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Houseboats on Lake Oroville in Oroville, California, US, on Feb. 20, 2023. California will be able to increase the amount of water it delivers to 27 million residents after a series of recent storms that brought record rains and helped replenish drought-parched reservoirs.
CNN
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced the removal of some drought restrictions, while keeping other measures to bolster water supply for vulnerable communities and develop water resilience after a parade of atmospheric river storms pummeled the state and boosted water supply in recent months.
Against the backdrop of the Dunnigan Hills in Yolo County, where rainwater is being channeled onto acres of farmland to slowly recharge groundwater aquifers, Newsom signed an executive order that ends the requirement for local water agencies to implement drought contingency plans of limiting outdoor irrigation to certain days or hours, increasing patrols for water waste, enforcing water-use prohibitions, and putting forward urgent calls for people to conserve water.
Newsom is also rolling back his 2021 order, urging residents and businesses to cut back their water consumption use by 15%, even though urban water usage was actually up by 19% months later.
In concert with these rollbacks, the Department of Water Resources also announced it will increase the amount of water deliveries to 75% of requested water supplies this year — up from the initial plan of only 5% last year — as a result of the recent storms. This increase represents an additional 1.7 million acre feet of water for the 29 public water agencies serving 27 million Californians. (An acre-foot is the amount of water that would fill one acre a foot deep — roughly 326,000 gallons.)
Despite these announcements, the governor made clear that Californians must continue to use water wisely and efficiently.
“We’re not out of the woods,” Newsom said at a briefing on Friday. The last three years have been the driest such period on record in California, with the West as a whole suffering through the worst drought in at least 1,200 years. Last year, state scientists also predicted that California could lose 10% of its water supplies over the next 20 years.
“It’s incumbent upon us to continue to maintain our vigilance and maintain some provisions of the executive order to allow for fast tracking of groundwater replenishment projects, stormwater capture and recycling programs here in the state of California,” he added.
Other drought measures remain in place. With a hotter and drier future projected for California, Newsom is continuing the ban on wasteful water uses including watering ornamental grass on commercial grounds.
The governor is also maintaining a state of emergency for all 58 counties, so that emergency response and recovery efforts continue.
In addition, Newsom is preserving current emergency orders focused on groundwater, because while recent storms have increased water supply — with snowpack largely reaching a record high and reservoirs being replenished to normal levels — groundwater reserves are still having a hard time recovering.
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An aerial view of Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona, on April 20. The Department of the Interior said on August 16 it is prepared to
take action to limit the water releases from Lake Powell to prevent it from plunging below 3,525 feet above sea level by the end of 2023. Below that level, the Glen Canyon Dam, which forms the reservoir, cannot produce hydropower.
Noah Berger/AP
Flames engulf a chair inside a burning home in Mariposa County, California, on July 23. The
Oak Fire, which started near Yosemite National Park, burned nearly 20,000 acres and is California's
biggest wildfire of the year. The challenging terrain and abundant dry vegetation fueling the wildfire complicated efforts to tamp down its growth, a Cal Fire spokesperson told CNN.
John Locher/AP
Craig Miller sits in his stranded houseboat at Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nevada, on June 23. Miller had been living on the stranded boat for over two weeks after engine trouble and falling lake levels left the boat above the water level.
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Some of the 20 hillside homes destroyed by the Coastal Fire are seen as cleanup work continues on June 17 in Laguna Niguel, California.
The May 11 brush fire was fueled by windy and dry conditions amid California's severe drought, which has been compounded by climate change. Flames raced up the hill to reach the multimillion-dollar houses after the fire started below in a nearby canyon.
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Firefighters battle a brush fire at Coronado Pointe in Laguna Niguel, California, on May 11. Statewide, January to April were the driest first four months on record, the US Drought Monitor reported.
John Locher/AP
A formerly sunken boat sits on cracked earth hundreds of feet from what is now the shoreline on Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nevada, on May 9. According to a new projection from the Department of the Interior, Lake Mead's water level will be below 1,050 feet above sea level in January -- the threshold required to declare a
Tier 2 shortage starting in 2023.
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A dead fish lies on a section of dry lakebed along Lake Mead on May 9.
Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Michelle Peters, a technical and compliance manager for Poseidon Water, walks through the reverse osmosis building at the Claude Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant in Carlsbad, California, on March 30. The plant converts ocean water into municipal water. In August, Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out a
multi-billion-dollar plan to preserve the state's diminishing water supply for future years, which includes recycled water projects such as desalination of ocean water and salty water in groundwater basins.
Joe Buglewicz/The New York Times/Redux
A landscaping crew removes non-functional turf from a residential development in Las Vegas on March 30. Under a Nevada state law passed last year, patches of non-functional grass that serve only for aesthetic purposes must be removed in favor of more desert-friendly landscaping.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
People walk on an area of Lake Powell that used to be underwater at Lone Rock Beach in Big Water, Utah, on March 27.
Bryan Tarnowski/The New York Times/Redux
The
shrinking Great Salt Lake is seen from Antelope Island State Park in Utah on March 15. Human water consumption and diversion have long depleted the lake. Scientists worry they're watching a slow-motion calamity unfold. Ten million birds flock to the Great Salt Lake each year to feed off of its now-struggling sea life, and more pelicans breed here than almost anywhere else in the country.
NOAA
In this GeoColor image from July 2021, smoke from numerous wildfires could be seen as gray-brown, in stark contrast to the white cloud cover over other parts of the continent.
Roger Kisby/The New York Times/Redux
Visitors take photos in front of a thermometer in July 2021, at Death Valley National Park in Death Valley, California. Death Valley is known to be a hot place, but on July 9
it hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit for only the fifth time in recorded history.
David McNew/Getty Images
These peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, near Lone Pine, California, often have snow packs that last throughout the summer months. But there were none in July 2021.
John Locher/AP
Golden Davis cools off in a mister along the Las Vegas Strip on July 9, 2021. The city tied its all-time temperature record of 117 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
A utility crew works on power lines in July 2021, in front of a hillside that was burned by the Salt Fire in California's Shasta County.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Annette Garcia, director of the Coachella Valley Horse Rescue, straps ice packs onto a horse's legs to help keep him cool amid a water shortage in Indio, California, in July 2021.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This aerial photo shows houseboats anchored at the Bidwell Canyon Marina in Oroville, California, in June 2021. As water levels continued to fall at Lake Oroville, officials were flagging houseboats for removal so they could avoid being stuck or damaged.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
People in Portland, Oregon, cool off at the Oregon Convention Center on Sunday, June 27, 2021. Portland
set an all-time high of 112 degrees that day. It surpassed it a day later with a high of 116.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Park visitors in Big Water, Utah, walk on an area of Lake Powell that used to be underwater at Lone Rock Beach in June 2021.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The exposed lake bed of the San Gabriel Reservoir is seen near Azusa, California, in June 2021.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Ranchers Jim Jensen, center, and Bill Jensen inspect a trench they are working on to try to get more water to their ranch in Tomales, California, in June 2021. As the drought continues in California, many ranchers and farmers are beginning to see their wells and ponds dry up. They are having to make modifications to their existing water resources or have water trucked in for their livestock.
Will Matsuda/The New York Times/Redux
California's Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, near the Oregon border, is seen in May 2021. The area has been severely affected by drought and the lack of irrigation waters from Upper Klamath Lake, which usually feeds into the refuge.
AP
Firefighters battle a brushfire in Santa Barbara, California, in May 2021.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This aerial photo shows rows of almond trees sitting on the ground during an orchard removal project in Snelling, California, in May 2021. Because of a shortage of water in the Central Valley, some farmers are having to remove crops that require excessive watering.
“The good news is that the wet winter has eased the drought significantly,” Jon Gottschalck, the head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, said at a media briefing last week. “Drought is expected to improve further or go away completely across much of California.”
The months of deluge have already helped raise the levels in the state’s largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, bringing them back to historical averages. The reservoirs have risen by more than 100 to 180 feet respectively since December.
Brad Rippey, meteorologist with the US Department of Agriculture, said end-of-February storage in the state’s 154 primary intrastate reservoirs is effectively normal for the end of winter. “But storage does not yet include the amazing snowpack that will melt in coming months,” he told CNN.
According to California water officials, these reservoirs gained almost 10 million acre-feet of water from November 30 to February 28 — an improvement from 67% to 96% of normal and from 35% to 61% of capacity. And additional storage gains have occurred during March, especially after recent storms.
“We’re up approximately 7.5 million acre feet in California storage since last year at this time, so already a significant gain in water supply and this snowpack is going to benefit those reservoirs, as opposed to melt in the spring,” said Brett Whitin, a hydrologist with the California Nevada River Forecast Center. “But it will be a challenge to manage all this snowpack. I mean, there’s been record snow and a lot of these rivers have limited channel capacity downstream, so getting that water out safely is going to be a challenge.”
To address these growing challenges, California has so far invested $8.6 billion to boost water supplies and storage, with another $327 million proposed to develop flood protection and drought resiliency projects. Government officials are also exploring ways to capture and store more water during storms to prepare for future droughts.
Over the last decade, California has seen extremes from both ends of the spectrum from lengthy droughts to severe flooding. Most recently, the state faced its 12th powerful, atmospheric river storm this week, continuing the onslaught of major weather whiplash after a yearslong, historic megadrought.
Scientists say human-caused climate change has increased the potential for this weather whiplash, where dramatic shifts in periods of drought and high rain and snow can occur more often, particularly in California.
Gottschalck, of the Climate Prediction Center, said the Western spigot of rain and snow will likely turn off come April.
“It does look like that will probably shut off as we go into our early part of April,” Gottschalck said. “And at that point, normal climatological precipitation, for much of California, goes toward zero quite quickly, so we do think there will be a break.”
Water officials in California say that while the record-high snowpack and nearly full reservoirs are good news for the state, snow measurements on April 1 — traditionally when California’s snowpack peaks and starts to melt — are considered the most important when it comes to forecasting the year’s water resources as well as the state of the drought. DWR plans to host its April snow survey on April 3 at Phillips Station, where officials expect further adjustments to water allocations.