When Will Los Angeles Run Out of Water? Sooner Than You Think

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted October 4, 2008.

Somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming""

Los Angeles has been sleeping far too long. But the question is not when will it wake, but rather what it will do once it does wake and realize the water is gone.

"We are way better than Third-World countries with no water supply," explains California Department of Water Resources drought coordinator Wendy Martin, "but it will take a significant change to keep ours."

Martin is speaking of California at large, but the science is in and the climate crisis isn't hard to figure out. Water isn't a renewable resource, so that makes Los Angeles the state's parched yet still bloated problem.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the state's water reserves are nearly finished, which leaves California with two options: Pray for rain, or suck off Northern California's supply. Guess which one it's going to try first?

If you guessed both, you're right. Indeed, California will revive a decades-old plan for a statewide water bank that will flow water to where it is needed most. Right now that means it flows from Northern California farmers and others to agencies in Southern California, whose citizens have lately been engaging in Option Two rather than studying up on reality -- specifically, the geographical and environmental kind.

"We as a state entity looking out for the broader good," Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow told the Times, "are not going to allow somebody to have 100 percent supplies and be hosing off sidewalks while a community has no fire protection and poor-quality water to drink."

He may not have mentioned Los Angeles by name, but anyone who has ever read Day of the Locust or seen "Chinatown" could tell you that Los Angeles has always been a managed fantasy. Like its redheaded stepchild Las Vegas, it's a consumption and recreation oasis in the desert running on Hollywood simulations and immigrant labor, which is to say distractions from its more geographical reality.

It has water on its beaches, but rarely anywhere else. For that, it has drained someone else's supply for centuries. Which brings us back to the future of Los Angeles, whose Sierra snowpack will likely evaporate under the weight of global warming's changed game.

With declining snowfall and earlier snowmelts, there is nothing Los Angeles can do but borrow someone else's water and get its hyperreal and hyperconsumptive act together. "Los Angeles doesn't treat water like it lives in a desert," explains Martin. "Our director made it clear that we would not impact Northern California so Southern California could wash off their driveways. People who are participating in the bank will have to be forced to change their behavior."

Behavior modification is the only way Los Angeles can extend, but not prevent, what some scientists are saying will be a permanent drought for not just the sunshine-and-noir metropolis but also for most, if not all, of the American Southwest. Sustainability exercises and policies will go a long way to mitigating the desert's reclamation of its lands from Hollywood and Hummers, but the Dust Bowl had nothing on what's coming to California. And it's coming to stay.

"I don't know what permanent drought even means," admits Martin. "We have recorded the history of water in California for over 100 years, and that's nothing. We don't know where we are at. But what permanent drought means to me is that if we are getting drier, then we need to change the way we use our water."

Martin suggests the usual no-brainers: Short showers, low-flow everything, no lawns, total conservation, and so on. But these are all wonderful solutions in search of a population that cares. A recent sustainability forum attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, L.A. Department of Water and Power, Heal the Bay, and more was a wonderful outreach opportunity, with one all-important caveat: Attendance wasn't mandatory.

And therein lies California's problem, especially if it wants to prevent a NorCal/SoCal showdown over blue gold that could rewrite the state's borders. The drought that California, and especially Los Angeles, faces is a life-threatening crisis that has been treated like a cold. There is no corner of the city or state that it will not touch. If not treated immediately, it will start out as a serious pain in the ass, forcing citizens to alter their behavior and consumption with restrictive codes and financial penalties.

See more stories tagged with: water, california, drought, water scarcity, water shortage

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

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