California suffering through driest three years ever recorded, with no relief in sight
A man walks down a street blocked by a water main in Los Angeles on December 13, 2015. A man walks down a street blocked by a water main in Los Angeles on December 13, 2015. Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close California suffering through driest three years ever recorded, with no relief in sight 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
California is in the grip of its worst water shortage in three decades, as reservoirs fail and rivers flow with more and more snowmelt, and officials report that conservation is no longer enough to keep the state from being reduced to dirt.
The number of people on California’s wait list to become water customers remains far below the 1.25 million mark set by the state in 2011, state Department of Water Resources spokeswoman Alison Holcomb said in an email. That includes residents who may apply for priority through various agencies during the current drought.
The state experienced its driest three years on record, with no relief in sight, in the midst of one of its wettest four-to-six months on record, said Mark Tran, director of the California Cooperative Irrigation Project at Cal-Irrigation, a group that assists water-strapped cities and agricultural districts with water projects.
“We have a long way to go,” Tran said. “We are so far underwater that it’s really difficult to pinpoint where we are.”
California last year was among 18 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to lose about 3 percent total ground cover, Tran said.
While that is still a significant cutbacks from the state’s average of 22 percent in the 1960s and 1970s.
“There’s no way anyone could have foreseen” the state’s current water problems, Tran said. “I find it mind-boggling that we are the most water-strapped state in the country.”
Since January, when reservoirs started to draw