Drought Preparedness Planning & Drought Response in California Jeanine Jones, CDWR.
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Transcript of Drought Preparedness Planning & Drought Response in California Jeanine Jones, CDWR.
Drought Preparedness Planning & Drought Response in California
Jeanine Jones, CDWR
Lessons Learned from Past California Droughts
• Impacts are highly site-specific, and vary depending on the ability of water users to invest in reliability
• Shortages stem from both hydrologic & regulatory drought• Small water systems on fractured rock groundwater sources
are most at risk of public health and safety impacts• Larger urban water agencies can manage 3-4 years of
drought with minimal impacts to their customers• The greatest economic impacts of drought in California have
been associated with wildfire and forestry damages, not with urban & agricultural water uses
Tools for Managing Drought
• California’s water infrastructure (which facilitates water transfers & exchanges)
• Groundwater• Institutional framework
for preparedness • Response actions such as
outreach & conservation
Institutional Framework
• Historically, $billions in state funding to local agencies to improve water supply and demand management
• Urban water management planning requirements, water shortage contingency plans
• Urban & agricultural conservation planning requirements
• Statutory framework for facilitating water transfers, water recycling
Drought Management Challenges Specific to California
• Water conveyance across the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta
• Ability to monitor statewide groundwater conditions and impacts of pumping (land subsidence) (because groundwater not regulated at state level)
Broadly Shared Drought Management Challenges – Small Water Systems
• Isolated rural communities• Systems on fractured rock groundwater• Small groundwater basins w/ minimal
recharge/storage capacities• Impacted soonest and to greatest extent
by droughts, typically operate with little margin for error
• Experience actual public health & safety impacts -- lack of water for human consumption, sanitation, fire protection
• Lack SDWA’s “technical, managerial, financial” capacity
Broadly Shared Drought Management Challenges – Drought Prediction
• NWS operational weather forecasts – out to about 10 days, good skill
• NOAA CPC outlooks for precipitation (30 days – 1 year), not skillful/useful for resource management
• Improved ISI forecasting would be hugely useful for drought management (longer lead time for reservoir ops, planning water transfers, budgeting conservation programs, etc)!
What Can Federal Research Programs Do To Help Improve Drought Management?
• Improve ISI forecasting!!!!– Advance research on MJO and ARs; ARs play big
role in California’s water year type– Improve understanding & predictability of
decadal-scale natural variability (high priority for Colorado River Basin)
– Expand weather/climate monitoring to support week 3/week 4 WX forecasts
• NASA – timely provide satellite-based InSAR observations (e.g., DESDynI mission) that allow monitoring of land subsidence due to groundwater extraction