JOEL B. POLLAK 20 Jan 20231,1262:56
Legislators have written “strongly worded letters” to state and federal officials demanding to know why 95% of the rainwater that fell on California in recent weeks was allowed to wash out to sea in the California Delta.
As Breitbart News reported, enough rain fell on the state — some 32 trillion gallons — to supply the state’s agricultural, industrial, and residential needs for at least 10 years, had the water been stored in reservoirs.
But the state has not seen a major reservoir built in four decades, despite billions water bonds. Therefore most of the water was lost to the ocean:
[T]he state’s water storage capacity is only 43 million acre feet, matching about one year’s human use. Given that most reservoirs — even in the ongoing extreme drought — have some water in them, not all of the 43 million acre feet of storage space is available to capture the ongoing rains — and some dams’ floodgates have been opened. More than 95% of the rain that is falling on the state is simply being allowed to wash out to sea.
The Los Angeles Times corroborated that report Friday, citing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It added that legislators from the Central Valley — mostly Republican — had complained about environmental rules that prevent state and federal authorities from diverting more water to human uses:
Environmental rules designed to protect imperiled fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have ignited anger among a group of bipartisan lawmakers, who say too much of California’s stormwater is being washed out to sea instead of being pumped to reservoirs and aqueducts.
In a series of strongly worded letters, nearly a dozen legislators — many from drought-starved agriculture regions of the Central Valley —have implored state and federal officials to relax environmental pumping restrictions that are limiting the amount of water captured from the delta.
“When Mother Nature blesses us with rain, we need to save the water, instead of dumping it into the ocean,” Assemblymember Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
California has endured three years of extreme drought, which is still officially continuing, despite the rainfall.