Today, the federal Bureau of Reclamation announced  that the Central Valley Project's initial water supply delivery allocations would be extremely low. 

When faced with a crisis, a community can pull together or pull apart.  We believe that the water crisis we are now facing provides an opportunity for everyone in California to work together.  We're all going to feel this drought, and we all need to be a part of the solution.  Although today's announcement is unquestionably bad news for our water supply this year, there is a remarkable amount of agreement about the future and the solutions to our water woes. 

California is facing a third consecutive dry year. This January was the driest in history.  As a result, the state's reservoirs and rivers will be at near-record lows.  Many urban residents will face mandatory rationing this year.  Conditions for farmers will be even tougher.  Some farmers, facing near total cut-offs of surface water, will pump more groundwater and try to buy water from neighbors with somewhat greater supplies.  Commercial and recreational fishermen know that California's quarter-billion dollar salmon fishery is likely to be closed entirely again this year and that the few remaining spawning fish will face some of the worst habitat conditions ever in our rivers - which bodes ill for the future of salmon in California, and salmon fishing.   California's public, its economy and its environment will all suffer this year.  This brings us the first area of agreement - we must do a much better job of preparing for droughts and investing in a more reliable water supply.

We also know, as a result of an enormous amount of progress by the scientific community in the past decade, that global warming is likely to mean more dry years in the future.  Scientists, water agencies, the state's Department of Water Resources and environmentalists all agree that a warming climate will put the squeeze on our water resources.  Again, there is agreement that we must prepare for a dryer future.

This takes us to the most important area of consensus - we need to be far more ambitious in our investments in a new generation of reliable water supplies.  Water agencies, business leaders and NRDC agree that four tools - water efficiency, wastewater recycling, urban stormwater management and improved groundwater management - what we call the Virtual River  - offer the largest, greenest, fastest and most affordable opportunities for making California's water supply more drought resistant. 

There is also agreement about where the funding can come from to begin these investments immediately.  The new federal stimulus package contains $126 million for wastewater recycling projects and a total of six billion dollars for wastewater and drinking water projects, of which California's share can be invested to help us prepare for the future.  Now that the California legislature has passed a budget, the state can tap into existing bond funds, already approved by the public and available today.  Most of the needed funding, however, will be made at the local level, by communities investing in their future. 

There has been a Catch 22 in California's drought planning - or the lack thereof.  During droughts, we are too narrowly focused on what we can do in a single year.  The truth is, in a single year, our options are limited to strategies like water conservation and water transfers.  After a drought ends, however, decision-makers tend to forget about water and turn to other pressing problems.  What we need to do is to launch an ambitious effort to prepare for droughts and a drier future.  Even in this crisis, perhaps because of this crisis, there is a great deal of agreement about the path ahead of us.   

There is another, sober, final area of agreement - There's no guarantee that this will be the last dry year in this drought.  So more than ever, we all need to come together and use water wisely. There simply isn't a drop to waste this year.