- IT'S A DESERT!
Uh, no it's not. It's a temperate savannah.
What many folks don't realize is that CA has received between 10% and 30% of it's 150yr average rainfall, for each of the last 4 years.
What would be the impact to any other state or region under similar circumstances?
The author and many others miss the BIG environmental issue here:
Smelt preservation is trivial. FAR more water is used for landscape/lawns.
The real environmental issue is that the goofy greenies have prevented the construction of any new dams in the last 40 years.
If we even captured 1/2 of the Sierra snowpack in good years there would never be another discussion about water in CA. We would have and keep a 10 year supply in the mountains.
Northern CA is not and has never been a "desert". Even the great central valley is covered in trees.
But now we have Valley Oaks, 300 years old and magnificent, dying from lack of water.