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The new edition of the California Water Plan (Bulletin 160-13) was recently finalized by the California Department of Water Resources. Interestingly, the new edition determined that in an average water year agriculture used 200,000 acre-feet less than previously thought. While this does not change the overall percentages of water use in the state, it is important to note that agricultural water use during an average water year is 41 percent of applied water. This is important factual information amidst all the media coverage of the California drought, much of which has erroneously reported this information.

The fourth year of a drought has led to creative water management to provide water for multiple beneficial purposes throughout the Sacramento Valley, including the mosaic of cities and rural communities, farms, fish, birds and recreation. Unfortunately, all these beneficial uses of water suffer during these dry years, with reduced water supplies for farmers and … Continue reading “The Public Benefits of Sites Reservoir”

Some recent satellite imagery from NASA shows the drought impacts on agriculture and the environment in the Sacramento Valley. The following images compare the summer of 2011 (a wet year) versus the summer of 2014 (the third year of drought) in the Central Valley. The green is land with water and the red is generally idled land without water. In the Sacramento Valley–the northern third of the Great Central Valley–you can see significant red around the outside of the Valley and sprinkled throughout the interior part of the Sacramento Valley.

As this year is looking more and more like another water short year for California, it is important to remember the many important uses for water in our state. The chart below, which is generated with information contained in the California Water Plan, shows the many and varied environmental water uses, as well as the proportion of water used by the urban and agricultural sectors in the state. As decisions are made in response to the drought, meeting these multiple uses needs to be part of the process.