As California enters its fourth year of a scorching drought that has consumed most of the state’s water reserves, a senior NASA scientist has a stark warning for the Golden State: There’s only one year of water left. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, a University of California, Irvine, water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, urged the state to begin a program of “immediate mandatory water rationing” for all customers and cautioned that California “has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing.” Famiglietti writes that the situation is much more urgent than policymakers realize. The state has no contingency plan should the water dry up, and regulators are quickly running out of time to deal with the problem before it becomes a catastrophe.
If a country of 39 million was facing this sort of impending water crisis, there very likely would be all manner of international assistance efforts mounted. A country of that size experiencing a severe drought and resulting water shortages would be considered a security risk. There’s been much speculation that the next great war will be fought over water. This isn’t just another country we’re talking about, though. This is California, which has for years had the ability to plan for the coming water crisis scientists forecast some time ago. Combine poor (read: no) planning with a four-year drought, and California has about one year of water left. One year. For 39 million people.
What will things look like at this time next year if the drought continues? No one can say with certainty, but the fact remains that California has no contingency plan. With groundwater rapidly drying up, state leaders may soon be facing a full-fledged water crisis. What planning has been don’t won’t have an appreciable impact for at least 30 years, and according to Famiglietti, the state’s strategy has been to “staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.”
There are those in California state government who regard Famiglietti as something of an alarmist. Time will settle that argument, of course, but there are two things that seem as if they should serve as cautionary tales:
What if Famiglietti and those making similar arguments are right? Why hasn’t California long since been planning for a worst-case scenario? Why wait until reservoirs have only a one-year supply of water before jumping into the fray? Water issues of this magnitude aren’t amenable to being resolved in such a narrow time frame, so why fiddle while Rome dries up?
Why is California’s dilemma not being viewed with no small amount of trepidation by many other arid, water-poor states? As population pressures increase, the demand for water will follow suit. If supplies are stretched thin now, what will the situation look like a few years from now?
California might be in a uniquely terrible situation right now. But nationwide, just 14 states have plans to prepare their cities, towns and infrastructure for climate change. In Florida, former Department of Environmental Protection workers say that their agency even imposes an unofficial ban on the terms “climate change” or “global warming.” If what’s happening in California now is a window to the future, Americans should be very worried indeed.
Yes, I understand there are those who don’t believe in global climate change…but it’s difficult to deny what’s happening in California. Even IF their four-year drought is an outlier, an aberration that has nothing to do with global climate, it’s still a crisis…and one that may well impact more that just California before too much longer.
Isn’t it time that we begin to plan for what could very well be a parched, contentious future? Or do we just continue to pray for rain and hope for the best?
