And yet we won't be building any more water storage. As a result, we have about the same water capacity to survice the next drought as we had in the 1970s. There were half as many residents then, and climate change wasn't a concern...
I'm curious about what this entails or means.
Retaining walls? (re)Injecting soil life like worms and microbes and related nutrients? Tossing around compost for likewise?
Some of the plants will have very good root depth, but all plants together will foster macro and microbiology, especially fungi, which will hold the soil together and at the same time spongify the soil, so that much more water will be absorbed than bare soil.
See the slake and water infiltration test, for a demonstration of bad vs good soil.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx_hmse9Se8
If your soil falls apart in the presence of water AND doesn't allow fast infiltration, you've got landslide and flood conditions. If your soil holds together and absorbs OR drains water, you've got prime agricultural conditions instead.
Further, cheap water storage results in increased evaporation, it’s a net loss over time.
And what happens to that lost evaporated water?
Just have to deal with the extra salt from letting those reservoirs slowly evaporate.
Instead they choose to spend some water having a river.
If they stored that water in reservoirs, they wouldn’t need to get so much of their water from the various aqueduct systems used today.
Such a system could effectively buffer the negative impact of droughts, while still serving the purpose of flood prevention during wet years.
There is a comment from Charles Bowden the rings to true to me. Talking about the Civilization in the Arizona Desert; the desert will win eventually because you can't take what it doesn't have. With California the real question is how much damage will we do while losing the battle.