H2O - Firm Grip on the Obvious

The former Mercury News, nee San Mateo County Times, appears to have a firm grip on the obvious regarding our long-term water shortage as we noted here and here.  The front page, above the fold article shown below from this article notes

But Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, which will make the decision, said earlier this month that although reservoirs have filled in many parts of Northern California this winter, Southern California has received only about half as much rainfall as its historic average.

As a result, the state must brace for the fact that this winter might have been one normal rainfall season in a longer drought, rather than the beginning of the end of the drought that began in 2011.

"I think we need to adjust to recognize the reality that we are in," she said, "while still being mindful that we don't know what next year is going to bring."

This is apparently still considered "news" at the Merc.  One really has to wonder when they and the Water Board will wake up and become "mindful"?  When will they come out for dramatic planning changes across the state?  How about more reservoirs?  If we had half as much attention on this as we do on sea-level rise, we would be in better shape.

Comments

[Joe]

The Mercury News is back today with more grim tree factoids:

But across the state, once towering pines have collapsed, their desiccated limbs sprawled across forest floors. Toppled oak and tanoak trees, their trunks decomposing from the inside out, litter the ground.

Choked with the detritus of at least 70 million dead trees, vast tracts of the landscape have become a botanical emergency room, parched by drought, invaded by damaging insects and infected with a deadly organism that may have piggybacked its way to the state on rhododendron leaves.

In many communities of the central and southern Sierra Nevada range, “80 percent of trees are dead,” said Ken Pimlott, the state’s top forester as director of Cal Fire, the state forestry and fire-protection agency.

The catastrophic tree loss has taken out 66 million pines and other conifers and more than 5 million oak trees and tanoaks, which are relatives in the beech family. Nearly 60 million more water-starved trees are teetering.

When trees burn and decay, they release “black carbon,” a highly destructive emission many thousand times more polluting than other greenhouse gases. A wildfire around Yosemite National Park in 2013 discharged as much carbon as 2.3 million cars emit in a year, state officials say.

Brown asked the Legislature for $150 million to address the problem. Lawmakers appropriated $51 million for this fiscal year. Counties will get $30 million of that.
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$100 Billion for a train to LA and $150 million for a real environmental disaster that has the potential to cause more "black carbon" to be released into the air than one can really comprehend. Nice work, Guv.