Facing the “new reality,” of extreme drought conditions caused by a “changing climate,”
Southern California officials are demanding businesses and residents in parts of Los Angeles,
Ventura, and San Bernardino counties cut outdoor watering to one day a week.
“This is a crisis.
This is unprecedented.
Climate change in California has resulted in higher than average temperatures, more
temperature extremes, and decreased rainfall, leading to increased occurrences of drought
and wildfires.
During the next few decades in California, climate change is likely to further reduce
water availability, increase wildfire risk, decrease agricultural productivity, and threaten
coastal ecosystems.
The state will also be impacted economically due to the rising cost of providing water
to its residents along with revenue and job loss in the agricultural sector.
California has taken a number of steps to mitigate the impacts of climate change in
the state.
2022 is another drought year, although we won’t know exactly how dry for about another
month.
Precipitation and snowpack this year in California are below average.
In addition, the prolonged dry and warm months of January through March of this year’s
“wet” season will have evaporated more water from watersheds and reduced snowpack,
reducing runoff and groundwater recharge from this year’s modest precipitation and likely
lengthening this year’s wildfire season.
Some reservoirs did refill during the wetter-than usual December, but many of the largest reservoirs
remain significantly lower than at this time last year, in the 2nd year of this drought.
This dry year already has more precipitation than 2021, and hopefully more runoff, but
we enter this year with less stored water.
Agricultural surface water deliveries are already scheduled to be significantly reduced,
some urban areas will likely have mandatory water use reductions, and prospects for salmon
and other native species are not promising.
This now three-year drought could go on for still more years.
Overall, California is fairly well prepared for drought, but some sectors and regions
are much more vulnerable than others and require special attention.
We naturally and usefully focus on California’s drought weaknesses.
Agriculture is by far the largest organized water use in California.
Overall, agriculture again will see much larger water supply reductions than urban areas,
even after farmers pump additional groundwater to make up for reduced surface water supplies.
In 2021, the drought cost agriculture about $1 billion, about a 2% reduction in crop revenues,
and several thousand jobs lost in lower-income communities.
Last year, these impacts were disproportionately felt in the Sacramento and Tulare basins and
were also substantial elsewhere.
Drought impacts are especially severe for rural counties and lower-income workers there,
where agriculture is often the major economic engine and employer.
Overall, the state economy is well insulated and prepared for drought, and is in a position
to redress some of these regional economic impacts.
The growth of more profitable permanent crops has increased agriculture’s economic ability
overall to endure droughts, so long as groundwater and more followable annual crops also exist.
This and future drought impacts on agriculture will extend beyond the end of this dry period,
as future cropping will need to be reduced to replenish the additional groundwater pumping
during this drought to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and prepare for
the next drought.
Some large agricultural areas have begun assessing pumping fees exceeding $300/acre-foot to reduce
long-term water use and fund groundwater replenishment.
In the long run, ending groundwater overdraft and reducing agricultural drought impacts
will require reducing irrigated acreage statewide by about 10-15%, mostly from less profitable
crops grown on less productive soils.
Rural drinking water supplies from wells are again threatened and will be interrupted by
falling groundwater tables from additional agricultural pumping during drought.
These problems affect about one hundred small community water systems and thousands of rural
household wells.
Short-term water-hauling and long-term consolidation
into bigger systems when possible, deeper
wells, and ending groundwater overdraft are the only solutions.
These are individually expensive solutions that often face local political difficulties.
The state is getting better at organizing relief for some of these systems, but the
state, counties, and local systems themselves have a long way to go.
Despite valiant efforts to rescue several endangered species during drought, California
is not nearly prepared or effectively organized for preparing habitats and other conditions
for native ecosystems to be sustained through the drought.
The magnitude and ubiquity of native habitat destruction over 150 years have overwhelmed
the naturally evolved substantial drought adaptations of California’s aquatic ecosystems.
A bright spot and example of effective management are how Pacific Flyway bird species are being
sustained by the long-term development of permanent and seasonal wildlife refuges with
additional operational support and management during droughts – involving close coordination
among state and federal agencies as well as environmental organizations, hunters, and
landowners.
Forests and wildfires are the areas most affected by drought.
Drought increases stress and deaths of forests, which increases the severity of wildfires
extending years after dry years end.
Changes in climate, especially higher temperatures,
are making these droughts deeper and probably
longer, which will require additional preparations.
The same infrastructure improvements that have insulated human water users from drought
have helped overwhelm the ability of native aquatic ecosystems to endure droughts.
Similarly, the prolonged suppression of forest fires has made forests more vulnerable to
large wildfires.
California has become more resilient to drought with steady adaptation and improved preparation
for each drought, particularly from the better human organization of water management.
Natural evolution also made California’s natural ecosystems relatively resilient to
droughts until this resilience was overwhelmed by human land and water management.
Today, these human and natural systems are mutually dependent on their sustainability,
and we must better organize these combined efforts for this and future more severe droughts.