Both Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam at Lake Powell are a significant source of electricity to southern California and the southwest. Schwabe: To add to what Professor Babcock said, low water levels can also mean less hydropower from two dams that operate on the Colorado and provide, combined, renewable electricity to over 13 million people. So Southern California residents have a large stake in decisions that need to be made. Cutting demand means reducing agricultural production and changing urban water use. Additional supply, such as desalination plants, increased recycling, and investments in groundwater storage is expensive. The only way to balance water supply and water demand is to build more supply or decrease demand. Shortages on the Colorado cannot easily be made up by alternative supplies because supplies are tight everywhere. All three sources have been in stress because of two years of short-run drought and many years of a longer-term drought. ![]() ![]() Why should Southern California residents care about low water levels in Colorado River’s reservoirs?īabcock: Southern California residents depend on imported water from the Colorado River, the Owens River, and the Feather River. We asked UCR water experts from UCR’s School of Public Policy – professors Bruce Babcock, Ariel Dinar, Mehdi Nemati and Kurt Schwabe – to discuss the impacts of the decline of this invaluable resource. While the greatest proportion of California’s share goes to the Imperial Valley to irrigate crops, the river is also an important water source for 19 million people in Southern California. The dramatic shrinking of Lake Mead near Las Vegas and Lake Powell above the Grand Canyon has prompted the Biden administration to call for the river basin states to cut their river water use by 25 percent next year or face federally mandated cuts. The report also notes that the “economic analysis is insufficient to support informed decision-making.” It points to “unusually long evaluation timeframes and…price escalation assumptions that are highly implausible,” among many other factors.Hit by years of drought exacerbated by a warming planet, the great reservoirs of the Colorado River are at historic lows. ![]() “We find the project to be substantially more costly than other options,” the report concludes. The overwhelming reasons against this project led eighteen of the 24 member agencies at the Water Authority to commission an independent report to analyze the findings of the RCS Study (Phase A). Past politics and escalating rates continue to sour the relationship between the Water Authority and the Metropolitan.Įnter the Regional Conveyance System. For years, the Water Authority has seriously considered building a duplicate pipeline to gain independence and more control over fluctuating water prices. The Water Authority has among the highest rates in California. Our water supply is managed with the Water Authority and supplied via a system of pipelines by the Metropolitan. According to experts on the energy-water nexus, as much as 19 percent of the state’s electricity consumption can be attributed to pumping, treating, collecting, and discharging water and wastewater. ![]() Today, San Diego imports more than 80 percent of our region’s water supply from the Colorado River or Northern California.
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