by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20220331-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf?_t=1648862025
A Note to Readers
Last week’s report had a section titled, “What Is Being Done About the Already Critical Water Shortages?”
My short response was “Mostly cuts and rationing.”
I added this:
“Our problem is not this drought, or even the earlier droughts in California. Nor is it even the result of the 22-year megadrought on the Colorado River.
“For more than 40 years in California no major water infrastructure has been built. Completed in 1972, the California State Water Project and the earlier completed Central Valley Project, plus other large projects throughout the state, created the largest and most complex water management system in the world. It was entirely adequate for the then 20 million people in California, but not for the 40 million who now live in the state. Not to mention another 10 or 20 million expected to live here by 2050.
“It is a crisis now, like none ever experienced.
“The political leaders and the water managers only know crisis management. Decades of not having a mission to build what is required for future generations has ingrained in their mind just managing crises, not doing what is required to prevent them in the first place. They are so unlike previous generations that built what we have lived off of for the past 50 years.”
This week’s report provides more of the same “solutions” that the crisis managers only intend to do.
But first, a summary of how the drought is intensifying even more rapidly each week. Look at the U.S. Drought Monitor below for California this week. The area of the state in “Severe Drought” is 100%. And the area in “Extreme Drought” is now 40%.
All of the major reservoirs are below the average for this date now. The state’s largest reservoir, Shasta, is just 38% full. The second largest, Oroville, was just 47% full.
The snowpack is 39% of average for this date. This one of the lowest levels for this date in 70 years.
January, February, and March have been the driest three winter months in California history.
Recall that the end of December storms gave the state 150% of the precipitation it usually has at that point in the water year. It is now about 70%.
Under the title, “And Now, More Management of the Crisis,” we report on the governor ordering more conservation rules, and announcing a program of paying farmers not to farm, which has the innocuous description of to “repurpose farm land.”
Of course, it is not just nature that exacerbates the water crisis. The Department of Water Resources has done its share of mismanagement. An article on page 10, “State lawmaker calls for audit after California ‘loses’ billions of gallons of water, ” provides the content.
While Federal and state agencies along with Sacramento River Settlement Contractors (SRSCs) agreed this week on an approach to addressing Central Valley Project operations on the Sacramento River this year, some water agencies strongly disagree with the decision. Two articles on pages 11-12 are provided.
Next is a report on howWater Is Not the Only Challenge Farmers Face Now as fertilizer prices hit new highs as multiple problems affect global supplies.
This week’s report concludes with three articles highlighting the developing real crisis of water supplies for the entire Colorado River basin for all seven states and Mexico. Not only is Lake Powell continuing to shrink towards becoming a “dead pool,” but all the states must come to an agreement on how much must each state cutback on what it takes from the river.
Next week: This report will provide coverage of some of the candidates for office in the June 7 California primary election. I have been very involved and working with candidates who do not accept the reality of the state being run by either the radical Democrats or the banker-allied Republicans. They represent, in most cases, the growing citizens’ army across the nation who are determined to return the U.S. to the American System of an orientation to the principles of the Constitution and an economy not run by Central Bankers of the Federal Reserve. Positively, they agree, we must return to being an economy that focuses on industry, agriculture, building infrastructure and an aggressive space exploration program and fusion research.
