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By Max Slavkin for Save Our Water

You don’t have to be a scientist to recognize that California’s climate is changing – you can just look outside.

This winter has been one of California’s wettest ever on the heels of three of the driest years in California history. Recent downpours brought rarely-seen snow to the low foothills of the Bay Area and toppled over 1,000 trees in Sacramento. Small communities and farmlands in the Central Valley that were grappling with the worst impacts of drought just months ago are now submerged under floodwaters.

Recent weather must be placed in the broader context of California’s climate transformation. Weather whiplash – increasingly intense drought punctuated by increasingly intense wet periods – has become our new climate normal. The recent rain and snow don’t change the fact that our state is becoming steadily hotter and drier over time. Historical data and models have become less reliable as conditions change. Our water infrastructure, mostly built during and for the 20th century, requires significant investment to adapt to 21st century weather. To prepare for the next prolonged dry period and to build climate resiliency, we must make conservation a way of life in California.

Special districts are at the forefront of that effort, and during California’s historic drought special districts led the way on water conservation and climate resiliency. Thanks to the hard work of special districts and water agencies statewide, California has seen historic conservation gains over the last year in every region and nearly every county. In August 2022, Governor Newsom released California’s Water Supply Strategy For A Hotter & Drier California, outlining actions needed now to invest in new sources and transform water management. Here again, special districts are setting the standard statewide with investments in new storage, recycling, groundwater, and other infrastructure projects reinforcing California’s long term climate resiliency. These are just three of many more impressive efforts from  special districts up and down the state.

In Southern California, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) is expanding local water supplies through their Pure Water Southern California (PWSC) project. This project will take cleaned wastewater and further purify it into a sustainable source of high-quality water for 15 million people – making it one of the largest water reuse programs in the world. Its innovative three-step purification process makes its water safe for groundwater basins and for drinking. At full scale, the plant will treat 150 million gallons daily, which would create water reliability for 500,000 homes across MWD’s service area.

In Kern County, California, the Rosamond Community Services District (RCSD) has invested $15 million in its new Rosamond Water Reclamation Plant. This plant repurposes deteriorating wastewater evaporation ponds into a site where wastewater is purified to percolate into and replenish the aquifers below. By using this plant, RCSD has become a statewide leader in water reuse – returning 100% of the water that it is allocated back into the Antelope Valley Groundwater Basin’s aquifers. For communities like Rosamond that are dependent on groundwater, it takes much longer to recover from drought and rebuild storage, making this project especially critical for this region.

In the Central Valley, South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID)’s new Water = Food = Life Campaign is working with local residents to save water. The campaign cuts through noise with its simple, straightforward message: that water, and its responsible management, is the foundation for life in California. The campaign utilizes billboards and trucks to promote the message to residents, and water districts across the state have embarked on similar campaigns to promote conservation among residents.

We know that saving water is the easiest, cheapest way to support California’s water supply.

At the state level, the Save Our Water campaign is working with California water agencies to make conservation a way of life with targeted advertising, local outreach events, and free online resources for water agencies to use and share. Thanks to the regular and consistent actions of Californians in response to local and statewide calls for conservation, average residential water use per person per day has dropped to the lowest number since data has been collected. Statewide water use is down by double-digit percentage points compared to 2020 in almost every region of the state, and many local water agencies are seeing their lowest water usage on record.

While recent rain and snow have brought much needed relief to the state, we know that the next prolonged dry period is coming to California. The more water we can conserve and store today, the more prepared we’ll be for next time.