Editorial: California’s water future mirrors housing disaster

Scholars began identifying California’s affordable-housing crisis in the 1970s. The state’s failure to address the issue eventually led to young, middle-class families locked out of the housing market and the current, devastating homelessness crisis.

It begs the question of how long California’s governor will fail to address the state’s water challenges before an even worse disaster strikes.

Yes, after three years of drought, recent storms have left the Sierra snowpack at more than 200% of average for this time of year. But heavy snowfall a year ago led to a series of dry months that only exacerbated the drought.

Climate-change forecasts project that the state’s water supply will be cut by an additional 10% by 2040. Despite that warning, California continues to overpromise its ability to deliver water to Central Valley farmers while doing far too little to identify new sources of water or conserve its available supply.

Small, rural towns are finding it increasingly difficult to find water to meet their basic needs. And the California Department of Water resources reports that more than 1,200 California wells have run dry this year, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year.

Meanwhile the state’s reservoirs remain at frighteningly low levels.

Doug Obegi, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, notes that water storage at Oroville Dam is nearly 100,000 acre feet lower than the same time last year. If the State Water Project’s proposed water allotments for next year stand, it would likely result in water elevations behind Oroville Dam dropping below the level where the project can produce power, resulting in the loss of hydropower production from August to December next year.

Yet no California governor has taken sufficient steps to solve the problem.

In 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a plan for twin tunnels under the Delta that would export water south. Gov. Jerry Brown spent eight years trying to muster the support to make the $25 billion proposal a reality. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom pronounced the Delta twin-tunnels project dead but called instead for a cheaper, smaller, single-tunnel approach to address California’s water needs. Comments on the Delta tunnel draft environmental report are due Friday.

The earliest the Delta project could be completed is 2040. The latest cost estimate for the single-tunnel project is $16 billion. Digging projects are notorious for massive cost overruns. Boston’s Big Dig ballooned from $2.6 billion to nearly $15 billion before it was completed — eight years behind schedule.

The state has never conducted a long-promised comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the tunnel project — most likely because it has never shown to pencil out. Nor will Newsom’s proposal add a drop of additional water to California’s supply or protect the health of the Delta, the largest estuary in the United States west of the Mississippi.

California should learn from its housing failures. Let’s stop spending money on a losing proposition and instead shift our strategy to directly address what is rapidly becoming a deepening emergency.