Drought
In the LA Times today, the message from State water resources director Lester Snow is an important one, that despite better than expected water supplies thanks to rainstorms earlier this year:
“We still consider we are in a drought and need to take special actions.”
The good news is that water deliveries to Southern California will be higher than previously expected; the bad news is that it is still well below normal. But that gets to the heart of the problem: the fact that Los Angeles is as dependent as we are on external sources for a vast majority of our water. Check out this chart that illustrates where our water comes from.
Rain is good, but only about 10 percent of our water is locally produced & most of this will wash away until we unpave more of the city. Unpaving LA will allow us to capture water for our own use instead of allowing it to spill out into the ocean. We need more green streets.
Certainly conservation and rationing measures are going to be needed to help solve our water shortage but we also need to invest in infrastructure and undertake the revitalization of the LA River including unpaving it and restoring vegetation and wildlife to the river.
As Vice Chair of the Ad Hoc River Committee, I’m proud to have been involved with instituting the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan (you can download it here), which the city officially adopted in 2007.
Everything you could want to know about our plans for revitalizing the L.A. River, which in turn will contribute to solving our longterm water supply issue, you can find here.
