I saw this AP story with an Oroville dateline and had to comment. The California winter home we sold this past February was roughly 5 miles from one arm of poor, sad empty Lake Oroville.
It is looking like we got out at the right time. The drought they are experiencing appears worse than those we’d experience every 3-4 years there.
CA gets enough rainfall, if they’d catch all the runoff and store it. However, doing so would damage the salmon runs on the Sacramento River and the ecosystems of the Delta and SF Bay. And the new reservoirs would flood a series of currently pristine Sierra valleys, which drives the Sierra Club nuts
So … CA will have water rationing and laws banning lawns, maybe private swimming pools will be banned too. I wonder if golf courses will be watered? Could be the rice fields west of Oroville will go fallow this year, although that will rob migratory waterfowl of a place to rest and feed on their way south. And again there will be wildfires burning across the tinder-dry hills, pretty much a yearly occurrence.
