‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’ might become the new municipal slogan for Los Angeles and the rest of dry Southern California situated next to an ocean of undrinkable water.
Mankind’s hubris has reared its ugly head once again as politicians and engineers insist that rerouting more rivers and inserting a straw into the ocean will allow the region to continue watering its lawns and irrigated crops in the midst of severe drought.
This form of ‘water management’ is entirely unsustainable, and Southern California’s demand for this essential ingredient for life in the desert is turning water into a nonrenewable resource. The hard facts are in, and all attempts to sweep this harsh reality under the rug will be unsuccessful: NASA scientists have announced that California has approximately 12 months of groundwater left.
Jared Diamond, the author of a book called “Collapse” that analyzes the common causal denominator in failed civilizations, would begin a discussion on the California water crisis by examining where the decision-making process went wrong for California’s leaders. I’ll note that the fact that his ‘roadmap to failure’ can be applied to the nation’s most populous state is and very well should be quite alarming. By and large, California’s decision makers failed to act to solve the water crisis decades ago when time and resources would’ve been more favorable for a successful outcome.
In 1908, a younger Los Angeles was already growing beyond its local water resources. Instead of putting efforts into designing a sustainable city that could survive in the future on available water resources, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was built to reroute an entire river from the Owens River Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles in an open channel. Agriculture in the Owens River Valley literally dried up overnight, but the city’s fountains were flowing and its lawns were greener than ever before. In 1965, a second aqueduct was constructed because engineers discovered that some of the Owens River was escaping Los Angeles’ straw, and honestly, who would allow this precious resource to flow into a man-made desert? Southern California was allocated more water from the Colorado River basin after the construction of the Hoover Dam, and the state’s groundwater, which is recharged at too slow of a rate to even be considered in plans to alleviate water-stress in the region, continues to be tapped to satisfy the city’s thirst.
What did the state do when this four-year drought first began? California leaders declared a state of emergency and pushed voluntary water rationing measurements. In short, those that could have acted to avoid such a catastrophe sat back and watched less snow fall on California’s northern mountains, watched the groundwater reservoir drain more quickly each year, watched the flow of imported water from Los Angeles’ aquifers slow to a trickle, and prayed.
Those prayers were made with undoubtedly good intentions, but my grandmother, a devout and eternally pragmatic Catholic, has always said that “God only helps those that help themselves.”
It’s time for California lawmakers to get off of their knees and have honest and hard discussions with the public. Los Angeles’ citizens are not benefiting from the ruse that everything will be okay and that a solution is on the horizon.
Water rationing laws should be enacted immediately, mandating a lifestyle that reflects life in a desert instead of one lived in an oasis fed by gurgling streams of cool water where rain is more familiar. Let California’s actions serve as a “what not to do” example for those leaders dealing with water crises prevalent in countless other regions.
Here, prayer is only valuable as a tool to bring Californians together to plan for a viable, drier future.
Kenna Rewcastle is a senior in College Scholars. She can be reached at [email protected].
