Wilson Dives Head First Into State’s Water Crisis : A good first go at a problem larger than imagined

California will pretty much have to get through its fifth year of drought by doing the best possible job of scraping the bottom of its rain barrel.

That, essentially, is the message from Gov. Pete Wilson and his emergency task force that spent two weeks sifting through recommendations for softening the impact of a dry spell that is setting modern records.

Cities that have not yet ordered water rationing should get to it, Wilson said, and base their plans on the real possibility that they will get only 50% of the water they use in normal years. As a yardstick of the severity of drought this year, consider that most areas got more than 80% of normal supplies last year.

For its part, he said, Sacramento will cut the red tape that normally can mean months of waiting to complete exchanges of water among areas with more than they need and regions that are bone dry. Sacramento will drill wells to keep as many as possible of the state’s parched wetlands and their wildlife from drying up.

Wilson said he was prepared to spend $100 million on drought mitigation efforts. The Legislature has no choice but to find the money, even with a budget that is as much as $10 billion in the red even before it is written.

The Department of Water Resources also will set up a “water bank” to augment exchanges, buying water that one region does not need and selling to regions in short supply.

Part of the water bank’s buying and selling will involve paying farmers who normally irrigate pastureland or raise water-intensive crops such as rice, alfalfa and cotton to leave acreage fallow during dry years. The state would sell the water it saved that way to cities or other farmers at prices that would cover the cost of acting as broker.

Among them, these crops use twice as much as the 7 million acre-feet of water that the federal Central Valley Project delivers to cities and farms in the San Joaquin Valley in normal years and nearly 10 times as much as the State Water Project delivers to Southern California.

This year, the water bank will be important chiefly as the difference for some farmers between going broke and breaking somewhere near even. Valley farms will get no water at all from the state between now and October and only 25% of normal deliveries from the federal project, shortfalls that will be particularly hard on crops that need large amounts of water.

Over the long haul, though, the bank’s real value will be in turning water into a commodity that can be bought, sold and traded on the market like any other. That in itself should help ensure that California water--scarcely abundant even in wet years--is used efficiently.

Neither Wilson nor his task force said so explicitly, but they left us with a strong sense that at this stage of the drought not much else can be done except to hope for rain and get ready for a possible sixth year of drought.

There are probably six--10 at the outside--weeks of a so-far dismal rainy season left for Southern California, with little reason to expect the region to get more than about 25% of its normal rainfall by April.

The Metropolitan Water District has been told that it will get 800,000 acre-feet of water--half of its normal delivery--from the state aqueduct, but its worst-case planning is based on only 250,000. The larger amount would supply 1.5 million households for a year; the smaller would be enough only for half a million households. The agency has no choice but to pass the shortages on to the local water agencies for whom it acts as wholesaler. They have been told they will get no more than 70% of the water they want.

Neither the MWD nor anyone else in California can retrieve a single drop of water that may have drained out to sea last year or last decade. The drought is a great, relentless, insensible leveler that, as Wilson said, will “change the way we live.” Even with a little rain and a little luck, it will also mean permanent changes in the way we think. About water.