California’s Drought: Lessening or Increasing?
On January 17, 2014, California’s governor declared a drought emergency, and started signing laws to limit water use, and encourage the saving of water. A question beneficial to future restrictions could be what have we done to worsen the drought?
The answer is not much. In 2014 the entire state was in the highest degree of drought, and this was during a major heatwave across California. But this is the worst the drought had gotten, as lots of rain last winter had helped with lessening the effects of the drought.
Here are some of the effects the drought has on California. For one there are a lot more wildfires when vegetation is dry. In 2014 there were 7,865 wildfires compared to 6,726 wildfires in 2016. These wildfires cost millions of dollars which could be used on other things, such as education.
Another problem the drought poses is dwindling water in our reservoirs, and the reliance on strong rain seasons. Water levels have decreased significantly since 2011, and an example of this is Folsom lake. With the lake filled to 35% capacity, it is well below the historical average and a news article stated that “it is a lot more dangerous because many more rocks are exposed now compared to before.”.
Drought had also brought on many water restrictions, Governor Jerry Brown signed many bills into effect starting in 2014, with the intent to save water. One of the most important bills was the Sustainable Water Management Act, which had the goal of “increasing the conservation of water above and underground”.
Other bills limited the watering of lawns and many other recreational uses for our water. I think we should go farther than this, as nothing as trivial as watering your lawn can stand up to our drought. If we were to impose harsher restrictions, then people would be a lot less willing to break them.
In 2014 fines for over watering your lawn and other over usage is between 100 and 200 dollars per day of violation.
Now fines are up to 500 dollars per day of violation but the amount of violations have increased since 2014. Violations include “washing your car without a shutoff nozzle, hosing down sidewalks/driveways, and watering lawns until water goes down the street.” all of which can earn a fine.
The main reason we need to tighten restrictions on water usage is because we are not out of the drought yet. If we stop conserving now it could get worse than when it was in 2014, and we can not predict weather patterns for years to come so we need to conserve water now just incase we continue to have low precipitation winters.
A major way we could increase water conservation is by treating the drought more seriously. I believe that many Californian’s just treat it as a natural occurrence when it really is not. With global warming, the amount of rain per year could continue to drop instead of rise.
This would be especially damaging to the rest of the country because California produces a lot of the country’s crops, and without water, these farms can not function. Causing farmers to lose their jobs would also increase our unemployment, and take away jobs that are manual labor on farms.
Another effect would be that vegetable prices would skyrocket across the country, if any are even available. This is why we need to impose harsher constricts, as it is the only way to ensure a future that is not filled with drought in our state.
Chris C, a high school student in California.
