A Taste of Shortages to Come

Water shortages threaten to squeeze California from all sides in 1990. State officials are not yet saying the word drought out loud, but that is a matter of semantics. Absent heavy winter storms in both Northern and Southern California, the coming year could give the state a sharp taste of a future in which water shortages are the norm, not the occasional inconvenience.

A wet March prevented 1989 from being a disastrous third consecutive drought year in California. A bountiful Thanksgiving Week storm is all that keeps California now from slipping into official drought-watch status. As it is, State Water Project officials will announce this week that its farmer customers can expect to receive only about two-thirds of the irrigation water they seek for the coming growing season. This could change, of course, if heavy winter storms fill the reservoirs on the Sacramento River system.

But the fact is that most of California is experiencing drought right now. Those hoped-for Northern California storms that feed the State Water Project will not guarantee the buffer Southern California has enjoyed in past years because of pumping capacity problems. Recent dry years in the Rocky Mountains and increased water diversions to Arizona may limit, for the first time, the Metropolitan Water District’s draw on the Colorado River to about 1 million acre-feet, down by about 20% from this year. A MWD official commented: “Our system is absolutely maxed out.”

Growth in the six-county region served by the district is one reason for impending shortages. Just five years ago, officials were predicting that they would be providing 2.3 million acre-feet of water to their retail water districts, serving an estimated 15 million people, by the year 2000. The future is now: MWD already has reached that level.

The district is working on a number of innovative projects that will stretch its supplies in coming years. But the most effective method of meeting immediate shortages is through strict conservation--voluntary conservation if it works; actual water rationing if it does not. Southern California officials must begin preparing the people for such a contingency now.