Are We So Parched We’ll Change? : Water made the state what it is. Lack of it will shape our future. How is explored in this, the first of three articles.

It seems possible now that the Great Late-20th Century Drought will be the worst catastrophe in California’s history.

Worst is a relative term, of course. The drought is no killer earthquake. And the state’s economy (and, one hopes, its water-famished ecosystems) should be resilient enough to recover fairly soon after normal precipitation--whatever that is--returns.

But when the giant Shasta Reservoir goes dry in October--now a virtual certainty--the mirage of California as Beulahland will evaporate with the few puddles left amid the miles of mud flats. And if next year is again dry, the damage becomes hard to imagine. The entire Sacramento River salmon fishery, which accounts for 70% of the state’s offshore catch, could go extinct. Eight billion dollars worth of mature orchards and vineyards may perish. A third of the Sierra Nevada’s timber is already dying or dead. Agricultural counties will collapse into bankruptcy like a line of dominoes, and unemployment in the Central Valley may be worse than during the Dust Bowl era. Hyperexpensive desalination plants or new dams will add billions to people’s water bills.

Like any disaster, however, the drought is also a cruel but wonderful opportunity to effect some long overdue changes. To the degree that we can still order up a different future for California, this is probably our last best hope. We can reallocate water, free up its movement or “develop” more of it; we can price it to encourage radically different uses or invoke the specter of chronic scarcity to restrain growth; we can send it off in new directions for newly perceived needs. It was water, more than anything, that made California what it is. Lack of water now presses us to decide what kind of state we want.

That is the only good thing you can say about the drought: It has hastened, perhaps by decades, an inescapable reckoning. Historically, California has a lot of precipitation for a Western state, but with or without droughts, urban growth, agriculture and nature have been on a collision course for years.

Many of the objective facts about our water situation are by now well known, but a few deserve repeating:

-- Urban Southern California consumes less than 8% of the state’s water, but that small fraction of our developed supply supports a $400-billion regional economy.

-- In 1988 irrigated agriculture diverted about 83% of all the developed water in the state. (About half the water applied to irrigated fields percolates back into rivers or aquifers, but quality is often seriously compromised.) By the most generous measure, agriculture represents 10% of the $735-billion state economy.

-- The winter, spring and fall strains of Sacramento River salmon have declined during the past 20 years by 70% to 90%, and the decline in winter- and fall-run stocks has much more to do with decades of water diversions than with drought. The winter-run chinook is now a federallylisted endangered species, and about 20 other species found in and around the Sacramento River Delta and San Francisco Bay are officially endangered, officially threatened or strong candidatesto join the list. Unless the federal Endangered Species Act is overturned, the prospect of any specie’s extinction will greatly impede efforts to divert more delta water southward.

-- In 1988, of every 100 acre-feet of Northern California water diverted south from the delta, 87 acre-feet never crossed the Tehachapi Mountains.

-- About 35% of California’s surface water supply is sold to farmers by the Bureau of Reclamation at subsidized rates. The State Water Project charges some of its agricultural customers $130 per acre-foot; the Bureau of Reclamation charges some of its agricultural customers $3.50 per acre-foot. Low-value, high-water-consumption crops are rarely grown with State Project water.

-- In 1988, four of every 10 acres of irrigated California cropland were planted in four relatively low-value, water-intensive crops: alfalfa, pasture, cotton, and rice. Based on calculable rates, the 3.8 million acres raising these four crops as recently as 1988 consumed 13.5 million acre-feet of water. In an urban setting, that would be more than enough for a population twice as large as California’s. What conclusion should be drawn from all this? The one I am willing to draw is that California has enough existing developed water supply for as many people and as much worthwhile agriculture as we should rationally want. More water should go from subsidized monsoon-climate crops to people, and more of what agriculture and people use should be returned to nature, or else much of what we cherish about California is doomed to disappear. More water should also be conserved for drought emergencies such as this one.

The whole system, in other words, should be managed far more efficiently and conservatively before we get into another epic north-south water war. Some improvements in the distribution infrastructure may be needed, particularly in the delta region, but the top priority by far is to stretch the existing supply. In retrospect, it will seem folly that during the first four years of a worsening drought virtually all agricultural water customers received their normal state and federal allocations.

But if a lot of California’s water is put to what economists and free-market thinkers would call inefficient use, that situation isn’t likely to change soon. There are social, legal and environmental reasons why it won’t. Nor would most Californians want all their water to gravitate to its highest economic use--in other words, to flow uphill toward political power and money.

Clearly, though, if there are not immense breakthroughs, urban Southern California has the most to lose.