With California slogging into its fourth year of withering drought, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered mandatory water reductions of 25 percent in cities and towns across the state.
Surface storage is the first and most important part of a comprehensive water solution. Even the areas of the state with the greatest potential to recharge groundwater require a steady supply of water to fill the underground aquifers. Other than the few short months of heavy rains, that water will come from a reservoir.
“We’re in a world of hurt,” said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist, forecasting a fallowing of up to 1 million acres of irrigated farmland this year, twice as much as last year.
Pat Mulroy, the former leader of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, delivered a bluntly worded warning to attendees at the California Water Policy Conference in Claremont, saying the linkage between the Delta and much of the West is clear, “yet many here in California still don’t see the connection.”
The prospect of semi-permanent drought would require courageous political leadership. We should put at least as much effort into protecting our vital water supply as we are wasting on a bullet train that we neither want nor need.
The previously undisclosed cost projection, contained in an internal DWP report reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, could mean sharply higher water bills for those who live and work in L.A.
The drought package Brown and lawmakers proposed Thursday includes $272.7 million in water recycling and drinking water quality programs funded by Proposition 1, the water bond voters approved last year.
As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.
The short-term economic impact of the recent labor standoff at West Coast ports will be small, according to a new economic forecast, but the ports face a long-term struggle to remain competitive in the rapidly changing realm of global trade..
The official reason behind the closure was a “staffing dispute” between workers and port operators, said Port of Oakland communications director Mike Zampa. He did not offer further details.
The official estimate is that California will have 6.3 million job openings in the current decade, and the vast majority will not be newly created jobs but rather vacancies from baby boomer retirements.
A survey of 138 shippers last week by the Journal of Commerce showed that 65% said they planned to ship less cargo through the U.S. West Coast through 2016, with a similar percentage planning to permanently reroute some cargo.
The statewide snowpack was at just 19% of average for the date — the second-lowest statewide snowpack recorded in early March since 1991’s reading of 18%. In January the statewide snowpack was at 25%.
The announcement came from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates a system of reservoirs and canals that make up the Central Valley Project. It mirrors a similar announcement last year that led to hundreds of thousands of farm acres being fallowed.
The amount of cargo that moved through the Port of Long Beach in January took a nearly 19 percent nosedive compared to the same month last year because of ongoing congestion and labor strife, officials said late Wednesday.