This is a big deal:
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which gathers water for 19 million people in the region, expects it can now begin storing water for future years. In recent years, it had been using up its water reserves.
It’s just one bit of a thoroughly excellent piece on the state of California’s drought by Ry Rivard at Voice of San Diego.
If Met can store this year because of surplus in local and Northern California supplies, that buys the big water agency breathing room in current negotiations over water use reductions on the Colorado River. Which means those of out here in the rest of the West, the ones nervously eyeing California because of their importance to our shared water supplies, can breathe more easily.
Well…we can breathe more easily as long as they don’t take their foot off the gas in terms of reduced consumption and diligence in promoting/playing along with a regional “deal” that would add more certainty to the system…
But yes, optimism is always better!
SE