Water is imperative for all aspects of California's growth: agricultural, industrial, commercial, and the healthy rearing of our children. However, California’s water supplies are threatened by our natural drought cycles. Increased development in southwestern states such as Nevada and Arizona also impact our water resources as California now receives less water from the Colorado River than it has in the past.

Storage

Climate change has led to more rain and less snow falling on California. Data from fifteen years ago already showed an alarming amount of water runoff into the Pacific Ocean: more than 26 million acre-feet of the 193 million acre-feet of annual precipitation. (Cal Dept. of Water Resources data, quoted in the Sacramento Bee, December 22, 2002). With the trend toward rain over snow, this waste has become even greater.

Seven years ago, The Public Policy Institute of California estimated that the greatest potential for new water supply between then and 2030 was improved urban efficiency, storage, and recycled municipal water. California needs more storage of all kinds: surface storage, underground storage, and recharging aquifers. New crop research has demonstrated a high tolerance for flooding fields, thus putting the water into aquifers that have been overdrawn during the drought.

The political left has been unwilling to build any more storage, although the 2014 initiative directed that $2.7 billion of the $7.5 billion of approved bonds go to that purpose. (No storage project had been approved as of June 2016.)

The political right, while supporting more storage projects, has been unwilling to acknowledge the reality of climate change, believing, contrary to scientific evidence, that the snow pack will continue to serve as the state’s primary form of water storage.)

The solution is to reject the far left and the far right. A centrist, moderate approach is also the most pragmatic: store the water that would otherwise flow out to the ocean. This would allow us to revitalize the farm economy of the Central Valley, and the thousands of workers and their families that depend upon it. It would allow water to draw upon for environmental purposes when the drought years return.

Desalination

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy said, “If we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get freshwater from saltwater, that would be in the long-range interest of humanity (and) would dwarf any other scientific accomplishments." We are close to attaining the desalination technology necessary to achieve this great scientific accomplishment. Currently desalination is becoming ever more practical, as the cost of the energy required has declined.

California’s regulatory environment, however, continues to add cost. According to the California Department of Water Resources, permits from 15 agencies are required before a desalination plant can be built. (California Desalination Handbook, 73-74, prepared for the California Department of Water Resources by the California State University, Sacramento, Center for Collaborative Policy, February 2008). Lack of coordination and inconsistent requirements add to the time involved in building a plant

California should create regulatory teams with members from all pertinent agencies to work with desalination developers to streamline the administrative process – one interaction with government, not fifteen. The environmental concerns involved in desalination are not trivial. Marine life can be threatened by the intake of salt water and the brine left over after completion of the desalination process poses significant disposal issues. However, technological progress on research to address these issues has been promising. The State of California should assist this research. One of the best ways of doing so is through partnerships that allow intellectual property developed at UC or CSU in this field to be owned by the inventor, but with a perpetual royalty-free lease to the State of California.

Water Bonds

In 2014, Californians approved $7.5 billion in bonds for water projects. At least $2.7 billion was to be spent on water storage. As of 2017, however, none of the funds had been committed to specific water storage projects. Other approved uses of the bond funds had raced ahead, especially preservation of endangered habitat. The state needs to expedite the construction of water projects much faster to meet our needs during a renewed drought.

Agriculture

California’s farms and ranches are the most productive in the world. They provide affordable food to our state and improve our nation’s international trade position. It is wrong to deny water to agriculture through unreasonable curtailments of the state and federal water projects, when cities and industries are not required to do the same. Farmers know the value of water and do not waste it.