How To Reduce Drought In California

Have you thought about the importance of water recently? Water provides many things to people, from green lawns to nutritious food. An event that may have spurred these thoughts is the drought in California. They are struggling because there is simply not enough water in California to go around for all of its uses. Measures have been taken to conserve water, but cutbacks have been made on everything, even the giant industry of California agriculture. More water should be devoted to agricultural uses instead of residential uses in California for the following reasons:

Due to the lack of rain in the past few years, and particularly in the last few months, California faces severe drought. This is the worst drought in more than one hundred years. The impact of California drought affects community, agriculture, organic ranchers, and dairy farmers. Because of these facts, the United States must rethink the way it uses water. Californians alone are asked to reduce their water usage by twenty percent to prevent water waste.

“For Angelica Gallegos, the worst part has been going without a shower for five months” (Source 2). There is an ongoing drought in California citizens need water, however farmers need it too. California should control aquifers.

to follow. The Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown (ca.gov, 2015) noted that if everything goes to plan the state could save about 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months. The water shortage the state is facing is unprecedented. This is why is it is crucial for resident to follow any rules or regulations that are mandated by the state and counties. The State Water Resources Control Board (2015) has implemented new emergency water regulations to be put into effect for residents, business and suppliers (SWRCB, 2015). The snow pack of 2014 was measured here in California’s and was found to be the lowest snowpack in 65 years (ca.gov, 2015). In the state of California snow is crucial because once the snowmelts it provide enormous amount of water supply. In the Governors executive order he announced certain plans to be implemented to conserve water. The goal of the Governors executive order is to make California a state that can adapt to less water usage (SWRCB, 2015). The order in which Brown announced to save more water will include: the replacement of 50 million square feet of lawns across the state with landscaping that needs less water, a consumer rebate program for those who use more water and energy efficient appliances, public properties must make cuts in water use, new homes and developments to use water-efficient drip irrigation systems, and to ban watering in urban areas (ca.gov, 2015). Brown in his order

If you didn’t know already, California is in a drought . The chief of California Cooperative Snow Survey Program says that California is “way below the records”. California has only gotten 5% of the average snow it usually gets , putting us in the lowest we have ever gotten on snowfall. Governor Jerry Brown has come up with a plan to save water and cut down on excessive water use . In the article “Mandatory Water Restrictions in California” brown discusses his plan further. Brown discusses one part/idea of his plan to save water , proposing the idea to “Ban watering the decorative grass that divides some public streets .”(LA times, 4) By doing this I think Brown plans to save water by not using water to keep useless decorative grass alive.

Visualize that citizens have to go 5 months without showering, living in filth, not being able to flush their toilet. Horrible right? Well sorrowfully, for numerous cresidents in California, that is the life they live. There is currently a 3-year drought in California. Innumerable citizens are compelled to drive miles and miles away in order to acquire water and bathe, while for farmers, they have been allowed to use aquifers frequently to grow their crops. We do not have enough water for both the farmers and citizens to be used oftenly, which has precipitated an outage between the two. Therefore, the California government is debating on whether to supervise the usage of aquifers. As a result, I support California enforcing

An issue of this magnitude is clear to see by many. Although, there are people who choose to believe that humans do not have an impact on the environment’s drastic changes, there are people who do choose to see our actions have led to this situation. Adam Sobel of CNN believes that the population of California has played some sort of a role in the drought they are experiencing. Sobel states that the human-induced climate change has increased the risk that a drought will occur, and it also forces the public to become aware of how we treat the environment. He points out that this is the first time in the state’s history that there has been a mandatory statewide restriction of water use. The system set in place for water consumption in the driest areas of the country does not make sense, and the restriction of water is the biggest acknowledgement of the issue. Sobel makes it clear that our contribution to climate change is not based on one single event attribution, but on statistics of large sets of weather events. This argument is important, because it reinforces the idea that we should be motivated to discover and implement better ways to control our water consumption, as well as prevent catastrophic flooding in areas that have a great chance of extreme weather events.

Water is essential to sustain life. It is becoming an ever more valuable resource every year as it becomes scarcer. The general problem is that California is in the midst of a severe drought. The specific problem is that the typical urban consumer has little knowledge of how to reduce their every day consumption of water. Urban usage accounts for approximately 5.7 million acre-feet per year, which equates to approximately 10% of California’s annual water supply in a year with normal precipitation (Burt, 2014). In this previous water year (October 1, 2013 - September 30, 2014) California experienced its driest year in 119 years (Ca.Gov/Water Conditions). Serious action needs to be taken immediately to reduce consumptive usage, especially in the case of urban consumption of water. Shakespeare famously said “I to the world am like a drop of water that in the ocean seeks another drop”. While each individual may believe their actions to be insignificant, in the bigger picture, California needs every drop it can get.

It’s time to accomplish something and take action and stop this, simply by doing simple stuff that can reduce the amount of usages on water. A task everybody can achieve and doesn’t require much work or time. As a California resident it’s best to understand the information around the drought, probably your thoughts are how did this drought even start in the first place? Understand what the drought is affecting and finally what is our job to take pieces of this to solve this

Part of the water drought in California most likely has to do with the lack of snowfall . This year's water content has been lower than the average by about 5 percent .

California is the nation’s leading agricultural producer and one of the major agricultural regions of the world. Reductions in precipitation and water available for irrigation are being largely offset by increased groundwater pumping, an unsustainable situation at least in the southern Central Valley” (Wang 6997-6998). What will California do when we have used most of our underground water? What solutions will we be left with as a state? Maybe now is the time for California to enforce new laws in order to find a solution to this water drought. Besides raising water prices, California needs to enforce all residents living in California to reuse water by making it a state law. Residents and business owners in California should be notified ahead of time regarding this new law so they can prepare their business and homes with water systems that will allow them to reuse water. These water systems should be required to use recycled water to irrigate landscapes and crops. By enforcing this law the entire state would be able to conserve more water towards the possibility of ending this water drought. Homes and businesses in California should also be required to install graywater systems to water lawns and flush toilets. If residents do not apply any of these new laws then residents should find themselves with a fine of a

In the article ¨Mandatory Water Restrictions in California¨ by LA Times, states that Governor Jerry Brown decided to announce the first water restrictions in California history. Brown thinks that restricting water would reduce it by 25%. I definitely agree with Brown about putting water restrictions because first of all, it would allow everyone to use water wisely and not waste it. Brown has a plan to reward people who decide that “replacing old dishwashers and washing machines” would save probably tons of water ( LA Times 4 ). Brown’s plan may be the start into saving more water, and the customers start saving water and money too.

As I said discipline is the key word for every citizen in California to understand if they would like to keep California out of a drought. Many people waste water in a daily basis where if one person may not seem like a lot, but multiply it with about more than 39,145,000 people that live in California doing the same thing, it tends to add up drastically. Anything is a waste of water from leaving the sink running while brushing your teeth, washing dishes,

On April 1st, 2015 California Governor Jerry Brown passed an executive order calling for the reduction of water use in urban areas by 25 percent (average across all counties) relative to 2013 data (Bechtel). These restrictions did not include agricultural water uses despite Agriculture accounting for approximately 80 percent of water use within the state (Bechtel). On June 12, 2015 restrictions were placed on agricultural use that affected up to 114 senior water right holders (Sanders). These restrictions forbid farmers from using rivers that have been severely diminished by the drought as a source of water. However, they can still legally pump groundwater on their property and purchase water in the open market (Sanders). This means they don’t necessarily have to reduce the amount of water they use, it only strips them of one (for some farmers very important) water resource. Supporters of this order include State Water officials, State Senators Jim Nielson and Fran Pavley among other representatives, California farmers, Senior water rights holders, and of course Governor Jerry Brown (Stevens). Felicia Marcus of the State water Resources Control Board states, “Asking people to cut back, take shorter showers and put their lawn on a water diet is very different than fields that are fallow and thousands of people out of work” (Stevens).

My intentions are to help California recover from the effect of drought that has impacted the whole state. Based on probable results it seems that my ideas could work. Eventually California will see an improvement of the drought situation. I can discuss the problem with that affected parties, I feel that they will have other possibilities that can help California and put a stop to