Excerpt
SUMMARY: Across California, after years of punishing drought, reservoirs that normally fill canals and make crops bloom are greatly depleted or even empty. Some say that getting more water into storage by building more dams is key. But dams also create problems for native fish, and some see them as a waste of money that may not provide sufficient supply. Special correspondent Spencer Michels reports.
SPENCER MICHELS (NewsHour): It may be the sign of a hopeful farmer, a biplane spreading fertilizer on a dry field in California’s Central Valley. There’s no irrigation in this part of the valley, so, for now, rain is the only way these crops will grow, and there hasn’t been much of that for the last four years.
And the reservoirs, like Folsom Lake near Sacramento, that normally fill the canals and make the crops bloom, are depleted. Folsom is just 17 percent full.
TIM QUINN, Executive Director, Association of California Water Agencies: It’s flat-out empty because of this drought.
SPENCER MICHELS: Tim Quinn is executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies.
And what’s the solution to this, build another reservoir?
TIM QUINN: Well, if we’d had more water going into storage, we could still have more left than we have got today.
SPENCER MICHELS: And that’s important, says Quinn, not just to Californians.
TIM QUINN: We’re a big part of this economy. And we provide food to the nation and to the world.
SPENCER MICHELS: Quinn and many in state government want a comprehensive solution, including conservation.
TIM QUINN: We do need to build more dams, but we also need to connect them with more underground storage.
SPENCER MICHELS: But building new dams goes against a recent trend in some states, including Washington, of actually demolishing dams, mostly for environmental reasons like protecting fish and restoring wildlife habitat.
These days in California, the mood is quite different. Since the gold rush, building dams and canals has been California’s answer to unpredictable rain and snowfall. To get the water from where it falls in the mountains hundreds of miles away to the dry farms and populated areas, Californians have constructed more than 1,400 dams, including Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River.
In 1968, the state dedicated Oroville Dam, tallest dam in the country, and sent water south to farms and cities. For many farmers and those whose livelihoods are tied to farming, the success of those dams is a key to what needs to happen now.
IMHO: Without water you, and every other living thing dies. A dry parched environment is also harmful. BUILD MORE DAMS, just be smart about it.
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