But Nevada and Arizona, with rapidly increasing populations, have sought more from the river. Historically, California drew more than its allotment. California has been legally entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of Colorado River water, three-quarters of it for the Imperial Irrigation District in the state’s southeastern corner, which was among the river’s earliest diverters. The west’s longest river touches seven states and forms the boundary between California and Arizona before flowing into Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. ![]() And the state’s population boomed to 40 million thirsty human beings.ĭuring the first years of the 21 st century, these and other trends coalesced into interrelated mega-issues that range the entire length of the state. Meanwhile, California’s farmers opened vast new acreages of high-value crops, such as almonds, that demanded more reliable water. In the 1970s, new state and federal laws began compelling water managers to make allowances for the environmental effects of their diversions. However, just as the last of the state’s major water projects was completed in the 1960s, environmental consciousness arose, making what had been a linear exercise much more complicated. The best known and most contentious-the inspiration for the movie “Chinatown”-was Los Angeles’ surreptitious acquisition of water rights in the Owens Valley, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada range, and the draining of the valley to enable L.A.’s expansion into the country’s second-largest city. At that time, water supply was seen largely as an engineering problem: catching winter rains and spring snow runoff by damming rivers moving water from its source to where it was needed for farms and homes via canals and pipelines and drilling wells to augment surface diversions. The federal Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, the California Department of Water Resources and dozens of agricultural irrigation districts and city, county and regional water agencies built elements of the system. At the same time, those farmers also face new demands to reduce their pumping of underground water because overdrafting is causing land in the Central Valley to sink ominously.Ĭalifornia’s basic water infrastructure of dams, reservoirs, canals and pipelines was constructed in the 20 th century.State officials are pressuring California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural sector to shore up flows through the Delta by reducing its use of San Joaquin River water. Tunneling under the environmentally damaged Delta would deprive it of some water.More Northern California water may depend on capturing and storing more during wet periods such as this past winter, and on boring at least one tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to convey the water to the California Aqueduct that sends it south.The region’s water agencies want more water, or at least more reliable water, from Northern California. ![]() As Southern California’s population grows, it faces reduced supplies from the overused Colorado River, one of its main sources. ![]() But how that diversion will occur and how much water will be affected are very much up in the air. How they are resolved over the next few years will write an entirely new chapter in California’s water history, changing priorities and perhaps shifting water from agriculture to urban users and environmental enhancement. Gavin Newsom says he wants one-the big conflicts are deeply interconnected and appear to be reaching their climactic phases. Water supply is very often the decisive factor in land-use decisions, thanks to state laws requiring developers to prove they can obtain enough water to serve their projects.Įven though the state doesn’t seem to have a comprehensive approach to managing its water-although Gov. Adding another layer of complexity, the conflicts over California’s water supply are often proxy wars for land-use disputes, involving such issues as whether the state’s chronic shortage of housing should be addressed by continuing to carve farmlands into subdivisions or shift to a high-density mode that builds up rather than out.
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