California Is Running Out of Water - Tell Your Reps To Act
Join us and tell your reps how you feel!
What’s the story?
- California continues to suffer through its three driest years on record. Fueled by the climate crisis, this dry spell withers flora into kindling for massive wildfires and puts an even greater strain on depleted water supplies. The megadrought also threatens the nation’s supply - and price - of produce, as California produces nearly half of all U.S.-grown fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
- The Golden State, and its largest cities, are running out of water—and time.
To live & dry in L.A.
- Amid the unprecedented drought, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has imposed a litany of water restrictions: 15-day bans on outdoor watering, asking residents to reduce water irrigation to twice per week, placing “flow restrictors” on homes that chronically violate drought restrictions. (The latter includes a number of celebrity mansions--more on this below.)
- L.A.’s water shortages don’t reside in any one zip code. A 2021 study found that approximately half of the county’s 10 million residents live in a neighborhood vulnerable to climate impacts.
- In the last decade, L.A. leaders have made progress and investments in the future of the city’s water supply. However, the work remains unfinished, target dates are continuously pushed back, and L.A. residents see the consequences daily.
- Residents are left wondering why there still seems to be no political action to tackle climate change, as scientists urge leaders to recognize that we may be running out of time.
- With the upcoming midterm election - including a mayoral vote in L.A. - it is essential that voters take action, fight for effective water solutions, and elect leaders who will prioritize each community’s environmental health.
Conservation efforts & the water police
- Officials had hoped the aforementioned water restrictions would encourage behavioral changes--and they have largely proven successful. The LADWP reported that the city’s water usage dropped to record lows in June, July, and August of this year.
- While most of California is doing its part, some of the wealthiest residents continue to ignore the state’s conservation efforts. Water restrictors have been placed on homes owned by Kevin Hart and The Game; Kourtney Kardashian and Sylvester Stallone have surpassed 200% of their allotted water budgets.
- While officials levied financial penalties and invoked “water police” for these cases, non-A-List Angelenos are angry at millionaires buying their way out of the drought and want to see significant - and equitable - action.
Water independence
Presently, recycled water only makes up around 2% of the city’s drinking water; officials hope to raise that number to at least 35%.
- L.A. relies almost exclusively on imported water, and its supply is becoming less reliable each year. After a dry winter with minimal snowpack, many reservoirs are currently half-empty and cannot supply enough water for L.A. residents. As precipitation continues to decrease, the city is likely to be forced into maintaining a completely independent water supply.
- Wastewater recycling is the capture and treatment of water for reuse. According to most experts, it is an essential step for L.A. to become water self-reliant. Officials expect a direct potable reuse facility to be functional within five years. This project will be the state’s first facility to put purified, recycled water directly into the drinking system.
- There are also plans to turn Santa Monica’s Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant into an advanced water purification facility by 2035. After the conversion, the plant will produce enough water for 2 million people. While the project is taking longer than expected, researchers hope that, when completed, it will allow L.A. to avoid running out of water.
The race for Mayor & water
- During a recent flyover of the Hollywood Reservoir, outgoing L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti noted that the water level was lower than he’s ever seen and urged his replacement to act on the looming crisis:
“It’s not an easy path, it’s not a cheap path, but it’s achievable…And if [they don’t] do it, we’re in big trouble.”
- The two candidates in the L.A. mayoral race - U.S. Representative Karen Bass and real estate tycoon Rick Caruso - both believe the city must reduce its reliance on imported water. Bass told the Los Angeles Times that her top water priority as mayor would be modernizing aging infrastructure and focusing on the quality of drinking water for city residents, especially communities of color who often face the most severe environmental impacts. Bass wrote:
“There’s no one solution — but by choosing a strategic balance, with investments in strategies like water conservation, landscape protection of our imported supplies, we will ensure a more sustainable water future…there is more we can do to reduce our reliance on imported water, which begins with more aggressive conservation measures.”
- Bass also plans to turn parks and open areas into “water resilient places” that can naturally capture stormwater and recharge groundwater basins.
- Caruso also feels these next few years are critical, highlighting the need for more efficient water use, water recycling, and groundwork recharge. He wrote:
“Drought impacts all of us, and we must work collectively to reduce our water usage while working to quickly and efficiently expand our groundwater recharge and recycling efforts.” He promised to “...work diligently to expand the use of recycled water for nonportable purposes and to ensure that all commercial and industrial users who want or need access to recycled water can achieve it easily — it won’t happen quickly but we must prioritize it.”
Have you been impacted by a megadrought? If you’re in California, click on the “Contact Reps” button and you’ll be put in touch with your local state reps. Outside the Golden State? You'll send a message to California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D) and Republican Leader James Gallagher.
-Josh Herman & Jamie Epstein
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so let me get this straight you guys are permanently blue and apparently you are the intellectually obviously And you people are doing everything because of Climate change and you still can’t succeed? May be it’s you because something should change
What I post articles on and the truth about, is what the Left's own policies are and how they are destroying our society. I have never threatened anyone, nor any group of people EVER. So I want to make this known. Brian, has decided to threaten me this morning with having authorities investigate me, claiming that I am inciting violence. I will not tolerate being threatened by anyone. This is a very dangerous threat, considering conservatives homes are being raided and arrested by the FBI for having a different political view. @Causes, I am making this public in case something should come of this threat.
I would think that by looking at ALL of the polls, that you all would realize why you are anout to lose across the board. But instead, you double down on the same tactics that America is sick of and no longer buys. We have dealt with your bame calling, censorship, psychotic ideology, and lies for years and are done. Americans care about eating, working, and being able to live without this craziness you all have created.
You can't have state mandated hundreds of thousands, more like millions more of housing units (which it's done) AND water for all of them. The forced housing development for every single city and town in the state is crazy, because you can't have both. The math simply doesn't work. None of the infrastructure works. Plus, Californians don't want it.
Those who believe in abortion, in supporting the body mutilation of underage children, exposing our children to pornograpghy and immoral behavior, the use of marxist tactics to divide races of people, encourage the breakdown of the nuclear family, use a fictional narrative to create chaos in a civil society, and label those who fight back against your ideology as domestic terrorist, are not Christian. You are the evil that creeps in amongst us to divide, pervert the Word of God, and to lure the vulnerable into wickedness. You are here to confuse and manipualte. Those who are truly Christian, can see right through you. We stand in your way. And the only way to be rid of us, is to persecute us and bring us to the point of caving to you. This is why you wish to silence us and demonize us as the wicked ones. If that fails, you want to inprison us. Anything that you can possibly do, to remove us from your path, you are willing to do. You take the weak minded and make an army of them. But let this be known. God has his own army. There are those of us that will not cave, will not be silenced, and will not stand by and allow you to pass. No matter what you do to us, we have a higher power there to protect us and guide us.
Evil will not win this battle. Just like the evil regimes of our past, this one too shall be defeated. Stand strong my Christian friends. We have God on our side and He will not fail us. This too shall pass and our great nation will be restored. Keep your faith, speak out against evil, and never give up.
If you ever stay in a ca hotels, you can shut off the Fossett, no wonder they are running out of water! I am sure the water bill is unbelievable!
I added a couple of links to articles to the discussion thread at
https://www.causes.com/comments/49411
Each article has a sense of urgency to the efforts currently underway.
• Apparently people in the LA area are already drinking recycled waste water.
• Desalinization Plant are still being built. There are already 12 in operation and California regulators this week approved a $140 million desalination plant that could convert up to 5 million gallons of seawater each day into drinking water. However it will take five years to get it up and running.
• Environmental issues are being addressed as best they can given the current technology which seems to be evolving rather quickly due to the response to the ongoing draught.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/elite-nyc-private-schools-make-parents-sign-anti-racist-commitment-attend-anti-racist-training
It's bad here. I'm in Ventura County. There's only two of us in our household, and our pets. We are rationed to once a week watering outside, so everything is on the verge of death right now.
What we are trying to do is adapt to using much less water than ever -and keeping with that adjustment. There's simply not enough for all of us here.
I love my blue state but I fear we may have to relocate eventually.
I feel sympathetic for California, as well as Nevada and Arizona and other drought-stricken states, but only so far as the people cannot directly influence their government leaders, who really have failed them. These areas were never meant to sustain millions with limited fresh water resources, even if there were snows in the mountains, and they've now exceeded their capacity.
This is the danger of climate change, and we need to stop electing politicians without a plan to fight it aggressively. This likely will not get better soon, and even if there's a very wet year it will not be a long-term solution to the droughts in the southwest. They need a plan to keep these areas watered responsibly, ban watering of lawns and extraneous landscaping, and conserve the precious little water they do have every day.
It was always arrogant to think you could turn a desert into an oasis long-term, and allowing people to plan lush green lawns was irresponsible. Water is precious and we currently don't have a reliable way to desalinate enough ocean water to provide drinking and cleaning water to these areas. Long-term, these states cannot support their current populations, and people will end up having to move to other areas.
On a macro scale, this is what's going to happen across our country and the globe as climate change continues. Many highly populated areas will not be able to sustain their current populations, and the only answer will be for people to start moving to cooler, wetter areas.
I don't know what all the best solutions are, but we need to demand them from our political leaders and only elect those with solutions that will work.
Tough decisions and tough chooses are needed now. It would be best to make them now before the climate crisis makes them for you.
There are no quick fixes for a multi year drought that shows no sign of lifting anytime soon.
Large scale renewable energy fired desalination plants will be needed to ensure adequate potable water for whatever population remains in the drought stricken regions and they need to get online ASAP.
I don't have sympathy for California as a whole. I do have sympathy for those that have voted against the establishment Soros backed Dems. But it is past time for them to get the Hell out of California. California is a cesspool of crazy Leftist that clearly cannot put their people above politics and their agenda. This has been a known problem for some time now and they have done nothing but push for Social Justice and LGBTQ bs. It's their own fault. Their elected officials have abandoned their people and instead made themselves richer, while the state has went to Hell. Maybe we will get lucky and the state will break off of the continent and become it's own isolated little country.
1.In the contact-your-rep section only two are listed. Why only two? Every Rep should be held accountable!
2. I see we have some high profile idiots identified:
• Water restrictors have been placed on homes owned by Kevin Hart and The Game
• Kourtney Kardashian and Sylvester Stallone have surpassed 200% of their allotted water budgets
Very disappointing!
While water management should be threading the needles of compromise, I agree with commenter who wrote that CA needs to redouble its desalination efforts. I wrote the same thing months ago.WTH!
We need all levels of government to kick into high gear to help look for solutions.
California’s water supply problems are a combination of poor water management decisions and climate change. Studies suggest it’s a 60/40 split. Since it’s easier & quicker to change water management decision than climate that needs to be the 1st steps while longer term actions are taken to mitigate climate change.
Historically CA water supply problems for are more related to water distribution and use than water shortages, but dry years increasingly stress the system.
Much of the state’s water problems are caused by human decisions like operational decisions made by water managers like unsustainable ground water pumping further complicated by several years of historically low rainfall and higher temperatures.
80% of California water use is allocated to agriculture. Diversion and damming of rivers sacrifices fisheries for farming using taxpayer subsidized water to grow water intense crops like almonds and rice for export markets.
The agricultural industry has been criticized for continuing to grow high profit crops like almonds that are ecologically destructive especially during drought years.
A UCLA study concluded it’s the driest it’s been in 1200 years. And another study found climate change is responsible fir 40% of the current drought.
The new California's Water Supply Strategy has 4 goals to address the projected 10% loss of CA water supply by 2050. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation will invest $309M into 20 projects supporting CA goals, and 3 states that effect CA water supply (ID, UT, WA)
(1) create storm water storage for 4M acre-feet of storm water
(2) recycle and reuse 800K acre-feet of wastewater per year by 2030
(3) employ more efficient water conservation techniques to free up 500K acre-feet of water
(4) desalinate more sea water
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/president-bidens-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-help-communities-reduce-vulnerability
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drought-gavin-newsom-plan-to-boost-california-water-supply/
https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Water-Resilience/CA-Water-Supply-Strategy.pdf
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/TimeSeries.aspx
https://blog.ucsusa.org/pablo-ortiz/causes-and-consequences-of-epic-western-us-drought/
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/megadrought-southwestern-north-america
https://shastascout.org/whats-causing-californias-water-crisis-and-how-serious-is-it/
Not a whole lot of sympathy here. They've seen this problem looming on the horizon for as long as I can remember (30+yrs). Why do they act as if they were caught unaware and had no time to have a well developed plan ready to put in place? They know they live in a semi-desert and they talk about knowing science so well. They should have it under control. That they don't tells a whole lot about the level of incompetence of leadership, at the state and federal levels. It seems no one has enough foresight to think any further than the next election, making it a pretty sure bet that many things are lacking in being thoroughly thought out. Doesn't bode well for their other climate-change mitigation plans, I'd think.
FIRST--WATER IS LIFE!
Second--Conserve water always.
Third--Recycle water--it is not destroyed.
Fourth--Get to work on safe and efficient desalination.