Water Shortages

Orange County residents collectively use only about one-third as much water in their homes as people living in Los Angeles County-384,000 acre-feet versus 1.1 million. But the Orange County average use per residence is 21% higher than in Los Angeles. In 1990, Orange County households has an average consumption rate of 142,981 gallons per year according to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California projections; in Los Angeles County the comparable figure was 117,864.

Through much of the 1990s, California suffered a money drought. By 2003, revenue had dried up severely and California seemed in terminal crisis. Then came the deluge of 2006. It rained dollars: Several big-time Silicon Valley investors cashed out, resulting in a huge boost in income tax revenue, and Sacramento was awash in money. In response, lawmakers doled out the abundant funds to interests who believed, often correctly, that previous budgets had left them unfairly parched. But the deluge quickly ended, and the state's situation became worse than ever because it had failed to either save the excess or change its spending ways during the unexpected year that it rained money.

Across the countryside of this nation on the heel of the Arabian Peninsula, the pumps and drills roar. Wildcatters bore as much as 1,000 feet into the earth and draw out the valuable liquid. They pump it into tankers and haul it away to sell to the highest bidder. But soon the reservoirs will run dry.

The most striking sight greeting visitors to the Colorado River gorge known as Black Canyon used to be the great wedge of alabaster concrete spanning the canyon wall to wall. But in recent years Hoover Dam, that enduring symbol of mankind's ingenuity, has been upstaged by another sight signifying nature's power to resist even the most determined effort to bring it under control: a broad white band stretching along the edge of Lake Mead like a bathtub ring, marking how far the reservoir has fallen below its maximum level.

The first sign of trouble came almost immediately after Kurt and Michelle Dahlin moved into Lancaster's new Westview Estates in March 2007. The water slowed to a trickle midway through showering. The toilet tank took two hours to refill. The family often was forced to bathe at 4 a.m. -- before the neighbors awoke and the water flow became a dribble. Some days, there was no water at all. Things only got worse as more homeowners moved into the gated community on the outskirts of Lancaster.

Californians who are assaulted almost constantly with news of real and potential water shortages may be surprised to learn that the federal government is preparing to put 1 million acre-feet of water up for sale on an annual basis. That is almost enough to supply two cities the size of Los Angeles with their entire needs, and about five times as much water as the city of San Francisco receives each year from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park.

California needs more reservoirs and better water-management practices to brace for a population increase to 50 million people within 25 years, a panel of water experts assembled Thursday in Ventura concluded. By the year 2020, the state's water supply could be short as much as 9 million acre-feet a year--almost 1 1/2 times the amount of water now stored at Shasta Dam, California's largest reserve.

Okinawa's worst water shortage in seven years has forced officials to cut water supplies throughout the southern Japanese prefecture for 24 hours every other day, officials said Monday. Water in two reservoirs averaged only 11.5% of capacity, while five reservoirs were averaging 44.6% of capacity, a local government official said. An Okinawa weather bureau official said only 0.78 inches of rain fell in the prefecture in February--17% of normal.

A collision between increasing populations and wasteful irrigation practices will produce shortages of water and food in some of the world's most populous countries during the 1990s, the Worldwatch Institute warned in a report released Saturday. Although the situation in the United States is less dire, the inexorable growth of Western states and their increasing demands on limited water resources will force more of the nation's richest croplands out of production, the institute reported.

Most people think about water only in that brief instant before they turn on a faucet. When the water flows, as it almost always does, they simply go on with life. But what if it doesn't? In the coming year, both weather and politics could affect California's water supply. We need to take decisive action now to avoid a water crisis like the energy crisis. In urban Southern California, the average family of four living in a single-family home pays about $30 per month for all the water they need.

Despite a return to normal snowpack and precipitation this winter, state officials said water shortages will continue this summer and urged continued conservation efforts. The Department of Water Resources on Thursday slightly increased allocations in the state system that helps supply urban Southern California. Managers said they might be able to raise projected deliveries again next month but warned that they expect the final numbers to be no more than last year -- about 40% of full allocation, which prompted rationing in many Southland cities, including Los Angeles.

A prolonged drought punctuated by intense monsoons that partially destroyed the city's water-preservation infrastructure led to the 15th century collapse of the ancient city of Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire, U.S. and Asian researchers reported. Researchers had suspected that water scarcity played a role in the city's demise, and the first tree-ring chronology in Asia provides strong support for that speculation. It shows that the drought persisted for decades, which would have severely strained the city's ability to survive.

Any hope that a panel of scientists would end the brawl over environmental restrictions in the hub of California's water system evaporated as warring factions each found ammunition in a report released Friday. Charged with evaluating the basis of federal fish protections that are limiting the pumping of water supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the National Academy of Sciences committee concluded the protections were on the whole scientifically justified. "In no case did we say these did not have a scientific underpinning," said committee chairman Robert Huggett, professor emeritus at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences at the College of William and Mary.

A National Academy of Sciences panel has concluded that the much-disputed fish protections that have curbed water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California are scientifically justified. The findings, contained in a report that will be released Friday, largely validate environmental actions taken by two federal agencies to save the imperiled delta smelt and protect declining populations of salmon that migrate through the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta. The protections, imposed under the federal Endangered Species Act, have recently grown stricter, compounding water shortages stemming from the state's three-year drought.

Who needs absinthe, vodka or even a six-pack of beer? Judging from the quality of our debate on natural resource policy, all it takes to addle the political mind in California is water. We're talking about the water that flows to us from the mountains and the rivers, via canal or aqueduct, irrigating our fields, maintaining our aquatic habitats, and sustaining daily life in the cities and suburbs. There isn't enough of it to be exploited with abandon as we've done in the past, and nothing we do will increase the raw volume we receive from nature.

Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts. But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water -- and hundreds of dollars -- each year.

One of the harshest droughts in 60 years is forcing water cutbacks to Israeli farmers, raising concerns in the Palestinian territories of painful summer shortages and prompting a political dispute between Israel and neighboring Jordan. Worse yet, the dry season--with its relentless sun and soaring temperatures--is still two months away.

When California Sen. Dianne Feinstein drafted legislation that would weaken endangered species protections to deliver more water to San Joaquin Valley farms, her rationale was jobs. "People in California's breadbasket face complete economic ruin," the Democrat said in a recent statement. She was joining a chorus of Central Valley politicians and farm groups that during the last year have painted the region as a dust bowl, beset by drought and environmental protections that are cutting vital water deliveries and the jobs that depend on them.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has drawn up legislation that for the next two years would loosen Endangered Species Act restrictions on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to increase irrigation deliveries to San Joaquin Valley growers. Feinstein has not released details of the proposal, which she is calling the Emergency Temporary Water Supply Amendment and which is expected to be attached to a jobs bill. In a statement Thursday she said that the language had not been finalized and that she was open to "alternative ways" of boosting water supplies for the valley's west side, which has been hit hard by delivery cuts caused by the state drought and the pumping limits.