Despite an unusually wet season last year and predictions for a boisterous rainy season this year, California continues to struggle to store enough water to meet the needs of its population and farms. We’ve experienced two particularly grueling droughts in the last decade, with state officials repeatedly blaming climate change for the challenges.
We don’t doubt that climate change is stressing our water systems. But state policy ought to prioritize resilience by building the storage we need to adapt to whatever climate conditions we will face.
Fortunately, Southern California water officials are getting the message.
News reports point to a $211-million underground storage facility in the Mojave Desert that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is currently building. The district this month completed the first phase of the High Desert Water Bank.
As the Los Angeles Daily News reported, “The water bank will take water directly from the East Branch of the State Water Project’s California Aqueduct and move it into recharge basins, where it percolates into the underlying aquifer. When water is needed, it can be pumped out using newly built wells and delivered to Southern California communities through the California Aqueduct.”
The new underground storage facility, which can provide enough water for 210,000 households, will help the agency deal with mandated cutbacks in California’s Colorado River supplies.
“We know that climate change will bring more of the dramatic swings between wet and dry that we saw over the last few years, so we must take every opportunity to store water when it is available,” MWD Chairman Adán Ortega Jr. told reporters.
That strikes the right note. California needs to store more water in wet years so we have it in dry ones.
Instead of only adopting policies designed to change the trajectory of the Earth’s climate, California officials need to build the water-infrastructure facilities needed to adapt to climate realities.
They also need to expand dam capacity, permit more desalination facilities — and do whatever it takes to ensure that California has plenty of water.
