Editorial: As snowpack shrinks, will Gov. Newsom finally show leadership?

We can't count on Mother Nature to solve our water challenges, especially given the realities of climate change.

Drip, drip, drip. That sound you hear is what’s left of California’s snowpack, melting away at an alarming rate.

The Sierra snowpack provides about 30% of the state’s water needs. On New Year’s Day, the snowpack stood at 168% of normal for that date, thanks to a series of storms in October and December. But by Tuesday, after a dry January, the snowpack had fallen to just 92% of its historical average.

With the window for winter snowfall rapidly narrowing with no sign of storms in the forecast, the situation will only get worse. It’s very likely that the state’s drought will continue into a third year. The grim reality is that we can’t count on Mother Nature to solve our water challenges. Especially given the realities of climate change.

It’s time for Gov. Gavin Newsom to get real about solving the state’s short-term and long-term water crises.

For this year, for the immediate drought, the administration must stop promising more water than it can deliver. Despite the rapidly dwindling snowpack, the state has yet to reduce its optimistic projections for how much water it can deliver to state contractors this summer.

Newsom must also redouble efforts to get urban and agriculture users to conserve. In July, the governor asked all Californians to reduce urban water use by 15% from 2020 levels. In November, state water officials announced the total statewide reduction was just 6.8% compared with the same month a year earlier.

To their credit, Bay Area residents are doing their part. Customers of East Bay Municipal Utility District reduced water use by 22%. Santa Clara County water users reduced their consumption by 20%.

But Los Angeles and San Diego counties continue to fall far short of the governor’s goal.

Then there’s the long-term challenge of figuring out a statewide water plan that shields us from cyclical droughts that will only get worse with climate change — a plan that not only provides an adequate water supply through storage and conservation, but also protects the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem.

Unfortunately, for generations now, our governors and legislative leaders have accomplished next to nothing. In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged, “We don’t have enough water. … At the same time, we have put so much pressure on the Delta over the years that we have broken down the system. We can no longer ignore the threats to California’s fragile water system.”

But Schwarzenegger and his successor, Gov. Jerry Brown, wasted the next eight years pushing for the $15.9 billion Delta twin-tunnel project, which didn’t pencil out and wouldn’t have added a single drop to California’s water supply.

After his election in 2018, Newsom put the Delta project on a side burner. He instead focused on trying to get the major urban and ag players to reach a voluntary agreement on water flows from the Delta. Herding cats would be an easier task. Farmers have more to gain from preserving the status quo than they do in signing on to an agreement that would potentially reduce water transfers to them.

That’s because, as Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted in 2009, the state had issued water rights for four times more water than had ever flowed through the Delta. (The Delta supplies 65% of the fresh water that Californians drink.) It’s a ludicrous approach that continues to this day, causing farmers and water districts to cry foul when deliveries inevitably fail to live up to those promises.

The California Constitution provides the state with the leverage needed to end the ongoing water wars. Article X, Section 2 declares “the conservation of such waters is to be exercised with a view to the reasonable and beneficial use thereof in the interest of the people and for the public welfare.”

The governor should announce that if farmers, environmentalists and water districts can’t reach an agreement by this summer, he will invoke the Constitution and reset California’s approach to water usage.

It’s time for real leadership.