As California continues to struggle under a prolonged four-year drought, Governor Brown announced stringent mandatory water regulations in an effort to cut usage by 25 percent. He made the announcement while standing on grass in the Sierra Nevada’s typically covered with five feet of snow in early spring, but which has been reduced to 8 percent of its historical average. Throughout the spring and summer, Californians have relied on melting snow to fill the reservoirs which provide water for people and crops in the US’s top growing state.
Governor Brown’s announcement comes just weeks after NASA’s top water scientist, Jay Famiglietti, warned Californians in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that they only had a year’s-worth of water supply left in their reservoirs.
California’s dismal snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is the worst on record, “the worst in a century,” says Jeff Anderson of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service. “I would say it shattered the record.” The snowpack in the Truckee River Basin is just 14% of normal while the Lake Tahoe Basin is substantially worse – 3%. “It’s scary,” said Anderson.
Lake Tahoe isn’t even putting water into its outgoing river, and isn’t likely to do so this year at all. Dry conditions, low precipitation, warmer temperatures and perilously low reservoirs have combined to create a very serious condition, which has called for the Governor’s drastic measures.
Already, 98 percent of the State is suffering from abnormally dry conditions, and 41 percent with exceptional drought. Ground in some regions of Central California is sinking a foot a year, because of over-pumping of groundwater for agriculture.
Climatologists think that California and much of the Southwest may be entering a sustained drier weather pattern. Governor Brown emphasized that Californians will need to rethink their use of water for the long term.
Americans will face higher food prices and more imports as farmers in California cut food production and face increased costs of production.
“We are amid the perils of the last days, and trying times are before us. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that those things that cannot be shaken may remain. Drought, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, casualties by sea and land, will multiply. Life will be unsafe anywhere, only as the life is hid with Christ in God. Now, while the angels are holding the four winds, is our opportunity to seek the Lord most earnestly.” Manuscript Releases, Vol. 20, page 285
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Comments
Todd
Thursday April 9th, 2015 at 11:46 PM“Ground in some regions of Central California is sinking a foot a year…” Could this be the beginning of the proverbial ‘California dropping into the ocean’ ?
C.J. Donovan
Friday April 10th, 2015 at 05:57 AMThe drought began when Obama decided to save the little “fish” being trapped in the water filtering system, so cut off water supply to California farmers!