The California State Water Project announced Thursday that it will boost its water allocations to local agencies and users this year from 5% of the amounts requested to 30% of the amounts requested, after the recent rains.
The announcement, coming after three years of drought, is welcome news to California’s struggling farmers, as well as to municipal water agencies that had begun implementing water restrictions to maintain their supplies.
Governor Gavin Newsom welcomed the news in a statement:
“Thanks to the water captured and stored from recent storms, the state is increasing deliveries to local agencies that support two-thirds of Californians – good news for communities and farms in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California,” said Governor Newsom. “We’ll keep pushing to modernize our water infrastructure to take advantage of these winter storms and prepare communities for the climate-driven extremes of wet and dry ahead.”
His office added:
With an above-average snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the state is cautiously optimistic that by early summer, there will be enough water stored in our reservoirs and aquifers to help relieve the worst effects of drought. While recent storms have been impressive, two months remain in the wet season and California could see a return to warm and dry conditions. Difficult conditions still exist in the Colorado River watershed, and many Californians rely on groundwater wells, which take much longer to recover from drought.
The higher allocation is the result of rain from several “atmospheric rivers” that hit the state in the last week of December and the first half of January, causing flooding and destruction — but also bringing rain and snow.
Newsom has come under criticism in recent weeks for failing to achieve progress in building reservoirs and other water projects, money for which was approved by voters nearly a decade ago, without tangible results.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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