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July 12th, 2008
Courtesy of PBS’s NewsHour, a detailed report on the fact that – for the first time since the early 1990s – California is facing a summer of potential water shortages. The rains tapered off this spring, producing the second dry year in a row and causing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a statewide drought. As the article notes, however, the weather isn’t the only problem and the regional battles between North & South are apt to continue to roil the state:
“…In 2007, a federal judge ordered that less water be pumped from the northern to the southern part of the state, a decision that exacerbated concerns and forced some communities to put restrictions on outdoor water use.
The judge made his ruling because of what’s been happening in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, east of San Francisco, where most of California’s freshwater passes on its way either to the ocean or to farms and cities to the south.
…You just have to follow the water to see the battle lines. The water starts here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and flows along two rivers into the delta. Then it either goes west to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean or heads to the south, which has little water of its own, through one of the world’s largest and most complex water conveyance systems.
…. And although he currently has enough water for his crops, he resents the power of the south, where two-thirds of the state’s population live, to usurp water from the north…. You look at the southern part of the state, they’re in need of water, and they have the voting power. So us, as farmers in the north, we just kind of hold our own and hope for the best.…The California water crisis is a preview of coming attractions, not only nationally, but globally. What you’re seeing is huge metropolitan-area growth around the nation and around the globe fast outstripping water supplies. How we deal with things here in Southern California and California, right, in a sense, right, it’s a test case. We’re the canaries down in the mine…”