Dear Deeply Readers,

Welcome to the archives of Water Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 1, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on water resilience. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.

We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].

BROWSE THE WATER DEEPLY ARCHIVES

Drought Emergency Ends in California; Here’s What’s Next

Celebrating the end of the drought will be short-lived, as state officials stressed that California continue along its course to improve conservation and efficiency to prepare for future droughts.

Written by Tara Lohan Published on Read time Approx. 3 minutes
Briones Reservoir in Orinda, Calif., was at near capacity when this photo was taken on Jan. 11, 2017. On April 7, Gov. Jerry Brown ended the state’s drought emergency and released a framework for conservation and efficiency improvements.Ben Margot, AP

As Northern California inched closer on Friday to breaking the record for the wettest water year in California’s recorded history, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order formally declaring the drought emergency over in most of the state.

After a very wet winter, California’s critical April 1 snowpack reading came in at 164 percent of the historical average and the U.S. Drought Monitor showed that less than 8 percent of the state was experiencing some form of drought, a stark change from the same time last year when 90 percent of the state was in drought, much of it extreme.

The governor’s executive order applies to all four counties – Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne – where State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus said the drought emergency declaration was important to continue projects in progress to restore drinking water supplies impacted by the drought.

Friday’s executive order, B-40-17, rescinded four previous executive orders related to the drought, but Nancy Vogel, deputy secretary for communications for the California Natural Resources Agency, said the negative effects of California’s drought would linger for a long time, including diminished groundwater, subsidence from overpumping of aquifers and tree mortality.

But she stressed that the drought had also had good effects, such as the development of a legacy of conservation and efficiency – as the state also on Friday released a long-term framework that builds on a May 2016 executive order, B-37-16, Making Water Conservation a California Way of Life.

Drought conditions in California in March 2016 and March 2017. (Water Deeply/US Drought Monitor)

Drought conditions in California in March 2016 and March 2017. (Water Deeply/US Drought Monitor)

Marcus said that California next faced the “less dramatic but no less important work to prepare for the next” drought. This includes developing permanent prohibitions on wasteful water practices like irrigating turf medians and hosing off sidewalks.

Agricultural water suppliers that provide water to more than 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) will also need to develop annual water budgets that would complement reporting requirements related to the implementation of the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

Ben Chou, policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called for more leadership from the state on agricultural water issues in the plan. “While we fully support the plan’s proposal to extend water planning requirements to more agricultural water suppliers, it keeps intact nearly all of the draft’s flawed ideas for improving agricultural water efficiency, including a misguided fixation on getting agricultural water districts (which supply irrigation water to farms) to complete complicated water budgets,” Chou wrote. “But even more disappointing, the plan omits specific water-saving practices for suppliers to adopt.”

When it comes to urban water suppliers, they will soon no longer be required to meet mandatory conservation requirements or stress tests for water supply. But the state will be developing new efficiency standards for urban water suppliers to comply with and utilize data that is site specific and related to climate, population, indoor water use, area of outdoor water use, commercial and industrial water use and leaks.

“State agencies will be setting efficiency standards but water suppliers will apply local information to set their targets,” said Kamyar Guivetchi, who manages statewide integrated water management for the Department of Water Resources. “Then they have flexibility to implement the projects they need to meet that target.”

Efficiency is often hailed as one of the cheapest ways to help increase water supply, while at the same time saving energy and money. But it won’t be the only avenue the state is pursuing. Groundwater overdraft remains a huge concern, with some parts of the San Joaquin Valley sinking as much as 28ft (8.5m) in the last century and critical water infrastructure at risk from subsidence.

The plan going forward looks a bit like an “all-of-the-above strategy.”

“If we combine efficiency foremost with tools like recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater management, underground and surface storage, ecosystems thinking and restoration, safe drinking water and more flexibility to enable each drop of water to benefit more than one need, we can face the future far more successfully,” said Marcus.

Never miss an update. Sign up here for our Water Deeply newsletter to receive weekly updates, special reports and featured insights on one of the most critical issues of our time.

Republish this article

Our mission is to empower stakeholders and the wider public with high quality information, insights, and analysis on critical global issues. To help achieve this, we encourage you to republish the text of any article that contains a Republish button on your own news outlet.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines. Click to expand

  1. In republishing any of our articles:

    Ensure that you include a line of our HTML tracking code on every article you republish. This is a lightweight, efficient way for us to see the number of page views of each specific article published on our partners’ websites. This does not affect page layout, nor does it provide any information about your users, other web pages on your site, or any further data. By copying and pasting the HTML code in the box below, the tracking code is automatically included.

    If, for any reason, you do not copy the code prepared for you, you must paste this code snippet into the end of the article in your CMS: 

    <img src="http://ping.newsdeeply.com/pixel.gif?key=113856&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsdeeply.com%2Fwater%2Farticles%2F2017%2F04%2F09%2Fdrought-emergency-ends-in-california-heres-whats-next" alt="" />

  2. Adhere to the guidelines below:
    • Edit our stories only to reflect references to time (e.g. "today" to "yesterday"), location (e.g. "New York" to "here") or editorial style; do not edit the wording of our articles.
    • Include all the links within the story.
    • Credit our authors and partner institutions — ideally in the byline. We prefer “Author Name, Institution”
    • Note at the top and/or bottom of the story that it originally appeared on Water Deeply. This note should include a direct link to the original article and a sentence that offers the reader the opportunity to join the Water’s mailing list. Our recommended example is:
      • This should read : “This article originally appeared on Water Deeply. You can find the original here. For important news about water issues and the American West, you can sign up to the Water email list.”
    • Do not republish a photo without our written permission. Some sources don't allow their images to be republished without permission.
    • Do not translate a story into another language without our written permission.
    • We often republish pieces from our partners. If you want to republish a partner’s story, you must credit the original partner and include a “via News Deeply” link.
    • Note that News Deeply considers the publication date to be the date marked on the story, and is not responsible for any content that you choose to repost.
    • After republication on the partner website, if you make an accompanying post on social media referencing the republished article, you must include the relevant Deeply social media handle in such post. For example, (i) for Twitter posts this means adding the appropriate @Deeply tag such as @SyriaDeeply, @WaterDeeply, or @WomensGirlsHub and (ii) for Facebook this means tagging the appropriate Deeply page in your Facebook post.
    • News Deeply material may not to be provided, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, to third parties or affiliates for redistribution through those entities, unless you have received prior written approval from News Deeply.
    • You may not automatically or systematically republish any material from our sites; all stories must be chosen individually for republishing.
    • You may not sell our content or republish it for commercial purposes without our prior written consent.
    • We reserve the right to request that any partner ceases republication of our content, including but not limited to if the guidelines listed above not being followed.
    • If you have any questions or concerns please contact [email protected]

Suggest your story or issue.

Send

Share Your Story.

Have a story idea? Interested in adding your voice to our growing community?

Learn more
× Dismiss
We have updated our Privacy Policy with a few important changes specific to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and our use of cookies. If you continue to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies. Read our full Privacy Policy here.
Accept