In response to the West’s historic drought, California officials warned on Wednesday that cities and farms won’t get any water from the State Water Project next year unless it’s an emergency. The unprecedented decision will affect 27 million residents and 750,000 acres of farmland. Unless a rainy winter offers a reprieve, officials say the state’s urban residents should also brace for mandatory water cuts.
“We have such exceedingly dry conditions,” said Karla Nemeth, director of California’s Department of Water Resources, in a press conference on Wednesday. “We are absolutely living climate change.”
A remarkable feat of engineering, the State Water Project is a complex network of reservoirs, pipes, and canals that shuttles water from the north of the state to its thirsty south. The system delivers drinking water to two out of every three Californians, and the state’s agricultural sector relies on it for irrigation.
While officials have reduced the State Water Project’s water deliveries during past droughts, this will be the first time since 2014 that they have essentially stopped them entirely. This year has been California’s driest year since 1924, and Lake Oroville, the state’s largest reservoir, is at 30 percent capacity. Another reservoir, Lake Mendocino, could run out of water completely. And despite a deluge of rain from an atmospheric river in October, the drought is grinding into its third year.
According to Nemeth, the State Water Project still plans to distribute 340,000 acre-feet of water to some communities for “critical health and safety needs,” which would include essential services like drinking water and keeping firefighting operations and hospitals running. To put that number in perspective, the project usually distributes 4.2 million acre-feet of water in a year.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has resisted imposing mandatory water restrictions, but if drought conditions continue, Nemeth says, it’s only a matter of time before the state resorts to them. In the meantime, many municipalities and water districts have taken the initiative and issued mandates themselves. The city of Bakersfield announced new water cuts earlier this week, and cities throughout Marin County and Silicon Valley are also facing new restrictions.
“The conditions on the State Water Project are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in a press release on Wednesday afternoon. The district, which provides water to 19 million people throughout Southern California, declared a drought emergency last month. Noting that some communities depend almost exclusively on the State Water Project’s supply, the district added that it “will continue doing everything we can to get water from other sources to these communities.”