Its harm to the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely on them could be irreversible and ongoing.
Instead, we should be pursuing a suite of alternatives to dams — holistic reforms to individual, corporate and agricultural water use, while incentivizing less water-intensive crops, improving water management and efficiency, and recycling the roughly 400 billion gallons of treated water discarded into the Pacific Ocean each year. Groundwater recharge and demand management should also be part of the equation.
California has been locked in a century-long pattern. We use more water than we have, and the oft-proposed solutions sacrifice more of our natural habitat and waterways to quench an agricultural thirst that far outpaces capacity. At some point, we must accept that conservation is now cheaper and more equitable than more dams.
Most water years of the future will not be as generous as the past water year. Failing to acknowledge that is a form of climate denial. California must realistically evaluate how much water will be available in a shifting climate, and allocate it in an equitable way, while preserving environmental and economic values for generations to come.Keiko Mertz is the the policy director for Friends of the River, one of California’s oldest river conservation organizations.
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