water truck arriving down the street to bring five-gallon jug rations every other week.
Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and a critical source of water for Nevada, Arizona and California. But right now, it’s at only about 25 percent of total capacity.
Amid a tidal wave of bad news – from inflation and the war in Ukraine to climate change and divisive politics – there is one story that might trump all others in importance, and yet it receives the least sustained global attention: water.
As an environmental scientist, Roger Viadero had to scratch his head over news reports last summer of the thirsty demand in Palm Springs and Las Vegas, among other western cities, for water from the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.
The letters pages of the Palm Springs Desert Sun newspaper broke their own records for online traffic last June with readers’ proposals to siphon some 22 billion gallons of water per day from the Midwest. To solve the Southwest’s water crisis, the desert denizens wrote, a series of canals and reservoirs could pipe water from the flood-prone Mississippi River to the Colorado River, a supposed win-win for everyone.
An innovative plan to conserve water by covering aqueducts with solar panels is about to undergo testing in drought-stricken California.
Why it matters: Water is becoming more precious by the day in the Golden State and the Western U.S. more broadly, in part due to climate change.
The Golden State is doing more than just praying for rain amidst the historic drought that is battering the state and the western United States.
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan that would increase California’s water supply and combat the extreme weather patterns caused by climate change. The initiative, its scope captured in the 19-page “California’s Water Supply Strategy, Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future” document released by Newsom’s administration, will invest $8 billion in water recycling, storage, and desalination.
As of Spring 2022, National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) data show nearly 70 percent of the lower 48 U.S. states in drought, affecting more than 100 million residents.
California in particular is facing a deepening water crisis, with over 93 percent of the state experiencing extreme drought. 2022 is the state’s driest year on record for the past 128 years, while 58 counties in the state are currently under a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disaster designation.
