In the latest and possibly most severe evidence yet of California’s worsening drought, the federal government on Wednesday announced it will cut water deliveries to urban areas it serves by more than half — and to zero for many farmers across the Central Valley.
The move will result in mandatory water restrictions across Santa Clara County, said Rick Callender, CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which provides water to 2 million people.
“We are truly in an emergency situation,” Callender said. “We’re going to be seeking everything we can do to address this emergency. The public should expect tighter restrictions.”
The district, based in San Jose, was relying on water from the federal Central Valley Project to make up about 25% of its supply this year. Santa Clara County is in a particularly difficult situation following two very dry winters, because its largest reservoir, Anderson, near Morgan Hill, is drained entirely for earthquake repairs to its dam that were mandated by federal regulators last year.
The district has been asking residents across the South Bay for a 25% voluntary reduction in their water use. With the drop in federal water, the district will need to rely much more heavily on recycled water, groundwater and purchased water from other agencies and farm districts around California. Conservation will play a critical role.
The district will consider which restrictions to put into place on June 8 at its next board meeting. They are likely to include limits on outdoor irrigation at homes and businesses, water cutbacks for golf courses and other areas, and additional measures seen during the 2012-16 drought and in prior drought emergencies dating back to the 1970s.
Tony Estremera, chairman of the Santa Clara Valley Water District board, said the agency, a wholesale water provider for San Jose Water Company and about a dozen cities in the South Bay, “is deeply concerned about what this means for our communities and our region.” He urged residents to step up conservation efforts, including taking advantage of rebates to remove lawns and install more water-efficient appliances, which are detailed at watersavings.org.
The cutbacks also may affect residents in the East Bay who get their water from the East Bay Municipal Utility District and the Contra Costa Water District, although both of those agencies have more water in storage than Santa Clara County. Those districts said Wednesday they are not planning mandatory restrictions at the moment.
The federal government said it made the decision to cut deliveries through the Central Valley Project because California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack was just 59% of normal on April 1 — after the second dry winter in a row — and hot weather in May melted much of the snowpack significantly faster than was projected.
“Due to the worsening drought conditions, inflow to our reservoirs was less than we expected,” said Mary Lee Knecht, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation. “Conditions are so dry, the water soaked into dry ground or it evaporated.”
The Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that it will cut water deliveries to its contractors who receive “municipal and industrial” water — basically urban agencies, from 55% of their contracted amounts to 25%. And it will cut deliveries to many farm contractors across the Central Valley from 5% to 0%, forcing them to pump more groundwater, buy water from other farmers or take crops out of production.
The Central Valley Project is a vast system of dams, reservoirs, canals and pumps that moves hundreds of billions of gallons of water every year from Northern California to drier areas farther south.
Built in the 1930s by the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt, the “CVP,” as it is called, extends more than 400 miles from Shasta Dam near Redding to hundreds of communities as far south as Bakersfield. Water stored in its 20 reservoirs, including Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, San Luis and New Melones, irrigates 3 million acres of farmland. Without the project there would be little agriculture in much of the Central Valley, an otherwise arid landscape.
But the project also provides water to some urban areas. Among the largest is the Santa Clara Valley Water District, although the Contra Costa Water District and East Bay MUD also receive federal water. Contra Costa’s main reservoir, Los Vaqueros, is 79% full, but the district will be looking for more conservation, officials said Wednesday.
“The drought reliability benefits provided by storage in Los Vaqueros reservoir will be very important this year,” said Jennifer Allen, a spokeswoman with the Contra Costa Water District. “With this new information, we would anticipate bringing a conservation proposal to our board early in July.”
California runs a similar project, the State Water Project, which mostly provides water to urban areas. It also has seen cutbacks on contracted amounts.
In response to Wednesday’s cutbacks, Westlands Water District, which serves farm communities in the west side of Fresno and Kings counties, announced a ban on outdoor landscape irrigation to preserve water for indoor use.
California is in the middle of its driest two-year period since 1976-77. The state’s newly emerging drought, which is already increasing the risk of wildfires this summer and beginning to strain water supplies, is part of a wider drought unfolding across the American West.
Less than two years ago, on Oct. 1, 2019, only 2% of California was in a drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, NOAA and the University of Nebraska. But now 100% of the state is in some level of drought, with 73% in extreme or exceptional drought. That’s the highest level since February 2015.
