It’s been said in different ways by a variety of people, but there’s more than just a grain of truth in it: If the federal bureaucracy or a socialist regime were ever put in charge of the Sahara Desert, there would eventually be a shortage of sand. This helps explain why there is such a scarcity of water in California that permanent use restrictions have been, for the first time in the state’s history, set.
On July 3, the California State Water Resources Control Board approved the rules for “Making Conservation a California Way of Life.” Under this framework, retail water suppliers are going to have to figure out how to meet the imposed “water use objective,” which “is 70% or less of the supplier’s average annual water use” in 2024-26 by July 2040.
The rules will apply to about 400 water agencies that together deliver water to 95% of the state’s population. Beginning on Jan.1, 2025, and on every Jan.1 thereafter, these agencies will have to “submit to the Department and the Board” their “actual urban water use for the previous state fiscal year.”
It will be up to the local agencies as to how they meet the requirements — though it seems that the water board could take action if it chose to. The agencies can impose outright water-use restrictions. Or they could pressure customers into adopting water-saving fixtures and appliances, such as low-flow shower heads, which will do little more than extend shower times for most people, and high-efficiency dishwashers and washing machines that cost more and need to run longer to do their jobs.
The agencies can even raise rates, which wouldn’t be an unappealing idea if they were actually market rates and not those some bureaucracy or board believes are the “right” rates.
Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, calls the new rules an “insane policy” that “will end investment in more water supply projects and spiral our cities into increasingly restrictive rationing.”
And if California needs anything, it needs investment in projects that will yield water abundance.
Much of California is arid land. A great deal of the state, about 38%, is even desert. But that doesn’t mean there’s not enough water to meet the demand. If policymakers would take the “all of the above” approach recommended by PRI Free Cities Center director Steven Greenhut, there would be no need for the state to order agencies to cut use.
In his 2020 book “Winning the Water Wars,” Greenhut explains the “many ways to feed more water into our state’s ‘plumbing’ systems.” He admits “some are more politically feasible or cost-effective than others.” Nevertheless, policymakers are obliged to enact policies that promote water abundance “through a multiplicity of approaches.”
The myriad options in an “all of the above” approach include new infrastructure (little has been built in the way of new or expanded water storage facilities over the last 40 years); desalination (there’s an immense source of water just to the west of the state); and wastewater recycling — all of which Gov. Gavin Newsom supports.
The first two are politically difficult. A pair of long-planned large storage projects recently held some promise, but one has been slow to take shape, and the other is on hold.
Meanwhile, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant in Carlsbad has been a success. It now provides 10% of the drinking water in the San Diego area. But it was no easy task getting it built. Desalination facilities might as well be nuclear plants, given the resistance they have encountered.
While opponents of water abundance argue and protest and block projects, billions that should have been put to use have been idled. Proposition 1, approved by voters 67-33 in 2014, authorized $7.12 billion in general obligation bonds, with $2.7 billion set aside to build storage, dam and reservoir projects. Yet a decade later, drawing boards have been busier than construction sites.
Even though California is mostly dry by nature, previous generations were able to obtain enough water to ensure a continuous state of growth. Today we live instead in the “won’t do, can’t do” era brought on by policymakers, central planners and a coastal elite whose ideological motivations and incompetence are holding California back.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
