California’s basic problem is that it gets too little snow.
No, our problem is that this year’s Sierra snowpack ended up on top of Boston. 
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Violently agree. As a wise person observed, “Water flows uphill towards money.”
Others have correctly pointed out that some reductions in federal water allocations to CA agriculture are happening. But that is only for surface water. Groundwater extraction in CA is practically unregulated. Exhausting groundwater reserves, and exhausting arable land with higher mineral-content groundwater threaten the viability of the Central Valley.
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The bridges are elevated “high over the ditch” so they can pass over the rail lines on both sides. Nine tracks on one side, eight on the other.
Several of our historic downtown bridges had the channel dug deeper beneath them when the river was jacketed in concrete (ca. 1941). This one, not so much.
Here’s a pic of the same bridge before the concrete:
As you can see, the river’s profile hasn’t changed all that much through this section.
This is not one of the sections expected to flood in the hypothetical future ARKstorm.
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But again, wouldn’t they BE paying us for the water we use to grow their food if we raised the price of water used for agriculture and allowed the price of the food they buy from us to rise accordingly? It’s not about hating almonds, it’s about ending the pricing externalities which allow almonds (among other crops) to be grown cheaply in a drought-ridden area.
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We’re both right - the tracks were built on what would have been the flood plain and marshes, then the bridge got built high enough to span the whole flood plain. Later, the river was channelized and lowered. Under the bridge in the photo is a water main or oil pipeline that would have been below the river bed because if it had been exposed to flood waters it would have snagged trees and washed away. So it appears the bridge was built to ride out the floods before the river was deepened.
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Being a diehard CA guy, and a bit of a desert rat to boot, I’ve got the perfect CA mega drought plan!
Anyone out there want to join me in my project to design a suit that could be worn that will recycle most of your exhaled and excreted water into potable water (I’m thinking maybe foot pumps to power it). Oh yeah, and I’m starting a breeding project to breed these giant-ass worms. Their offspring can actually collect water and store it in their bodies. I’m going to need some help because the adults are a bit tough to wrangle, and every time they breathe heavily on me I start to get a little woozy…
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There’s a whole Republican belief system that there is no drought, that it’s all a conspiracy. At least that’s the case until now. Will the conspiracy theory keep expanding as the drought worsens?
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Recycle graywater: http://oasisdesign.net/greywater/ and also http://greywateraction.org/
Composting toilets (aka "dry toilets): http://humanurehandbook.com/humanure_toilet.html
Curb energy consumption generated by nonrenewables: saving energy saves water.
Large amounts of water are needed for energy production (coal, nuclear, hydroelectric), and large amounts of energy are needed for the extraction, conveyance, treatment, and distribution of water.
According to the California Energy Commission: “Water-related energy use in California also consumes approximately 20 percent of the state’s electricity, and 30 percent of the state’s non-power plant natural gas (i.e. natural gas not used to produce electricity).”
I realize that there are regulatory hurdles and necessary learning curves. These practices will benefit people, land and water supply, while reducing fire hazards, CO2 footprints, energy expenditures and thus also air and water pollution.
New dams are horribly cost inefficient compared to not having people not water their lawns and local water management projects too:
And, the state added 6 million acre feet of water storage in the last couple decades. LA for instance has massive water banks now.
Not to be snarky, how much of that increased storage capacity consists of newly acquired, yet diminished capacity?
I suppose this idea is wrong-headed and I can certainly be accountable for it, but I have often wondered why we don’t harness the rain and floodwater that overwhelms other states. Couldn’t we just somehow gather or otherwise pump out and turn the brown raging deluge to clean water?
It might also directly help the poor souls who unwittingly drive across a major water hazard and get trapped in their cars.
Any significant volume of water gets to a low elevation very fast, so transporting it anywhere else requires very flat terrain. You can’t pump a river up even a small hill without using enough energy to power Las Vegas.
To be fair, that sounds more useful than powering Las Vegas.
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How the hell is building new reservoirs supposed to get us out of a drought? We don’t even have anywhere near enough water to fill the reservoirs we have NOW.
Taking shorter showers might not make a huge impact on the drought but at least it’s one way to help save what little water we have. Trying to end a drought by building more reservoirs is like trying to end a famine by building more pantries.
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If you build them, it will come.
While he may not be PC, Orson Scott Card has an excellent article with a practical solution:
transporting the water would take major infrastructure, which would be too expensive to put in place to harness something so sporadic and inconsistent. It would also take a tremendous amount of energy to pump the water over such a distance, more even then is currently required for desalinization. Remember california has the third longest coastline of all the states, it sits right next to the ocean, which has a lot of water. desalinization is expensive and takes a lot of energy, but new advances are pushing that technology closer and closer to being viable, and it might be an eventual answer.
