(Photo: Drought and climate change threaten the Colorado River. David McNew/Getty Images .)
Lack of rain and below normal snowpack made last winter one of the driest on record. As a result some of the major sources for our region's water supply are dwindling. KPBS Reporter Ed Joyce has details.
It's been a dry season in Southern California: San Diego -- seven-inches below normal rainfall. Los Angeles -- eleven-inches below normal. The Metropolitan Water District brings water to San Diego and more than 18-million Southern Californians. District General Manager Jeff Kightlinger says last year's above-average rains filled reservoirs across the state. But he worries about future supplies.
Kightlinger: We are in the eighth year of a drought on the Colorado River. The driest eight-year period that we've ever recorded. So the Colorado River is less than 50-percent full - all of its storage, so that is definitely worrisome. This year we've had a very dry year in Northern California which is Metropolitan's other significant source of supply."
Kightlinger says there's about a year-and-a-half of stored water to get us through the current dry spell. He hopes this is not the beginning of a statewide drought.
Kightlinger: Some of these long-range projections are definitely worrisome, they're definitely scary out there. And we certainly don't know exactly what the impacts of global warming are going to be: The loss of some of the snow-pack, converting some snow into rain earlier in the year. We do plan, we try to plan 25 years out. We're building more storage in Southern California. We're building the facilities to move water quickly when it rains. But all that is very expensive and takes a lot of planning.
Kightlinger says conservation is critical. He says we're doing a great job on our indoor water use. But we need to cut back on using outdoor water too. Ed Joyce, KPBS News.
