FR Publisher Jon Fleischman is in the midst of a multi-day trip to the State’s Capitol, maintaining, renewing and initiating contacts to better serve FR readers. This morning we’re pleased to offer this guest commentary from Lester Snow penned exclusively for the FlashReport. Snow serves in the Schwarzenegger Administration as the Director of the State Deparment of Water Resources…
This year we’re all feeling the pain caused by a serious water crisis. This won’t be the last year we face a water crisis, unless we do something to prevent it from happening again. In order to prepare for dry years and droughts, California desperately needs to invest in our state’s water infrastructure system. Various factors have contributing to the drought conditions we currently face. The Sierra snowpack is only 67 percent of normal, Northern California has just experienced the driest spring on record, while Southern California experienced record low rainfall, and major California reservoirs are alarmingly low. Complicating these already dire conditions are the court imposed cutbacks in Delta water exports.
If conditions don’t improve during the next rainy season, California will have less water in its reservoirs than during the state’s worst drought in 1976-77.
The Governor responded to these dry conditions by issuing an Executive Order (EO) earlier this month declaring a drought. The Governor’s EO strongly encourages conservation, expounding on his earlier call for a 20 percent reduction in water use by 2020. Although we won’t be able to conserve our way out of the water crisis, many water agencies across the state are answering this call by adopting conservation plans, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The Governor followed his EO with an emergency drought declaration to provide much needed water to the Central Valley that will help save crops and jobs. The emergency measure provides hundreds of California’s farmers with adequate water supply now, but the Governor knows it is really a band-aid to cover a wound only comprehensive water reform can heal.
This drought is an urgent warning that we must act now to reform and modernize our water supply, storage and conveyance systems in ways that safeguard and heal the Delta while addressing the needs of our growing population.
California’s water infrastructure hasn’t been improved in far too long. In fact, our last major state-built storage projects were constructed over 30 years ago for a population of 18 million. Much less than what it is now and severely less than what it is projected to be. California faces the very real danger of not being able to provide its residents with a clean, reliable and adequate water supply.
The state’s water resources and the infrastructure it depends on directly impact our daily lives and our economy. With increasingly dry conditions statewide, communities are now mandating water conservation and rationing, fire danger has grown, agriculture is facing catastrophic crop losses, urban and rural economies have been harmed due to development restrictions and drought conditions could degrade water quality in some regions.
In order to address the crisis, the Governor has developed a comprehensive plan that envisions an improved method of moving water through or around the Delta, to safeguard fish and ecosystems, while assuring the quality of our water supply. His plan includes improved water storage, river restoration and water quality enhancement, and he has advocated for the passage of an $11.9 billion bond issue on the November ballot to move these desperately needed water modernization plans forward.
It is incredibly important that we invest in our state’s water infrastructure now so that we can prevent the crisis from crippling our state for years to come. Now’s the time for us to rally behind a comprehensive water plan that will allow our state to continue to develop and flourish.
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