Nevertheless, he thinks the Water Authority should “put out a drought advisory” encouraging residents “to be more water frugal.” The law declared water “subject to the doctrine of prior appropriation,” ordering the state engineer to report whether “small-scale residential precipitation collection … has caused any discernable injury to downstream water rights.”Ĭalifornia public agencies “don’t price water itself, it’s considered a free good,” Paxton said. ![]() Whereas the Water Authority “should be looking at the whole Colorado River Basin,” he described its water use philosophy in general as “myopia” and “beggar thy neighbor.”įor example, he pointed to a 2016 Colorado state law banning the use of rain barrels as a conservation measure to collect rainwater from certain residential rooftops. ![]() “In 2020, total (San Diego County) regional use of potable water was about 30 percent less than it was in 1990, even though the regional population grew by 35 percent,” according to the Water Authority’s web site.īut San Marcos’ Jack Paxton, a professor of agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences retired from the University of Illinois, takes a harder tone.Ĭolorado River rightsholders are “absolutely not” consuming water sustainably, he said. However, subsequently, “flows have been much lower than expected,” resulting in “over-allocation” to rightsholders.ĭue to “a warming trend in the Colorado River basin … water supplies are expected to decrease further,” the authors write.Īsked whether the Colorado is being used sustainably, Stephenson said: “That’s to be determined,” though “the states are all working on plans constantly to make sure that the Colorado River is sustainable.” The Law of the River’s divvying to Western states “was based on flow data collected between 19, a period that contains the highest long-term annual flow volume in the 20th century,” Arthur Littleworth and Eric Garner write in their 2019 book “California Water,” now in its third edition. Drought Monitor, a government-university partnership. The whole length of the Colorado River - through Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada - is experiencing “extreme” to “exceptional” drought conditions, according to the U.S. However, that San Diego County isn’t experiencing a contingency-triggering “shortage” doesn’t mean water isn’t in shortened supply in the places it’s imported from. Gavin Newsom recently declared a regional drought emergency in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, San Diego County remains in the clear.īecause of its high priority water rights, the San Diego County Water Authority’s Colorado River “supplies are largely insulated from cutbacks,” Authority spokesman Ed Joyce said previously. Graphic by Dan Brendelįor instance, while Gov. ![]() Per capita residential water use varies countywide, with certain North County districts, especially covering Rancho Santa Fe and Solana Beach, clocking in well above the statewide norm. ![]() Rather, it means an agency’s allotted supply wouldn’t meet expectations due to cutbacks triggered administratively, such as by a governor’s executive action. “Shortage” in this vernacular doesn’t describe water’s objective availability in the total marketplace. “We really don’t talk in terms of ‘scarcity,’ but we do talk in terms of ‘shortage,’” Stephenson said.
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