Drought Scenarios Run From Benign to Doomsday

For four years, Southern California’s water officials have yearned for rain and a reassuring blanket of winter snow melting high in the Sierra Nevada. For four years, nature has spurned them.

Midway into the fourth year of drought, some water agency officials, government planners, politicians and scientists are wondering what will happen if the rain and snow repeatedly fail to fall. What if the drought persists, lasting not only into a fifth year, but for as long as seven or even eight years, equaling the longest known sustained dry periods on record?

Water experts and political observers have advanced a welter of scenarios, from the benign to the apocalyptic. Many of their visions of a parched future share some common threads--the inevitability of water rationing, the threat of conflict over water rights, and the growing likelihood that voters might be forced to choose between developing new major sources of water or curbing Southern California’s relentless growth.

Beyond those shared elements, the scenarios diverge. Some water experts suggest that successive years of rationing would wear at the nerves of city residents, hitting hardest at the poor, immigrants and those who already have been conserving water. Chronic shortages could heighten tensions between urban and agricultural water users, some observers warn; others suggest that cities sharing common water sources might quarrel over shrinking allotments. Others see court battles looming between water agencies and environmental interests.

Should some of the worst-case scenarios be realized, Southern California’s landscape would be dramatically altered. The darkest visions encompass the withering of lawns, the loss of sections of farmland, hoarding of water by consumers, and economic calamities in industries dependent on a strong and steady flow of water.

Even the most optimistic water agency officials, who believe that their contingency plans for long-term drought will work, acknowledge that the plans have never been truly tested.

“If we have three more years as dry as we’ve had in 1990, clearly, we’re approaching the unknown,” said Duane Georgeson, assistant general manager for the Metropolitan Water District, the agency that provides water to more than 240 municipalities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties.

The known, to most water experts, has been a random pattern of wet and dry spells that characterizes California’s weather in the 20th Century--a period in which droughts have lasted no longer than two or three years in succession.

Only once this century, from 1929 through about 1935, has a sustained drought lasted beyond the usual two- to three-year span. The seven-year dry spell devastated between 20,000 and 30,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley and helped spark a massive federal dam-building program.

California’s water agencies use the 1930s shortage as a marker for their contingency plans and water capacity. The drought is the basis for the California State Water Project’s “rule curve,” a planning factor used to ensure that the system’s reservoirs and storage facilities can provide, with conservation, supplies of at least six years’ worth of water.

A series of more recent scientific studies of tree ring samples from ancient groves scattered around the state have hinted that at least one other historic dry spell lasted as long as the 1930s drought. Dr. David Meko, a scientist with the University of Arizona Tree-Ring Research Laboratory, said that tree core samples taken in 1970 show a similar period of drought in the mid-1840s--”more severe than any in the current century.” Similar studies indicate that most of the western United States endured a dry period that may have lasted up to two decades near the end of the 16th Century.

Some hydrologists dispute the tree ring data, saying that few samples were taken from trees in Northern California or in the Sierra Nevada--the snow-covered mountains that this region relies on each year for 75% of its water.

“Without enough tree rings from those areas, I would have reservations about how good a reconstruction it is,” said Maurice Roos, the state water department’s chief hydrologist.

Scientists admit that there is no hard evidence weighing against the possibility of a drought enduring at least seven or eight years.

“It’s unlikely you would get consecutive very dry conditions below normal in more than six or seven years running,” Meko said. “Of course, if you flip coins long enough, there’s always the chance of getting more than a few heads in a row.”

Many water experts predict that the drought would begin playing havoc with Southern California lifestyles by its fifth year. Little precipitation this winter, most water experts believe, would make regionwide water rationing mandatory by the end of 1991.

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted down mandatory rationing in favor of a voluntary conservation program. But the rationing plan, backed by Mayor Tom Bradley, is already a model for similar laws on the books in many of the region’s cities.

Another year of drought would make the rationing law inevitable, Bradley Administration and water agency officials said. The plan would tie customers’ water consumption to the amount they used in 1986, the last pre-drought year. It would require 10% cutbacks at first, but increase to 25% as the drought worsens. Those who used more than their allotments would be slapped with increasing fees and eventually see their water supply reduced by “flow restrictors.”

“The city responded well to the last drought and they responded well to the energy crisis,” said John Stodder, a Bradley aide. “Why wouldn’t they in another water crisis?”

In an extended drought, the city’s highly transient immigrant population might not be able to adapt to rationing guidelines set in the base year by earlier tenants, some officials say.

Recognizing the potential problem, Stodder said, Los Angeles created a “generous” appeals system, and devised a separate formula for rental units, making landlords and tenants share equally the fines for repeated violations.

Ignacio Perez, a Salvadoran spokesman for the Central American Refugee Committee, warned that immigrants, suspicious of government agencies, would be reluctant to appeal. Penalizing landlords for the violations of a few renters, Perez said, might lead apartment owners to “count the number of people in each unit and kick them out.”

Accustomed to severe rationing programs in their homelands that often cut water supplies for days at a time, some immigrants might crowd into urban markets to hoard bottled water, assuming that supplies will again be scarce. “When you are afraid, you don’t wait for explanations,” Perez said.

There are also worries about industrial water users. A study of the 1976-77 drought by the UCLA Business Forecasting Project found no lingering damage from rationing. William S. Wade, a consultant for the MWD, predicts that an extended statewide water shortage that cuts supplies by 24% could cost Los Angeles industry $25 billion and 350,000 jobs.

Even if rationing plans work as well as their architects forecast, most regional water agency officials admit that they might still have to seek other steady supplies. Officials at MWD and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power say that they would most likely seek help from California’s agricultural water agencies. Farms use more than 87% of California’s water in wet years, but this year, rural water companies have had their state-managed supplies slashed by up to 50% and federal allotments reduced by 25%.

One way for rural users to help cities would be to enter into more “water transfer” agreements, a mainstay of water agency policy in recent wet years. Rural agencies would be encouraged to sell their water to parched cities in return for similar favors in the future. Another option would be for farmers to be paid by urban water agencies to let their land lie fallow, saving water for urban areas, said James Wickser, DWP assistant general manager.

A complicated system governs the flow of water into California, directing water through 1,200 dams--more than in any other state--and storing it in more than 140 federal, state and local reservoirs.

Water is captured from four major sources. The massive State Water Project releases water through the Sacramento River into the Sacramento Delta, then funnels it to the California Aqueduct. The federal Central Valley Project shunts melted snow from several Sierra rivers and lakes to San Joaquin Valley farms. The Colorado River delivers water to Los Angeles and much of the southern part of the state. The Los Angeles Aqueduct siphons water from the Owens Valley and a lesser portion from Mono Lake into the city’s reservoir system.

When some of those major sources lose water during an extended drought, water agencies try to tap into whatever sources remain abundant. But as each drought year passes, Southern California has seen its rainfall slacken, its federal Colorado River allotment whittled away by other states, its Sierra snow sources evaporating, and its Owens Valley and Mono Lake sources restricted by angry residents and court orders.

Though recent water transfer pacts between the MWD and rural water agencies were reached without rancor, some officials worry that attitudes might stiffen as water becomes more scarce. Southern California water agencies have been vilified by farmers for decades as the bureaucratic symbols of Los Angeles’ grab for water rights. After almost a century of bad blood, there is little evidence that farmers’ suspicions have completely eased.

Southern California water agencies might be forced to lobby state and federal water-rights authorities to prod farmers into giving up more water. Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), well-versed in rural water worries, believes that any friction would take the form of intense lobbying and court fights.

Land-fallowing policies might be especially thorny, he said, because too many idle farms could set off regional economic downturns--hurting farm suppliers and neighboring merchants.

“It could get very cannibalistic for awhile,” Costa said.

Cities might be pitted against neighboring communities as supplies dry up. Within the MWD’s service area, Los Angeles has yet to take its full yearly 26% allotment of water, allowing San Diego and Orange counties to withdraw more than their annual rations.

“We believe our allotment is sacrosanct,” says a top DWP official. But in an extended drought, changes might be sought. Orange County and San Diego water officials have long claimed--at least, academically--that because they have grown to rely on these extra allotments, their supplies should not be cut during a drought.

Southern California’s water agency officials might seek to temporarily weaken environmental protections that require massive amounts of fresh water. In the Sacramento Delta, barriers could cut the flow of fresh water to the sea, said the MWD’s Georgeson. Fish might suffer in the estuary, but a similar move was allowed by courts during the 1976-1977 drought.

Another option, DWP officials said, might be to ask courts to allow the agency to drain more water from Mono Lake, a move currently prohibited. “You might have court fights, but that’s what balancing the public trust is all about,” said assistant general manager Wickser--a rationale that might be opposed by the agency’s new majority of environmentally conscious commissioners.

Some water experts suggest that tinkering with the environment could backfire at a time when wildlife groups are flexing new-found political muscle. If the “Big Green” ballot initiative passes this fall, Costa said, “fish and wildlife would get more water priority than cities or agriculture.”

Even if those environmental interests are left untouched, the anti-growth crusade could become a major issue. Weary of rationing, the region’s voters might become receptive to such sentiment.

“We’ve damaged the air, we’ve built on every square foot of land and our waters are polluted,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “Either we ignore the signs or step back. The concept of unlimited growth is outdated when water becomes this much of a constraint.”

Political observers say that water agencies and pro-development forces would have no choice but to join the debate, supporting new water projects like the Peripheral Canal, pushed in 1980 by Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., but defeated by voters.

This year, water experts say, only a real rain could wash away all the scenarios and the troubles they pose. Otherwise, they will have to wait until January, when teams of hydrologists again trek to the Sierra to measure the snowpack and make their predictions for the coming year.