California Water Supply and Demand

The United States is considered by many to be the leader of the developed world, however even first world countries must still face third world issues. It may come as a surprise to discover that the United States still faces many struggles with their water supply. These issues may not be as devastating as those faced by the developing nations of the world, yet they still pose quite the hurdle to overcome. One area of the country which has had a particularly difficult time managing its water resources has been California. Since California became a state in 1848, state water resources have faced difficulties. As the state’s population grew and gold mining became popular, the water systems became polluted with mine debris, eventually various court rulings restricted mining in favor of agricultural and commercial development. As the population began to grow, Los Angeles all but exhausted its local water sources. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt granted permission to divert water from the Owens River Valley 223 miles south to a newly-formed reservoir in the San Fernando Valley in order to supplement the water supply. The 1933 Central Valley Project (CVP) became the largest water purveyor in California, mostly to irrigate the agricultural Central Valley. The State Water Project (SWP), the most expensive public works project in California’s history, was launched in 1960 and billed as a patch for the CVP’s shortcomings. (Wells) It would seem that government initiatives cannot meet the demands for water in California. This is because the government has vastly overestimated its supply of fresh water and already allocated it. In the last century, the state has handed out rights to five times more surface water than the rivers produce even in a normal year without drought. (Skelton)This would seem to completely disregard the concept of supply and demand. The law of supply and demand is the theory explaining the interaction between the supply of a resource and the demand for that resource. Generally, a low supply and a high demand increases price, and in contrast, the greater the supply and the lower the demand, the lower the price tends to fall. Demand for natural resources has in the past been correlated with economic growth, but there are more factors at play than simple economics. Factors such as income growth, environmental change, advances in technology and price pressures all have a part to play. (ELC ) Most of California’s water infrastructure projects were designed and constructed at a time when delivering cheap water to feed economic

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