No, California Does Not Have A Water Problem

And no, I haven't lost my mind.  That's not why I typed that headline. Obviously, there has been a lot of media coverage about the imposition of restrictions on the use of water by Governor Jerry Brown, in the wake of news reports that California has only a one-year reserve of water available to its residents.  Surly that means the state has a water problem.  But not really.

A "water problem" would imply one or both of two things.  Either California's land use policies have encouraged development that exceeds the available resources (including water) needed to sustain it, or California's water supply is magically disappearing into thin air, never to return to the earth.  There is a degree of truth to both propositions, as it turns out, but not to the extent that either can be considered wholly true.

In the nearly 70 years since the end of World War II, California's population has grown exponentially.  Actually, exploded might be a better way to describe it.  In 1950, the population of the state was just over 10 million; today, it is just over 38 million.  Some of that growth was facilitated by advances in technology (air travel and air conditioning, for example), as well as the desire of many Americans to escape the overcrowding and overdevelopment of the eastern part of the U.S..  But not a little of it was encouraged by politicians looking to buy votes by promoting the good life in the Golden West, and shaping real estate development accordingly.  So our first proposition has a foundation in reality.

But what about our second one?  Well, California's water is in fact disappearing into thin air, but it is definitely returning to the earth, in the form of record snowfalls this past winter in the Northeast.  Welcome once again to the wonderful world of climate change, in which extreme patterns of weather--drought and blizzards--are no longer a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, but an annual headache.  And headache is the operative word for today; disaster may be an appropriate one for the future--perhaps even next year.  We all might as well pull our heads out of the sand, now that were being surrounded by more and more of it.  Climate change is real; forget about the junk science pushed by the oil industry and listen to NASA, the agency that put America on the moon.

Neither proposition, then, is completely true.  So California doesn't have a "water problem."  What does it have?  Very simply put, it has a water management problem.  It uses the water that God, nature, or whatever your favorite prime mover may be has given the state and its people in ways that range from the counterproductive to the destructive--and that have the me-first ethos of post-Reagan America written all over it.  Here are a few choice examples:

• Excessive use of groundwater for agriculture;
• Fracking, which consumed 70 million gallons of water in 2015 alone, in a desperate attempt to maintain our addiction to a finite resource and the already-swollen profits of the oil industry;
• Exporting its supply out of state via bottled water (an environmental disaster on two fronts, when you include the environmental impact of the bottles themselves).

California is literally leading the way in destroying one of the most basic substances of human life for the sake of short-term profits.  To paraphrase a recent New York cartoon, yes, we'll end the world but, before we do, we'll create tremendous value for shareholders.  And California will more than do its part.

Or will it?  The answers are obvious.  Fight climate change.  Reform the development process.  And enact sensible restrictions on water use by everyone.  California has already led the way on climate change, and it is beginning to do so on water use (although the restrictions leave a lot to be desired, given the extend to which businesses are exempted from these regulations).  I'm not surprised that development reform isn't being discussed to any significant extent.  Hopefully that will change; the state and the rest of us have no choice, if we care about survival.

To repeat:  California does not have a "water problem."  It has a problem with the way it which it chooses to use a finite and precious resource.  In truth, we all have this problem and, when it comes its impact on our resources, water is far from alone.  It's long been said that California is the trend-setter for the rest of the nation.  Let's hope that's true in a positive sense when it comes to water usage; we will all need to do a lot of learning and very soon.