For four years, Southern California's water officials have yearned for rain and a reassuring blanket of winter snow melting high in the Sierra Nevada. For four years, nature has spurned them.
Midway into the fourth year of drought, some water agency officials, government planners, politicians and scientists are wondering what will happen if the rain and snow repeatedly fail to fall. What if the drought persists, lasting not only into a fifth year, but for as long as seven or even eight years, equaling the longest known sustained dry periods on record?
Water experts and political observers have advanced a welter of scenarios, from the benign to the apocalyptic. Many of their visions of a parched future share some common threads--the inevitability of water rationing, the threat of conflict over water rights, and the growing likelihood that voters might be forced to choose between developing new major sources of water or curbing Southern California's relentless growth.
Beyond those shared elements, the scenarios diverge. Some water experts suggest that successive years of rationing would wear at the nerves of city residents, hitting hardest at the poor, immigrants and those who already have been conserving water. Chronic shortages could heighten tensions between urban and agricultural water users, some observers warn; others suggest that cities sharing common water sources might quarrel over shrinking allotments. Others see court battles looming between water agencies and environmental interests.
Should some of the worst-case scenarios be realized, Southern California's landscape would be dramatically altered. The darkest visions encompass the withering of lawns, the loss of sections of farmland, hoarding of water by consumers, and economic calamities in industries dependent on a strong and steady flow of water.
Even the most optimistic water agency officials, who believe that their contingency plans for long-term drought will work, acknowledge that the plans have never been truly tested.
"If we have three more years as dry as we've had in 1990, clearly, we're approaching the unknown," said Duane Georgeson, assistant general manager for the Metropolitan Water District, the agency that provides water to more than 240 municipalities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.
