Newsom unveils plan to store more water as California gets drier
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday released a plan to capture and store more water as the state faces a hotter, drier future, the Los Angeles Times reports.
With California expecting an estimated 10 percent decrease in its water supply by 2040 due to rising temperatures and decreasing runoff, the plan calls for accelerating infrastructure, including recycling more wastewater and desalinating seawater and brackish groundwater, and reducing water use by 8.4 million households.
"The hots are getting a lot hotter. The dries are getting a lot drier," Newsom said. "We have to adapt to that new reality." The plan calls for expanding below-ground storage capacity by four million acre-feet to help prepare for the expected loss of up to nine million acre-feet per year.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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