Climate change has led to more rain and less snow falling on California. Data from fifteen years ago already showed an alarming amount of water runoff into the Pacific Ocean: more than 26 million acre-feet of the 193 million acre-feet of annual precipitation. (Cal Dept. of Water Resources data, quoted in the Sacramento Bee, December 22, 2002). With the trend toward rain over snow, this waste has become even greater.

Seven years ago, The Public Policy Institute of California estimated that the greatest potential for new water supply between then and 2030 was improved urban efficiency, storage, and recycled municipal water. California needs more storage of all kinds: surface storage, underground storage, and recharging aquifers. New crop research has demonstrated a high tolerance for flooding fields, thus putting the water into aquifers that have been overdrawn during the drought.

The political left has been unwilling to build any more storage, although the 2014 initiative directed that $2.7 billion of the $7.5 billion of approved bonds go to that purpose. (No storage project had been approved as of June 2016.)

The political right, while supporting more storage projects, has been unwilling to acknowledge the reality of climate change, believing, contrary to scientific evidence, that the snow pack will continue to serve as the state’s primary form of water storage.)

The solution is to reject the far left and the far right. A centrist, moderate approach is also the most pragmatic: store the water that would otherwise flow out to the ocean. This would allow us to revitalize the farm economy of the Central Valley, and the thousands of workers and their families that depend upon it. It would allow water to draw upon for environmental purposes when the drought years return.

The above are statements on several public policy issues drafted by Tom Campbell, former US Congressman, former California State Senator, former Director of Finance for California, and currently Interim Chairman of the Common Sense Party. They are meant to initiate consideration of several important issues; they are not the official views of the Common Sense Party. Please feel free to submit your own thoughts on these issues on the Open Policy Discussion Page.