Posted on 02/01/2014 12:58:53 PM PST by BenLurkin
Drought conditions are getting worse by the day in California and experts say the average resident is going to see the changes.
In the latest move by officials, the State Water Project announced Friday that it won’t send any more water down from Northern California, something that hasn’t been done in more than five decades.
The news comes in the middle of one of California’s driest winters on record and after two dry years that have depleted reservoirs.
Officials say the Water Project’s decision to hold back supply is necessary to save water in the state.
Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency Jan. 17 and directed state officials to take all necessary actions to prepare for the drought conditions.
“We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities and increased fires in both urban and rural areas,” Brown said. “I’ve declared this emergency, and I’m calling all Californians to conserve water in every way possible.”
Brown called on Golden State residents to voluntarily reduce their water usage by 20 percent.
“This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature,” he said.
Brown also directed state agencies to use less water and hire more firefighters. In addition, the Democratic governor has initiated a greatly expanded water conservation public awareness campaign.
In addition to the SWP, Southern California residents can get water from Colorado River, the LA Aqueduct in Owens Valley and groundwater, which provides most of the water supply.
Surprisingly, the drought may be good news to some. Prospectors are making their way into the hills and mountains to see if the lack of water will make it easier to find gold grains and nuggets.
Northern California is typically believed to be prime gold country, but Curt Timmons of Digger Mining and Supply in Baldwin Park says a little time in the desert, Big Bear or the San Gabriel Canyon could yield some sparkly dividends.
“You can pretty much go to the bottom of these creeks with a shovel and have easy access to these gold-bearing materials,” Timmons said.
With water levels in the state’s rivers so low, gold diggers can now get to places that haven’t been touched by man in perhaps more than a century.
Might help if they stopped dumping millions of acre feet for the smelt. Just sayin.
http://www.water.ca.gov/swpao/docs/notices/14-02.pdf
As you can see in the above PDF, every water contractor in the state just got told to pound sand and they'll only get residual water not delivered from previous years.
And this is far from the first time that such little allocations have been made. In fact, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District will get more water this year than they were initially allocated in 2009, 2010, & 2011.
And is it for a utter lack of water? Nope, it is a lack of water that meets the environmental mandates from the courts for the preservation of Delta Smelt and other supposedly endangered species.
Just...tired of the misleading articles. To take the title and content of this article, you'd imagine that the state drew a line and said ‘no one south of this gets water.’ Instead they said no one gets water (unless they have left over from last year...)
I don't flood anything, I do respect that there is only so much water and why dump a ton of it into the sewer for no reason?
I'm with you, I think Brown started the mess with CA by adding unions in state government. Now we owe them a few hundred billions to pensions? I kind of want to tell them all to kiss my @ss regarding that. Why overpay those hounds?
State does a lot of stupid stuff for sure.
There has also been a massive downturn for the negative in the economy.
Delivery folks just ran into a major depression regarding work. What does that mean? Nothing good IMO.
Interesting, and sounds likely. It's been very warm and dry this past year on the San Francisco peninsula, more so than I've seen it over the last few decades. Normally we get fog rolling in to SF from the ocean all the time with very few weeks without fog. Now we've been getting fog-less months with very few weeks of fog, with warm air flowing from land toward the ocean. It's been like L.A. weather here in S.F. during our winter months, very warm and sunny. Only two rainy days (of light sprinkles) during the last few months.
I wasn’t thinking of reelections...
Raise the price. People will conserve where it suits them.
“And charge everybody the same price.”
Price plus “shipping”.
Yes, charge a market price based on the cost to deliver (which may be more for small residential consumers, etc.)
Basically, let the local communities (and farmers) bid for the water, and deliver it to the highest bidders.
The bizarre thing is that this right-wing free-market notion actually leads to maximized conservation that should please the drip-worshipers!
Yes, agree.
In my area, Eastern PA., they reserve water to keep the “salt line” at bay. If they use so much water that the salt water comes up the Delaware River toward the fall line at Trenton, it will seep into NJ and salt the well water. There are other reasons to leave some of the water to it’s natural course. Good luck finding a non-controversial position in this. And who gets to sell the water? Why does L.A. get water from the other side of the mountains? Does the water belong to whoever owns the land it fell on, or does it belong to the people along its historic course?
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