@mwdh2o has moved to a six pump flow on the Colorado River Aqueduct to start the new year in case the Drought Contingency Plan not finalized. Can’t afford to leave 5-600,000 AF of ICS storage stuck in Lake Mead if we go into shortage.
— Jeffrey Kightlinger (@8thGenCA) January 5, 2019
For background:
Meanwhile the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has increased the pressure with an ultimatum of its own. Absent a DCP, Met is at risk under the current rules of having its banked water stranded in Lake Mead. DCP would relax those restrictions, but without a DCP, Met has made clear it has no choice but begin taking that water out beginning in January. (Daniel Rothberg explains all this here.) This means Lake Mead drops faster, increasing everyone’s risk, but especially Arizona’s. (Tapping foot, glaring, arms crossed, at Arizona.)
I said it before and I’ll say it again here — Arizona will remain, per its history, far and away the most recalcitrant Lower Colorado state. Maybe we’ll get the Arizona National Guard sent out to the river again.
where do they have they can put it?
Songbird, if nothing else, they can store it in the aquifers used a century plus ago for the original waters from the Los Angeles Aqueduct. “Recycled” water is already done that way in parts of LA, to remove the “ick” factor from people’s minds rather than putting it directly into municipal water supply https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mwd-recycled-water-20150922-story.html