The California water shortage is in need of solutions.

California is in crisis.  The state’s 37 million residents are feeling the effects of a multi-year drought. With an ever increasing population (estimated to reach 48 million by 2030) policymakers fear that California will not be able to supply the water needed to sustain the population.

 

Much of the water that California relies on is “imported” from outside the border of the state and distant rivers and watersheds in the northern mountain ranges.  Water is stored in huge open-air reservoirs and transported long distances by viaducts to urban areas.

 

Local water sources near urban centers are hard to come by which is problematic for finding additional water without the huge environmental and financial costs of building more infrastructure.

 

One such example of environmental cost is the Hetch Hetchy Valley located in Yosemite National Park; this stunning valley (which rivals that of Yosemite Valley) is now flooded by the O’Shaughnessy Dam.  The Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct (completed in 1934) transports drinking water 167 miles from the reservoir to the greater San Francisco Bay Area through a network of gravity-fed dams, reservoirs, tunnels, aqueducts and pipelines.

 

The city of San Francisco’s tap water is literally sourced from mountain springs and is pure and natural.  The water had better taste great because the water infrastructure and resulting flooding have had a significant effect on the natural environment, not to mention the high expense.

 

These water improvement projects of the 1920s and 1930s (and the associated water wars of the time) also had a drastic impact on the original distant sources of water.   As the primary water war backdrop of the 1974 neo-noir film Chinatown, the Owens Valley has been completely transformed by the diversion of the Owens River to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which transports water more than 200 miles to Los Angeles.  As a result of this water infrastructure Owens Lake subsequently dried up completely leaving the present alkali flat which plagues the area with alkali dust storms.

Californians are looking for alternative ways to meet the rising demand for water, ways that will not repeat the environmental and social disasters of the past.  Some of the options include looking beyond the traditional sources of water including desalination and water recycling but also to improve methods of storing water such as underground storage and increasing incentives to conserve water (including consumer price increases).