It's (past) time to update local water infrastructure

As SJ continues climbing out of its longtime drought status, Edward Ring reminds us in the WSJ that additional rainfall means nothing if we aren't adequately extracting and storing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Such approaches would eliminate CA's water deficit without harming the environment.

Unlike anywhere else in the American Southwest, California can rely on so-called atmospheric rivers that saturate the state with enough rain to supply the state’s farms and cities with adequate water. Even in drought years, these storms blow in from the Pacific, hit the ramparts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and dump tens of millions of acre-feet of runoff into the streams and rivers. Californians can, and must, agree on new infrastructure solutions that will safely harvest more of this water for human consumption.

The Colorado crisis underscores California’s grotesque failure to upgrade its water infrastructure for the 21st century. Since 1980, Californians have endured five droughts, and politicians are predicting worse in the future. With groundwater aquifers dangerously depleted and access to Colorado River water imperiled, rationing won’t be enough.

It isn’t as if water abundance isn’t possible in California. The state’s 2021-22 water season recorded some of the lowest total precipitation ever. But in a single month, December 2021, well over 100 million acre-feet of rain fell during the one big storm that hit the state that year. If California had the capacity to capture more of that water, it would have been enough to supply full allocations to Golden State farmers and avoid rationing in cities. As it is, during this current water season, one of the wettest on record, politicians continue to warn Californians that “the drought isn’t over.”

There are two major projects that could unlock millions of acre-feet of new water for Californians....

The second major project, then, would be for Californians to build new ways to extract and store water from the delta during atmospheric river events. A new technique, already demonstrated on the Tuolumne River, creates channels in some of the delta islands so that huge perforated pipes can be installed under a gravel bed. Fish aren’t endangered by such installations. This water could be rapidly transferred to aquifers south of the delta via surface percolation and deep injection. Unused aquifer capacity in the San Joaquin Valley is conservatively estimated at more than 50 million acre feet.

This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing here.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity

Image by Wikimedia Commons