Water in California - Predicted Need For Increased Water Supplies

Predicted Need For Increased Water Supplies

It is projected that California’s population will be almost 50 million people in the year 2020. If the prediction comes true and there is no action to increase the water supply, the difference between water demand and supply would be between 2 and 6,000,000 acre feet (7.4 km3) in the year 2020. Over the past 5 years California voters have approved $3 billion in bonds for water development and management. Many of these projects are incorporated in the CALFED Bay-Delta program, a federal-state program designed to reduce water supply conflicts. In August 2000 the state and federal governments approved the CALFED plan for water quality, water conservation and recycling, watershed administration, ecosystem re-establishment, delta levees, surface and groundwater storage, water transportation, and science. The plan has a 30-year implementation period and designed to incorporate changes in conditions and knowledge about the effects of specific projects. Stage 1 was initiated in 2000 and was designed as a 7-year program. The cost is estimated to be $8.7 billion. Stage 1 water yield within the next 7 to 10 years is estimated to be 2,900,000 acre feet (3.6 km3) per year. As part of Stage 1, an Environmental Water Account was established through the purchase of 350,000 acre feet (0.43 km3) of water. The EWA is used to protect fish and other wildlife without reducing water allocations to farms and municipalities.

Read more about this topic:  Water In California

Famous quotes containing the words predicted, increased, water and/or supplies:

    Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit;Mnot to be reckoned one character;Mnot to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south?
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It is so manifestly incompatible with those precautions for our peace and safety, which all the great powers habitually observe and enforce in matters affecting them, that a shorter water way between our eastern and western seaboards should be dominated by any European government, that we may confidently expect that such a purpose will not be entertained by any friendly power.
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    There were three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except for a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)