California’s Water Supply

While The Times has done a far better job covering water issues this year than ever before, I must take issue with a recurring theme that water supplies are near normal.

Because ground water is available in some areas and not others, and because some areas are having to deal with an increasing population while other areas remain relatively stable, there is a great deal of confusion among consumers due to the different conservation programs that have been implemented from city to city.

During multiyear periods of normal precipitation, there is enough water in the various systems that supply Southern California that some flexibility exists for water management. Planning can be discussed in terms of total water demands of about 5 million acre-feet of water a year, give or take a few hundred thousand acre-feet.

This year is very different from normal. This is the fifth year of drought with no guarantee that there won’t be a sixth or a seventh year. Thus, the luxury of matching supply and demand with a “give-or-take” attitude is absent. This year, with inadequate storage in the largest reservoirs, every acre-foot (326,000 gallons) of runoff is an important addition to our supply and every acre-foot of conservation is an important reduction in demand.

Water supply conditions are better than we might have hoped forgiven the lack of normal precipitation over the past 12 months. Purchases of water from the governor’s water bank and a very wet March helped enormously. We’ll be glad to have that water in storage next June if dry weather persists.

It is true, as you reported, that we could come within a few hundred thousand acre-feet of meeting normal demands for the remainder of the year if we dropped all conservation efforts and delivered everything available. The risk is that reservoirs will be drawn down and will not fill up if the winter is dry. If, on the other hand, this winter is extremely wet, we may be criticized for holding back deliveries this summer when people needed the water.

Yet, the risks associated with prematurely announcing the end of the need to conserve are considerable and I doubt that there is a single water manager or any other responsible individual who would jeopardize a critical water supply for next year to eliminate inconvenience this year.

CARL BORONKAY

General Manager, Metropolitan

Water District, Los Angeles