Amid Drought, CA Fails to Capture Flood Water

It seems like California can’t win.

Vast portions of California dealt with flooding and landslides after severe storms rolled through late last month, into early this month (January 2023). While these storms left a wake of death and destruction, the one upside was the assumption that they would help with mitigating the effects of the severe drought in the state.

While the storms certainly helped, according to a report in Axios, they have been less impactful than one would assume.

Axios revealed that the water has “been running off into rivers and eventually the Pacific Ocean, rather than filling reservoirs and recharging depleted groundwater storage.”

This is frustrating, as every drop of water in overpopulated California is precious these days.

According to a comprehensive write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle, California needs to reorient how it deals with flood water runoff. Most major urban areas aren’t equipped to effectively channel flood water into storage facilities, which is why it ends up in the ocean.

The Chronicle suggested underground aquifers are the preferred storage method “because they can hold large volumes of water without the dams and sitting obstacles presented by above-ground reservoirs.”

These types of projects will take time and investment, and need the full support of our political class. A report in Politico on the same topic highlighted how elected officials from both political parties are taking this issue seriously.

As stated in the article, Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Visalia) is pushing a measure in the California Assembly to speed up permitting for new projects that will help capture storm water and reduce floods. The article pointed out a similar proposal is coming from Democrats in the Senate, and that Newsom has called for $200 million allocated to flood protection in his budget.

These are the types of problems you have to implement when you have sucked your rivers and reservoirs dry due to overpopulation. You’re left with having to come up with ever more creative solutions to problems, and you have to scale up as fast as possible.

Hopefully California can come up with a plan to take full advantage of flood water runoff, because sadly the overpopulation of our state is not ending anytime soon.