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President Donald Trump is obsessed with how California manages its water supply, demanding changes such as one price To provide state billions of dollars with help to cope with the deadly and destructive fires in southern California.
However, Trump’s specific complaints are not based on hydrological or managerial reality – such as his insistence that a lack of water Northern California was a factor in either fire eruption or fire efforts. Hydrants have dried to a large extent because the systems are designed to cope with separate fires of the structure rather than widespread fires involving thousands of buildings.
This said there was something to criticize how California, once a world leader in the large -scale water management, fell apart. The increase in the population and developing agricultural practices increase demand, while federal and state environmental laws, judgments, political removal of the legs and climate change have limited supply.
One of the main failures is the slow reaction to the obvious need for more water storage – either in tanks or in Underground aquifers – Capture winter rains and spring snow toppers as a buffer for dry years.
Scientists believe that even if The total water supply in California From rain and snow storms it does not diminish, wet and dry cycles have become more intensity and more rainfall come with rain instead of snow. In this way, the natural reservoirs of the snow packages in Sierra and other mountain ranges become less reliable, increasing the need for additional storage.
The most experienced experiences in California – two wet winters that have denied some forecasts – emphasize the need.
A New report The Institute of Public Policy in California points out that the atmospheric rivers that have missed huge amounts of rain and snow this month, after a very dry January, did not lead to a significant new storage in the main reservoirs of the state.
“Instead of storing all the water they can, during the winter tank operators, they are obliged to maintain enough space in their tanks to capture a high influx and reduce the risk of flood downstream,” writes PPIC Jeffrey Mount and Greg researchers Gartrell.
“When the February storms arrived, the water attacks in the two largest reservoirs of the state – Shasta and Ororil – they quickly filled the flood reserve space. As the winter flood season was far from over, the dam operators had no choice but to release the water to make room for possible future floods.
“And they release a lot of water. Between February 1 and 18, these two tanks have only released over 2 million acres of water in the Sacramento and Feather rivers to maintain space for future rainwater. “
Read more: How can California increase its water supply?
The acre-legged is 325 851 gallons and 2 million feet of feet equal to more than half of the capacity of Oovil or about 20% of what Californians consume each year for non-agricultural purposes.
Overall, the mountain and Gartrell calculated 5.1 million acres of feet, entered the delta of Sacramento-San Joaquin from the outflow of the storm and the tank during this period in February. Only 4% of it can be redirected to storage due to insufficient capacity and operating mandates.
Even a relatively tiny increase in storage capacity can pay huge dividends when wet winters like this one develop during periods of land. There was Long -term tank of sites On the west side of the Sacramento Valley, it could fail up to 1.5 million acres feet of this unnecessary flow.
California water managers acknowledge the need for more storage to take advantage of the high strengthening of winters like this, but clearing all legal and financial obstacles, and in fact its construction takes decades. The sites offered for the first time ago ago, they are just starting to look feasible now.
The hydrological reality of the water supply in California is changing more than our desire to deal with it. The result of this discrepancy is dangerous.
