This week’s heat wave is about to melt what’s left of California’s snowcap.
That could mean water shortages — not because of climate change, but because we failed to build more water storage when we had the chance.
Barely two months ago, the Golden State was officially free of drought — from the Tijuana River to the Oregon border — for the first time in 25 years.
We also had plenty of rainfall recently, with Southern California enduring its wettest Christmas on record.
But aside from a few heavy snowstorms — one of which produced deadly avalanches — there hasn’t been enough snow on the Sierra Nevada.
And the snow that did fall is about to disappear.
That is bad news.
Snow is California’s natural reservoir. It stores trillions of gallons of water, releasing it slowly over the course of a spring thaw.
If the snowcap melts too quickly, it can cause flooding.
It can also force state and federal dams to open their gates and let water run out to sea — not just to save endangered fish species, but to save the dams from overflowing and collapsing.
Once the snow is gone, we have the water in the reservoirs, and underground wells. That’s it.
We could build more dams, and bigger dams, to catch the runoff from major storms and melting snow.
But California has not built a major dam in half a century.
In 2014, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond. Of that, $2.7 billion was earmarked for water storage projects.
Yet progress was abysmally slow, tied up amid permit processes and a general lack of leadership.
Ten years later, voters passed Proposition 4, authorizing a $10 billion bond for “climate resilience.” Water supply projects are the single largest line item.
But progress is still too slow — and the state’s inertia is as glaring as the empty reservoir above Pacific Palisades.
The federal government recently approved a plan to build the Sites Reservoir, west of Sacramento.
Gavin Newsom is taking credit for that — even though the project was on the table before he became governor, and it won’t be completed until long after he is gone.
There is so much more that California could be doing.
Instead, the state has opposed good ideas like the first Trump administration’s proposal to raise the height of the Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet, which would add about 14% to its capacity.
Newsom recently proposed the “California Water Plan 2028,” which suggests a few administrative steps, but does not include new infrastructure plans.
Experts are predicting a “Super El Niño” effect this year, meaning that warming water along the eastern Pacific Rim could wreak havoc with global weather patterns.
It’s inexcusable that we are facing another uncertain season without much more storage capacity than we had after the last major dry spell in 2017, nearly a decade ago.
We need to make water storage an urgent priority — even in rainy years.
When California’s reservoirs run dry, it is too late.
