Editorial: Drought is putting Northern California water supply at risk – East Bay Times
Bay Area residents are just beginning to understand the gravity of the region’s water challenges.
Ensuring a reliable source of water should be a major priority for California governors and state and local water officials. Instead of focusing on intensive efforts at water conservation and recycling, they have done next to nothing for the past two decades despite the projected impacts of climate change on water supplies.
The current drought now covers 85% of California. Santa Clara Valley Water District Board President Tony Estremera has warned residents that “we could face the possibility there will not be enough water (next year) to meet basic demands without serious risk of subsidence in 2022.”
River flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are so low that Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the state water board’s division of water rights, said last week that the situation in the Delta creates a potential “doomsday scenario.”
The low river flows pose the threat that saltwater backwashing into the Delta from the Pacific Ocean could reach the pumps that send fresh water to 25 million Californians throughout the state. Yet Central Valley farmers are fighting the State Water Resources Control Board’s compelling need to block thousands of farmers, landowners and others from pumping water from the Delta watershed. All so that Big Ag can continue turning huge profit by exporting almonds to India and China. As recently as 2014, California farmers had about 870,000 acres dedicated to almond orchards. By 2020, California’s almond acreage had nearly doubled to 1.6 million acres.
A heavy price looms for the water officials’ failure to address the state’s longstanding water issues.
The Bay Area News Group reported Friday that an alarming number of Northern California communities are at risking of running out of water. The shortages threaten supplies for more than 130,000 people. In Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast, city leaders are rushing to install an emergency desalination system. In Hornbrook, a small town in Siskiyou County, faucets have gone completely dry, and the chairman of the water district is driving 15 miles each way to take showers and wash clothes.
Closer to home, Contra Costa is in better shape than Santa Clara County residents. The East Bay’s Los Vaqueros Reservoir remains at about 75% of capacity. But in the South Bay, Anderson Dam, which stores half of the water in Valley Water’s system, is virtually empty. Anderson Reservoir was drained earlier this year over seismic concerns and will remain empty for about 10 years.
Water levels at many of Santa Clara County’s nine remaining reservoirs are alarmingly low: Almaden (66% full), Calero (41%), Chesbro (33.2%), Coyote (27.2%), Guadalupe (20.5%), Lexington (31.7%), Stevens Creek (17.5%), Uvas (34.4%) and Vasona (75.4%).
Valley Water officials expect the price of water to double over the next decade. If Valley Water has its way, customers will be paying for a wide range of projects, including Anderson Dam ($576 million), Pacheco Dam ($2.5 billion) and a share of the Delta tunnel project, which is currently estimated at $15.9 billion. But even if all of those projects are completed, they won’t provide the kind of guaranteed water supply that Bay Area residents and businesses need. That can only come from major investments in conservation and recycling and by forcing Central Valley farmers to stop converting range land to almond orchards.