California is in a drought emergency, but it doesn’t have to be

Southern California is in a drought emergency.

I know what you’re thinking– how can that be after an Atmospheric River brought record-breaking rain to California just weeks ago?

The issue lies in our state’s inadequate water capture efforts. “When you look at the Los Angeles River being between 50% and 70% full during a storm, you realize that more water is running down the river into the ocean than what Los Angeles would use in close to a year,” says Mark Gold, associate vice chancellor for environment and sustainability at UCLA.

That’s a lot of water wasted.

Our very own city is working against us. Los Angeles, like many cities, was built to dispose of water, not conserve it. Following disastrous floods in the 1930s, the city engineered the L.A. River, a 51-mile waterway channeling water from the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific. If only we knew then what a valuable, and dwindling, resource water would become.

The good news is that cities are actively searching for new ways of capturing urban runoff. In 2012, L.A. leaders voted on an ordinance requiring many new developments to collect rainfall or let it seep into the ground, where it can be dispensed in underground storage tanks. Six years later, L.A. County passed Measure W, a parcel tax that raises nearly $300 million annually to collect and treat stormwater, support green projects, and help keep trash off our shorelines.

While this is a good start, there’s still much to be done! To our great disappointment, the L.A. Regional Board failed to protect our waters from pollution by authorizing a lenient Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) Permit in July. We are once again tasked with holding polluters accountable. Help us Take LA by Storm in search of accountability for our waterbodies!