For all the doom and gloom about water in California, here's a surprising truth: California has enough water to meet its needs today and tomorrow without new dams, peripheral canals or catastrophic costs. But there is a rub. It will take political will and better management.
If, given the notorious stranglehold of special interests on Sacramento, you are rolling your eyes and saying, "Give up. It's hopeless," hold on a moment. There is a road map that can lead to a better future for Californians. Here's how:
Conservation. Stop hosing down the driveway, buy more efficient appliances and plug leaks. And by all means, every house should have a water meter; believe it or not, millions of houses in the great Central Valley still do not. With this kind of affordable and existing technology, we can save about one-third of the water used indoors, according to the nonpartisan Pacific Institute. Planting California-friendly, drought-tolerant plants and installing smart sprinkler systems can help to conserve more than half our outdoor residential water.
Store groundwater more efficiently. Right now, Los Angeles County's Department of Public Works puts winter and spring storm water (and some reclaimed water from the county sanitation districts) into ponds so it can soak into the ground and be available for use during the dry summer months. Why not also do it with wet-year rain surpluses for use in dry years? There is plenty of storage capacity underground in the huge aquifers that lie beneath the San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando Valley and Chino areas. And a bonus: Water doesn't evaporate when stored underground.
Reuse nearly all of our wastewater. Before anyone yells "toilet to tap," let's establish that the last time there was "new" water on the planet was in the Garden of Eden. As it stands now, wastewater is treated until it is almost potable, and then most of it is thrown away. Los Angeles' Hyperion sewage treatment plant produces the seventh-biggest freshwater river in the state. It flows dependably, year round -- but directly into the ocean. What if, instead, this water was reused for landscape irrigation and industrial processes? Or better yet, allowed to seep through the soil -- completing the filtering process -- back into the aquifer, where it could then be pumped up for drinking water.
