Is California on the Brink of Environmental Collapse?

By Rachel Olivieri, AlterNet. Posted September 4, 2008.

There is no landmass on Earth quite like California. Here one finds the world's most ancient trees, bristlecone pines, more than 4,700 years old, in the White Mountains; the tallest and largest trees, the coast redwood and giant sequoia, respectively; the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Whitney; the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere, Death Valley; the largest western hemisphere estuary, the Bay Delta; an 800-mile coastline; the most irrigated acres; the most endangered species in the U.S.; the most diverse geology and biodiversity in the U.S.; and the greatest, most ecologically destructive water projects on Earth.

California has spared no expense to either taxpayers or natural ecosystems to attain its status as the most hydrologically altered landmass on the planet. It would surprise few that California was built on gold, greed, extraction, depletion, extinction, dubiously acquired large-landed semi-desert agricultural empires, well-gifted railroad land grants fueling speculative growth, and highly subsidized stolen water -- all comprising a tunnel vision for overextended populations and infinite growth in a world utterly finite.

The incomprehensible vulnerability of California's over-reaching population centers (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose), the projected urban expansion of the Central Valley, and the weight of climate-warming models leaves one haunted by civilization's lack of respect for a river's entitlement to its water and the food systems that it naturally perpetuates.

There's only so much natural wealth covering the 158,302 square miles of California's ten hydrologic regions. When a region overextends its local resources, it must take from another. More than water is diverted; it drains the very wealth of the food chains these waters support in aquatic, terrestrial, and ocean basins.  

With 200 million acre-feet (MAF) of average precipitation spreading over 100 million acres containing 450 known groundwater basins and draining on average 71 MAF of runoff through 20,000 miles of rivers and streams, California has only 1,900 river miles legally protected from dams and diversions. All but one major river remains dam-free, the Smith River on the upper north coast.

About 42 MAF of the state's runoff is captured and diverted through six major systems of reservoirs and aqueducts. This massive infrastructure artificially waters the coastal region from the North Bay to San Diego, and the Sacramento Valley through the San Joaquin Valley into the Tulare Basin, the Mojave Desert, and the southernmost Imperial and Coachella valleys.

Before the Spanish arrived in 1769, there were only twelve large natural lakes in California -- Lake Tahoe, Lower Klamath, Goose, Tule, Honey, Eagle, Clear, Mono, Owens, Kern, Buena Vista, and Tulare Lake. Today the latter four are devoid of aboriginal wildlife and have been dewatered for agriculture. Tulare Lake, a once-thriving ecosystem in the lower San Joaquin Valley, was four times the area of Lake Tahoe. Today, 1,200 non-federal dams and 181 large federal dams with their reservoirs temporarily dominate a contrived oasis that is doomed by sediment, evaporation, the force of time, the laws of nature, and global warming.

These numerous artificial lakes defy the balance between natural surface water stores and underground stores. In nature, 70 percent of the fresh water circulating in the hydrologic cycle is stored underground and a combined total of .017 percent for lakes, rivers, and land-locked seas. Underground storage is free from evaporation, siltation, and storage cost (both economically and environmentally).

Before European contact, underground glacial water stores were estimated at 1.3 billion acre-feet -- the entire California landmass under thirteen feet of water. This now has been overdrafted to 850 MAF. Like oil, the remaining supply will be extinguished in less than a hundred years. One out of four Californians rely totally on groundwater, and nearly three-quarters of a billion acre-feet of that groundwater once lay under the Central Valley. Continual overdrafts in the region have caused the landmass to subside as much as thirty feet, yet the aquifer remains a major water source for agricultural production.

Five million acres of Central Valley wetlands -- nature's food bank, filtration system, and flood control mechanism -- once brimmed with life including half a million Tule elk and sixty million ducks and geese. Reclaimed for agriculture, this area has been reduced to 350,000 artificially managed wetland acres. Nine out of every ten acres of riparian woodlands are gone, along with ten thousand grizzly bears that once roamed the valleys and foothills. The loss of mega and micro flora and fauna is beyond counting.

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Rachel Olivieri is an independent researcher and writer from Willits, California.

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