April 25, 2023, by CONNER EVERTS, longtime advocate for environmental justice, demand-side water management with cost-effective alternatives rather than supply boondoggles like Ocean Desal. Cross-posted from JOHN EARL’S SoCal Water Wars.
Guest Rant: Sierra snowpack could recharge bad water policies.
Why not stop the cycle of water mismanagement in California, instead?
Breaking: Arizona sets a good example
In 2018, UCLA scientists accurately predicted that California would experience “dramatic shifts between extreme dry and extreme wet weather [especially wet] by the end of the 21st century.”
And it seems safe to say that Californians have seen that prediction fulfilled for the past six years, and more.
But nobody predicted the record snowpack and snow water content that this year’s extreme storms left in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Now, this water-year’s extreme precipitation seems to have ended. And so ends the worst drought in the west in 1,200 years, at least in most of California.
Californians are experiencing the predictable results of our latest climate-change whiplash: great snow, fuller reservoirs, better flowing rivers and streams, and great floods.
They are also experiencing the predictable spin doctoring of climate events by Big Ag and other “water abundance” ideologues, who want to preserve our current unsustainable water-supply system.
These extremists seem to think that climate change is over or never happened. Or maybe they care more about profits and power than life itself?
Good and bad news
Mammoth Mountain has received a record high snowfall of almost 700 inches (300 inches above average) with skiing to continue at least into July.
That’s great news for our reservoirs and skiers, but the resulting snow melt will also create flooding along with levee and road breaks. The LA Aqueduct already had a major break in the Owens Valley, where “all hell broke loose,” according to the LA Times.
And while snow skiing is fun, I personally prefer to witness nature’s course by kayaking on the newly reincarnated and great Tulare Lake (once the largest of all lakes west of the Mississippi), currently where “water laps just below the windows of a lone farmhouse” and “thousands of acres of cropland have been inundated,” according to another Times story.
Return of Tulare Lake
[Photo courtesy of NASA]
The recent mega-storms have exposed poor infrastructure maintenance and the lack of sound floodplain management, part of the State’s history of putting profits before safety and environmental justice.
Despite that history, proponents of “water abundance” lobby for more tunnels and dams.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) provides water for 19 million people in Southern California. It’s efforts to store water from this season’s storm runoff for future climate emergencies are laudable.
But at the same time MWD has ended its Water Shortage Emergency and Emergency Water Conservation Program and continues to advocate for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Delta tunnel instead of prioritizing necessary local and regional projects—a horrific path given the pressing need for local infrastructure upgrades.
One likely result of the State and MWD’s lack of vision is that responsible groundwater recharge will remain neglected and land subsidence will come from a “frenzy of well drilling” by big San Joaquin Valley farmers in a “race to the bottom” across the American southwest.
That is why we must prioritize groundwater metering immediately and move up the deadline for complete compliance with the (2014) Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, originally scheduled for 2040. Every moment of delay further diminishes our rapidly disappearing groundwater supplies and the chances for recovery.
One likely result of the State and MWD’s lack of vision is that responsible groundwater recharge will remain neglected and land subsidence will come from a “frenzy of well drilling” by big San Joaquin Valley farmers in a “race to the bottom” across the American southwest.
That is why we must prioritize groundwater metering immediately and move up the deadline for complete compliance with the (2014) Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, originally scheduled for 2040. Every moment of delay further diminishes our rapidly disappearing groundwater supplies and the chances for recovery.
[See The Water Droplet: What is Land Subsidence? “The importance of groundwater as a freshwater resource cannot be overstated. Many communities rely heavily on wells that tap into aquifers beneath the ground we walk on. These wells pump groundwater to the ground surface where it is used for drinking water, agriculture, and countless other activities…” READ MORE]
L.A. aqueduct break caused by recent flood. Photo: L.A. DWP
Mono Lake
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is citing the spontaneously created “record-snowpack” doctrine to justify continued water diversions from streams that feed one of the world’s most unique and critical ecosystems, Mono Lake.
Screenshot of SWRCB hearing on Mono Lake diversions, Feb. 2023
In 1994, the State Water Resources Control Board ordered LADWP to decrease its diversions in order to refill the lake to within 27 feet of its original level at 6,392 feet above sea level, an estimated 20-year task. But the city hasn’t come closer than 10 feet of that goal, and currently is 15 feet short.
The city is greedy for the lake’s water, which costs it almost nothing and makes up less than 1% (4,500/AF) of its water supply…
Great job, John!