Water Shortages

Aisha Sufi, a woman with tired eyes and nine children, waits for a water truck in a nation of drought. She is one of an estimated 150,000 Yemenis who have left their villages this year bound for Sana, Yemen's capital, in search of basic needs. Water and jobs, for example, are increasingly scarce in rural regions where many populations have quadrupled since the 1980s. "It's not good here or there, but it's better to be here," said Sufi, who lives in the Hoshaishiya neighborhood of Sana.

Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl. Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. Water scarcity looms as a major challenge to California's $37-billion agricultural industry, which has long relied on imported water to bloom.

Even with the recent batch of rainstorms, the ongoing drought has grown so severe that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for increased citywide water restrictions and the adoption of a tiered water rate that would punish Department of Water and Power customers who fail to conserve. Sprinkler use would be restricted to two days a week under the proposal and, by summer, could be cut to one day a week if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported Monday that water demand reached a 32-year low for the month of June, dropping 11% compared with the same period in 2008. Jim McDaniel, the senior assistant general manager of DWP's water system, said hard work by ratepayers is paying off. Though experts said June was on average 4 degrees cooler than normal, McDaniel attributed the low demand to the new water restrictions.

The "water buffaloes" like to frame their fight as farmers vs. fish. It is not. It's about farmers and fishermen. A California water buffalo is someone who instinctively battles to develop water -- so named, I'm told, after the beast that reputedly can smell water from 200 miles away. The fight isn't necessarily about "versus" either because farmers and fishermen often are in the same boat, dry-docked for lack of water. Up and down the San Joaquin Valley, farm fields have been fallowed and field hands can't find work because there isn't enough water to irrigate crops.

Need more water? If you've got $30 million or so, you can bid for it at an auction this fall. In what officials believe is a first for the state, a Southern California water agency is planning to auction off enough water to supply about 70,000 homes for a year. Water sales are not uncommon in California, especially when supplies are tight, as they are in the current drought. But putting water up for bid in an auction -- which is bound to drive up the price -- appears to be unprecedented in the state.

Already-scarce water gets even scarcer this weekend for millions of Mexicans. One of the world's largest cities is launching a rationing plan in a drastic -- and some say overdue -- effort to conserve water after rampant development, mismanagement and reduced rainfall caused supplies to drop to dangerously low levels. Starting Saturday, water will be cut or reduced to homes in at least 10 boroughs in Mexico City plus 11 other municipalities in the state of Mexico, which surrounds the capital.

One month after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power barred residents from watering on days other than Mondays and Thursdays, city officials are looking at loosening the law for the city's parks department and other large landowners.

With California's budget crisis resolved for the moment, state lawmakers Thursday turned their attention to another emergency: a three-year drought that has left key reservoirs at 35% of capacity. Legislators stepped forward with plans to ask voters to borrow as much as $15 billion for projects to expand and improve the state's water supply. "This is the session to aggressively solve California's water challenges," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said Thursday.

The Metropolitan Water District is considering a contingency plan to cut water deliveries to its member cities using a new formula that critics contend favors faster-growing areas while penalizing older, poor communities. The district's staff is recommending the plan in case the agency, which serves 18 million people in six counties, is forced to slash water deliveries this spring in the event of continuing shortages.