We should, and we do, share the state’s water resources. The important question is how much we have to share.
California’s State and federal water storage and delivery systems were developed during a period in the 20th century that was, from a historical perspective, unusually wet, and they were developed at a time when the health of the environment was not a matter that most people gave any thought to. Even then, though, planners knew that they would need additional projects to get all the water they wanted for their water redistribution system. They planned to put dams on several rivers in Northern California in order to add 5 million acre feet (MAF) of water per year to the State Water Project’s supply. That would have given them a total of 8 MAF.
However, in the early 1980s, those rivers were given Wild and Scenic Rivers status and became unavailable for development. Water managers knew that without the extra 5 MAF, they would not be able to meet projected demands after the year 2000; they were getting only three-eighths – about 37% – of the water that they originally planned for. Unfortunately, pressures for urban and agricultural development overwhelmed the regulatory system, which couldn’t seem to say “No” when users asked for more water.
There are various estimates of how much more water has been promised than can actually be relied upon. In 2009, Phil Isenberg, who had chaired Governor Schwarzenegger’s Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, testified before the state’s Little Hoover Commission. He said that the Task Force had learned that the total sum of 6,300 water rights in the Delta watershed exceeds the average annual flow of the watershed by 8.4 times. The sum of the promised water is 3 times the highest recorded annual flow.
According to the California Water Atlas, California has 50,000 water rights holders. These water rights holders claim that they divert about 250 million acre feet of water each year. But California receives just 71 million acre feet of usable water from annual precipitation on average. Even allowing for the fact that water can be used more than once, this is a significant disparity.
“Paper water” – paper promises of future water that may not actually be there – has supported urban growth is some parts of California where it might not otherwise have occurred. Growers in the San Joaquin Valley have planted high value, thirsty permanent crops like almonds and pistachios in the expectation that they could somehow wring the water they needed every year, even in a drought, from the state’s over-subscribed system. In addition, both urban and agricultural users have relied on groundwater to supplement surface water supplies. The result is that in many parts of the state, and particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, groundwater has been dangerously depleted.
Even Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) planners recognize that water diversions from the Delta cannot continue at the volumes that exporters became accustomed to in the 1990s and 2000s, as fish populations plummeted. And drought conditions statewide make it clear that no amount of water transfers from north to south and west can compensate for California’s unrealistic ideas about how much water it has to work with. Certainly, twin transfer tunnels will not provide any additional water in a drought, which California can expect to experience one-third of the time.
← California’s water belongs to the whole state. Why shouldn’t the state divert it from the north to the south and west, where it is needed more?
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