While waiting for Mother Nature to provide drought relief, California voters this week decided to pay for it. Proposition 1 passed overwhelmingly, 67 to 33 percent, to approve $7.5 billion to fund measures related to water conservation, recycling, ecosystem and watershed restoration, drinking water protection and groundwater cleanup, as well as to invest toward two new major storage reservoirs.
Key allocations of the Water Quality, Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act include $520 million toward water quality, $1.5 billion for ecosystems and watersheds, $810 million to regional water management, $725 toward recycling/treatment plants, $900 million for groundwater cleanup and another $395 million for flood management. The largest allotment of $2.7 billion will be geared toward water storage—if and when regular rainfall returns—specifically for the Temperance Flat reservoir near Fresno, and the Sites Reservoir near Sacramento. Proposition 1 was strongly endorsed by Gov. Jerry Brown as well as by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, among others.
The first significant rainfall of the season resulted this week in greener lawns and more water in some streams, but the storm only resulted in minor improvements to the state’s parched landscape. The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report showed a slight reduction in the percentage of the state in moderate to exceptional drought, the most severe of the monitor’s five categories. About 55 percent of the state remains under “exceptional” drought, down three percentage points from last week. Two to three inches of rain fell in some parts of Northern California during the brief storm.
“During the past two months precipitation amounts for Del Norte, Siskiyou, Humboldt, Trinity and Northern Shasta counties have been 150-250 percent of normal,” according to the Drought Monitor report. Forecasters are addressing the potential for El Nino, the Tropical Pacific weather phenomenon that affects weather patterns. Strong El Nino patterns draw moisture into California; a weak El Nino probably won’t generate enough rainfall to affect drought levels, according the Drought Monitor report. The latest estimates are about 58 percent that El Nino will come ashore, down from an 80 percent chance forecast in June.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena this week said that if the drought persists and/or worsens, America’s food supply—and that of the world—will be threatened. Such a scenario would result in drastic consequences for food commodity prices and result in potential shortages. The warning issued this week said: “California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km of total water per year since 2011—more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually—more than half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”
The resulting dangerous conditions, the JPL report indicated, could create higher commodity prices—including food and water—and thereby create higher profits for the companies that provide these services. Privatized water service could drive the prices even higher.
“There will be some definite changes, probably structural changes, to the entire industry as the drought persists,” said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
And water worries are not just affecting California. NASA says the groundwater levels at some of the world’s largest aquifers—in the U.S. High Plains, the Central Valley, China, India and elsewhere—is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.”
