California has been experiencing a drought for three years. This marks it as one of the worst droughts on record for the state of California, and there are few signs of improvement. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, asked Californians earlier this summer to voluntarily lower water usage by up to 20 percent. As the drought continued and worsened, The California Water Resources Control Board voted to enforce water rationing. While specific limits will vary from city to city, most will impose fines on those citizens who do not comply with the water usage restrictions.
Since it began, the drought has caused prices to increase for water and crops, with the expected cost this year exceeding $2.2 billion. As many as 17,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, despite the majority of the state’s water going towards agriculture. Many ranchers are selling their animals to farms in states less affected by the drought. This past January, Governor Brown officially declared a state of drought emergency.
Water table, reservoir, and lake levels throughout the state are at a historic low, and the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a major source of water for much of the state’s rivers and lakes, has been severely reduced because of the drought. There are 154 reservoirs in the state, and as of two months ago they contained 60 percent of their historical average. This means California is missing 1 year’s worth of water from its reservoirs, the equivalent of 11.6 million acre-feet. One acre-foot is roughly 325,853 US gallons of water, making the total amount of water absent from California reservoirs approximately 3.8 trillion gallons.
This level of water loss has put over half the state into the exceptional drought category. Exceptional drought, known as D4, is the worst level of drought, and nowhere in the state is the situation any better than D2, or severe drought. Several factors differentiate exceptional drought from less dangerous categories, including water emergencies being caused by reservoir and well shortages and low measurements of soil moisture.
The moisture reserves in California’s soils are almost completely dry, and grasslands are severely damaged. 70 percent of the pastures for livestock are now rated either poor or very poor, which is one of the factors causing ranchers to sell their cattle. The wildfires affecting north and central regions of the state are also indications of the exceptional dryness. Over 8,000 acres of plant life has been consumed in flames, and the fire near Yosemite Valley is still not completely contained.
To help the state get through these difficult times, The Eco Plumbers has offered its services in providing Niagara Stealth toilets. These 1,500 (and growing avg. 800-1,000 per month) stealth toilets will save as much as 20,000 gallons a year per toilet, which may seem miniscule compared to the 3.8 trillion gallons needed to bring California’s reservoirs back to normal levels. However, a large number of these toilets will help to ease the difficulty for the people receiving them – in this case, citizens of Hollywood. Eco Plumbers is offering water conservation services to help with the rebate programs that already exist with Los Angeles water. The Eco Plumbers hopes to assist the state of California further in the future and to help the people work through this difficult time.
