In this summer of wildfires, heat waves and drought, there was another bit of bad environmental news out of the West this week. Federal officials declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, the huge reservoir on the Colorado River near Las Vegas, setting off sharp cuts in water to Arizona farmers next year.
California’s current voluntary water restrictions may soon become mandatory.
Governor Gavin Newsom said this week that statewide restrictions may be imposed in late September, roughly two weeks after the September 14 recall election.
In San Diego County, residents and businesses have managed to cut their water use by half since the early 1990s. While our region as a whole has done a strong job saving water, a historic drought continues to intensify throughout California and the western United States.
The City of Folsom announced Monday it will require residents to reduce water use by 20%. The water-use restriction will go into effect Aug. 30.
This comes as the water supply across the state continues to dwindle amid a crippling drought. Folsom itself draws water from the American River at Folsom Lake, which has lower levels than it did during the 2014-15 drought. This is the second driest year on record since 1977.
As a measure of both the nation’s creaking infrastructure and the severity of the drought gripping California there is the $5 shower.
That’s how much Ian Roth, the owner of the Seagull Inn, a bed-and-breakfast in this tourist town three hours north of San Francisco, spends on water every time a guest washes for five minutes under the shower nozzle.
Water is so scarce in Mendocino, an Instagram-ready collection of pastel Victorian homes on the edge of the Pacific, that restaurants have closed their restrooms to guests, pointing them instead to portable toilets on the sidewalk.
Anti-government activists seemed primed for a violent clash with federal authorities this summer in the Klamath Basin along the California-Oregon border.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation had shut off water for most of the region’s 1,400 farms, denying access to the same irrigation canal in Klamath Falls, Ore., where during a drought two decades earlier, activists tried to pry open its headgates and clashed with U.S. marshals.
Beginning this past Monday, Roseville residents are required to reduce water use by 20 percent.
The mandatory conservation requirement builds upon the 10-percent voluntary water use reduction announced in May and recognizes that the water supply outlook is stressed at Folsom Lake and throughout California.
In a multi-agency meeting on the state of California’s drought conditions, state officials painted a broader picture on water allocation, lack of available water and what the Golden State is facing in the months and years to come.
Officials expect record low water levels across the state, especially for Oroville and San Luis Reservoir. Jeanine Jones with the California Department of Water Resources said the state is at 58% of average reservoir storage as a whole for this time of year. As of Monday, Aug. 9, Lake Oroville came in at 34% of average and Folsom Lake came in at 35% of average.
This year’s drought is on the verge of going from bad to worse for thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board approved emergency curtailment regulations. The move impacts 5,700 of the 6,600 water rights holders in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed. Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) says Tuesday’s decision by the board is the wrong approach. He had petitioned the board to vote against the emergency measures.
Roseville residents will be required to reduce water use by 20% beginning Monday, Roseville officials announced Tuesday.
The reduction, which began as a voluntary measure months ago, is now mandatory for all residents and builds on the 10% cut that was announced in May. The new measure to conserve water “recognizes that the water supply outlook worsens at Folsom Lake and throughout California,” city officials said in a news release.
In an aggressive move to address “immediate and dire water shortages,” California’s water board today unanimously approved emergency regulations to temporarily stop thousands of farmers, landowners and others from diverting water from from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed.
The new regulations — the first to take such widespread action for the massive Delta watershed stretching from Fresno to the border with Oregon — could lead to formal curtailment orders for about 5,700 water rights holders as soon as Aug. 16. The decision comes on the heels of curtailment orders issued to nearly 900 water users along the drought-stricken Russian River, with 222 more expected next week.
