The historic barrage of storms this winter offered some breathing room for California’s extreme dry conditions, with 95 percent of the state now reported to be out of drought, according to the newest drought monitor map, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Climate Prediction Center, released June 13.
The update showed that now only about 5 percent of the state is in “moderate drought” and 27 percent is considered “abnormally dry.” Last year, the state was almost in 100 percent moderate-to-exceptional drought.
However, water experts say there is far more work ahead to prepare for future dry years.
“This one wet winter was not able to recharge our groundwater basins,” Darcy Burke, board director of Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District told The Epoch Times. “Water needs to slow down, needs to stay in place, and needs to slowly percolate through. We need more storage.”
According to Burke, over 26 million-acre-feet of water—enough for 75 million households—had to be released into the ocean between October and May this year.
Reservoirs are full, she said, and some water has been lost that was needed for other purposes.
“We have no place to put it,” she said. “[Lake] Oroville is full and it’s spilling. All the excess water ... is going off the spillway not generating electricity.”
Water Flushed to Ocean as Reservoirs Overflowing
Lake Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir, reached 100 percent capacity on June 6, with several others following, according to the California Department of Water Resources.In contrast, in January, among the state’s 17 major reservoirs, only its smallest—the Cachuma Reservoir northwest of Santa Barbara—was nearly full, according to the water department. The rest were partially filled, ranging from about 30 to 80 percent.
According to the department, aging facilities made water storage and moving it through pipelines, canals, or ferries inefficient.
But some say the winter’s water was not stored because it was flushed to the ocean to help replenish some endangered fish species, like the Delta smelt.
Farmland Flooded but Pumping Still Restricted
A major part of California’s economy is agriculture, which generates over $50 billion in annual revenue and employs over 420,000 people, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit research institution based in San Francisco.While the rainfall eased the drought, it also flooded land, which is still not able to be used, said Burke from Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District.
Additionally, with so much flooded land, some dairy farmers were left with no place for their livestock.
“There’s no Motel Six to take a cow,” she said. “Tens of thousands of dairy cattle were either sold or were [slaughtered for food] because there was no place to put them.”
On the other hand, some local farmers have expressed concern over state-mandated restrictions on pumping water for irrigation and associated long-term impacts.
California farmers are limited in the amount of groundwater they can extract under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed in 2014 to preserve groundwater.
But such restrictions have led many of them to let their land go idle during the growing season because they can’t make ends meet, Steve Jackson, son of Don Jackson, who is also an almond farmer, and a water board member, said on California Insider.
“We’re looking at a million acres of ground that would potentially be fallowed permanently,” he said. “That’s thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of produce … that will never come back.”
Mark Nakata, a fifth-generation farmer and CEO of California United Water Coalition—a nonprofit aiming at ensuring water access for all Californians and protecting residents’ water rights—told The Epoch Times that the economic impact if farmers went out of business will be unimaginable.
“It'd be an economic disaster like we’ve never seen here,” he said.
Nakata said that building more water infrastructure is the solution. Such, he said, could help release water on dryer days or capture it to prevent flooding.
He said the lag of new infrastructure construction—the last major project was built in the late 1990s—is due to special interest and environmental justice groups that sue to stop such projects over environmental concerns.
“Water is not a political issue. Water is a human issue, the ability to feed our people is a human issue, and the ability for everybody to have clean water is a human issue,” he said.
