Too much rain, but not enough water

By Debra Kahn, Jordan Wolman and Allison Prang

California is getting a lot of water, but it needs even more. | Kenneth James / California Department of Water Resources

MAKE IT RAIN — We were doing a great job fending off our editor's queries about whether the massive storms California's been getting over the past month will end its punishing drought ("Ask me again in two months!")

Then came a story in the Mercury News last week with an eyebrow-raising assertion from Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego: "If these storms continue to come onshore for the next two or three weeks, that will end the drought."

Really? Can two months of storms erase three years of drought? In short, no, according to California's state climatologist, Michael Anderson.

"He and I had a conversation about that," Anderson said Monday.

Yes, California is getting a ton of water. It's on its fifth atmospheric river since late December, and three more storms are on the way over the next two weeks that could deposit 20 trillion gallons — enough to cover the entire state with a half-foot of water.

But the state's main reservoirs are still below average for this time of year. The Colorado River system, which feeds California and six other Western states, is even lower. And 64 percent of the state's groundwater wells are also below normal.

"Three years of critical drought takes a long time to recover from," Anderson said. "When you see all this rain come in and you think, 'Wow, that's really going to help that basin,' that's kind of where his mind was." (Ralph didn't respond to requests for comment.)

Anderson had to hang up after 5 minutes on the phone ("I am a busy camper here.") But he stressed that it's too early to predict how the rest of the wet season, which runs through April, might turn out. "Our skill in that realm right now isn't very good," he said.

Keep in mind that California also had a monster December in 2021, followed by the driest January through April on record.

The situation certainly makes messaging difficult: "This really is, I want to say extraordinary, but I actually think it's more focused on yet another climate signal, in that California's experiencing, coincidentally, both a drought emergency and a flood emergency," California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth told reporters Monday. "We continue to be in a drought state of emergency as our traditionally wet season progresses."

A LITTLE TECH SUPPORT: It's hard to find that sweet spot between flood and drought — but a new software tool in use on the other side of the continent could help.

Great Lakes water officials are employing a digital “decision support tool” to help figure out how much water they should let out of the Moses-Saunders Power Dam, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border along the St. Lawrence River downstream from Lake Ontario.

The software lets water managers analyze the effects of lake levels on different interest groups with competing interests, like shoreline property owners (who want to reduce flood risk) and shipping companies (who want flows high enough for cargo ships to navigate).

Water managers are hoping it will help defuse conflicts before they get to lawsuits, like the one New York filed against the International Joint Commission, the U.S.-Canada panel that manages Great Lakes policy, seeking damages from floods in 2017 and 2019.

“Before this tool, the board couldn’t get live responses over the impacts of different outflow decisions,” said Bernie Gigas, a member of the public advisory group for the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River water managers. “It also will show how many houses are going to get flooded. That’s not information they had before. This makes it readily available.”

APRIL SHOWERS — The SEC has indicated that it will release its final climate disclosure rule in April.

The SEC first released a proposed version of the rule a little less than a year ago. The public comment period, which was extended multiple times, yielded thousands of letters that the agency is reviewing.

Keep in mind that the agency isn't beholden to meeting the April timeline — but observers are optimistic. Read more from Avery Ellfeldt at E&E News.

DOLLARS MAKING SENSE — The U.S. and other rich countries are dragging their feet on shelling out climate aid for poor countries, to their own detriment, as Jean Chemnick reports for POLITICO's E&E News.

It's pretty self-evident why rich countries should help poor countries with climate change: It's called global warming, after all. CO2 is a global pollutant, and since developing countries' emissions are rising faster than rich ones', that's where the most bang for the buck is.

“It’s fully projected, what the impacts of emissions in other countries will be on the United States. It's virtually mathematical,” said Ashfaq Khalfan , climate justice director for Oxfam America.

It should also be in rich countries' best interest to prevent the unrest stemming from climate disasters. “If you get hundreds of millions or a billion people facing forced migration, you make global governance almost impossible and may threaten democracies that can’t deal with that kind of strain on the system,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G.

It won't be cheap. Achieving developing countries' emissions-reduction and climate adaptation goals would cost $2.3 trillion through 2040, according to an analysis by the World Resources Institute.

BACK AT IT – Divestment advocates are wasting no time in 2023 redoubling their efforts to get public money out of fossil fuels, introducing a bill Monday in New York that would require the state teachers’ retirement system to divest from fossil fuels.

A similar bill mandating NYSTRS’ fossil fuel divestment didn’t even make it out of committee last session.

Fossil fuel divestment has been a tough sell at the public level. These divestment efforts are coming at the same time as attempts by red-state officials to pull out of companies that they accuse of boycotting fossil fuels.

Lindsay Meiman, a spokesperson for Stand.earth, an environmental group, said the “organization is planning on supporting grassroots divestment legislation” in New Jersey, California and Oregon this year.

GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. We deliver data-driven storytelling, compelling interviews with industry and political leaders, and news Tuesday through Friday to keep you in the loop on sustainability.

Team Sustainability iseditor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporters Jordan Wolman and Allison Prang. Reach us all at gmott@politico.com, dkahn@politico.com, jwolman@politico.com and aprang@politico.com.

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— Fed Chair Jerome Powell said his job isn't to be "a climate policymaker.”

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