This is part of the general trend where California decided building things was bad, invented CEQA, and now here we are.
Mmm, that might be glossing over the part where they decided to build farms in the desert, with water from other states, to grow animal feed and food for other countries.
I'd argue it's probably not the population or CEQA causing shortages, but our overzealous ag policies coupled with use-it-or-lose-it water laws and byzantine inter-state water compacts. Oh, and cyclical sustained draughts.
Residential households aren't really the ones using most of the water. It's ag (and other industries). Building new reservoirs and dams affect a lot of working communities too, not just silly things like nature. Meanwhile much of California's ag output is excessive, with a lot of it going to exports or waste, and much of the rest targeting unnecessarily high levels of animal production.
Our farm output is like < 1% of our national GDP, but they use 30-40% of our water. We already make way more food than Americans need. If we keep ramping up ag production and keep building reservoirs, we'd just keep propping up an over-producing industry that mostly serves the interests of huge ag conglomerates, not Californians or Americans.
Still the simple fact remains that California hasn't expanded water supply for 50 years while both water demand and droughts have increased a lot.
I'm not convinced that this is a problem of insufficient storage (reservoir capacity)... do you have a cite (or at least a explanation) for why you believe that? But even if that were the main problem, California is trying to add more of that too: https://bondaccountability.resources.ca.gov/p1.aspx and https://bondaccountability.resources.ca.gov/Program/ProgramD... specifically for storage programs
But this doesn't really fix anything. It's a very expensive band-aid. If there's not enough water in the upstream rivers and there are periods of sustained drought years, you can't just overfill an infinite number of reservoirs and still have enough water to last through subsequent years. Evaporation and other losses will deplete them naturally over time unless we pump enough of it underground or into other closed systems. And dams/reservoirs do have huge environment and community impacts that we really shouldn't just hand-wave away for the sake of the farm and meat lobbies.
This is the sort of really difficult problem that (IMHO) the federal government should step in to tackle at the national level, possibly via a Constitutional amendment. The clouds and rivers don't care about our state borders, and our really antiquated water rights frankly need to be eminent domained away from private interests and state-level fights and managed at a national level... but there is no easy way to get there from here, nor an easy way to avoid that fight =/ It's probably as difficult a political fight, or perhaps even more so, than peace in the Middle East... there's nobody we can bomb.
Building more dams is, as far as I can tell, neither necessary nor sufficient for resolving California's continued water crises. But I'm not an expert. My undergrad was in environmental science, where we lightly studied these topics, but not to any great depth. Offhandedly, it seems to me "more dams will solve California's countless water crises" is a rather extraordinary claim that requires some evidence. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though, if you have any additional details to share?
As a Californian, I know we have water crises more years than we don't. I'm a little stunned that people who don't know that throw around confident beliefs about California water management.
One of a zillion easily found articles on the topic: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165378214/3-reasons-why-cali...
I agree that California has water crises often... that wasn't something we disagreed on at all. And for what it's worth, I lived there for a couple decades, through many of the droughts.
I just don't think what you presume to be obvious and self evident (more dams will fix it) is necessarily true.
And if you have more stored water, it's obvious to me that you can handle a drought better.
Edit: I guess I'm not very familiar with California water management. I guess the reservoirs release water when they need to.
And California does seem to be moving ahead with expanding capacity.
https://www.governing.com/infrastructure/california-governor...
If they build more reservoirs but the rains don't keep up, a lot of it would still be lost to evaporation.
Assuming this is a serious question:
If you have 20 half full reservoirs you have twice as much water as with 10 half full reservoirs.
The underlying problem in California is that not enough rain is falling within the state's watersheds for everything people want to use it for. Adding more capacity won't double the amount of water available.
Adding more storage can help if it means less dumping at peaks or if they capture water in other areas. But reservoirs have been running half full for years before the heavy rains this year and last. The root of the problem is not enough water for too much demand.
From (unreliable) memory I think California captures maybe 10-20%.
A quick googling gave this: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
Where, exactly, do you want these reservoirs built that will cost less than a nuke?
Yeah but that's from Shein, and you don't wanna buy your nukes from a company that uses child labor and unsustainable materials.
Choosing to starve because you just picked the last fruit off the low-hanging branch is plainly irrational, especially since reservoirs are an aquaculture investment, not a burn pit to shovel money into. The smart business decision is to build wherever gives the best balance between comparative cost and usefulness, regardless of absolute cost, and then make whatever the cost is back through selling the rescued water. If the ruling class is generally right that the state is still a desirable abd growing place to live outside of the regular desperation for more water then this is about as close to a guaranteed return as these things get.
... but water usage is flat-to-down.
The Colorado River Compact has been over allocated for a long time.