With a boost from the wettest January on record, California’s megadrought is over.
But with torrents running out to sea, relief may be as short-lived as the next dry spell. Intensifying the problem is that California has not built a reservoir in approximately 50 years, and many water supply plans—if they survive strict governmental review—get tied up in court by environmental lawsuits.
As this litigation takes its toll, California finds itself with limited ammo for its war against recurrent droughts, which has hurt agriculture and forced rationing at times in the South. The most recent example involves a lawsuit filed last December targeting the Sites Reservoir, northwest of Sacramento, which several groups say will upset the ecosystem, according to a report published by Courthouse News Service.
Edward Ring, author of The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California, has studied the issue intensively as senior fellow with California Policy Center and director of the CPC’s Californians for Energy and Water Abundance. In a recent interview with Northern California Record, Ring agreed these lawsuits are crippling and need to be curtailed.
“In general, the way the system is set up, environmental lawsuits have had a very chilling effect on the ability of Californians to develop the resilience and the water supply that we need to get through dry years,” he said, alluding to the state’s alternating cycles of drought and deluge.
As stifling as these lawsuits can be, they’re not the only force blocking water resiliency. Ring underscored that besides no new reservoirs, progress also lags on less controversial projects. This leaves conservation, which only goes so far, he said.
“You can’t blame it all on the environmentalists,” Ring said. “It’s a lot bigger than that.”
He cited everything from bureaucracy to funding hurdles and a lack of leadership as impediments to change. Bureaucracy, he said, involves dozens of state and federal agencies and elected officials, all sharing an environmental perspective that prioritizes conservation.
“The counterargument is we’ve been very good at conservation, but it may not be enough if we have a real long drought and people may not want to submit to conservation measures that become so extreme they feel like rationing," Ring said.
In his book, Ring recalls how in 2014, 67% of California voters approved Proposition 1 to finance water storage, yet almost a decade has lapsed without construction of a single project. Not only reservoirs but desalination plants have run into opposition, he writes, like the 50-million-gallon-a-day Huntington Beach project “held up by a mostly hostile bureaucracy and litigation for over 20 years.” California regulators rejected the $1.4 billion plant in May of 2022.
As the most recent project to land in court, Ring discussed the $4.4 billion Sites Reservoir project, which ran into a legal challenge one month after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced fast-tracking plans to supply 3 million homes annually. Drawing from wet seasons for use during dry spells, the reservoir would hold up to $1.5 million acre-feet of water, according to the governor's press release dated Nov. 6.
Several environmental groups fighting the project today cite a threat to salmon and steelhead as water is diverted from the Sacramento River system.
In its defense, Ring said: “You can always find environmental problems with any project, but you have to balance that against the benefits.”
Describing Sites as an off-stream reservoir like San Luis to harvest runoff, he said, “It's not a dam that blocks the migration of salmon or any other fish.” In fact, as previously negotiated, he said, this water also could nurture wetlands.
The bottom line, if California is going to achieve water resiliency, Ring said, the state needs to explore an “all-of-the-above” strategy: Desalination plants, underground aquifers and wastewater recycling.
Harvesting and treating urban stormwater runoff is another option, Ring said.
“Look at all the water that ran down the streets of Los Angeles in these last storms. We can harvest some of that,” he said.
In his book, Ring recalls how two “atmospheric rivers” struck in October and December of 2022, but the state lacked the resources for a big gulp despite extreme thirst left by the third year of severe drought.
Without a broad approach, he predicted California will continue to struggle and push its resources to the brink, which he said is a balance easily upset in an earthquake or other disaster.