Don’t Be a Water Bug : Seventh year of drought would leave California with reservoir of problems
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If long-range weather forecasts are accurate--and with luck they will be--by the time this editorial is published rain may be falling over at least part of the Los Angeles area. That would be good news, because so far California’s rainy season is off to a slow start. And that is very bad news, indeed.
It looks as if another below-average rainy season will put the state on its way to a historic seventh straight year of drought. As Times staff writers Virginia Ellis and Frederick Muir recently reported, that worrisome possibility is being raised by state hydrologists who have looked not just at state rainfall records, which date to 1906, but also at tree rings, which have provided clues to rainfall as far back as the 16th Century. Their finding is that the last time California had a drought this long was 1836-1846.
Currently, water in state reservoirs is so low (56% of normal) that even a year of average rain would not end the drought. What California needs this winter is heavy rain and snow.
Officially, California’s rainy season is considered to run from Oct. 1 to the next Sept. 30. November is usually when heavy rains start, but so far that hasn’t happened. The biggest stroke of fortune would be heavy rain up north, in the Sierra Nevada, where most of Southern California’s water supply originates.
If nature fails to cooperate, there are things we can do to prepare for continued drought. First, the state’s major water agencies--including, locally, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Metropolitan Water District--will need contingency plans for another year of drought. Those plans, unpleasantly, must provide for mandatory rationing for their customers.
And their customers, which means all of us in this arid region, must refuse to slip back into our old water-wasting habits. Southern Californians have proved in recent years that we can cut back on water use. In fact, one bright spot in the current drought is the fact we have voluntarily reduced water consumption by about 19%, according to one recent estimate. That’s a great start.
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