Water Scarcity, San Diego, Los Angeles, Historical Analysis, Sustainable Solutions
Having spent all of my life living in Southern California, it has been astonishing to witness the growth and development of such massive cities in what was originally (and still is) a semi-arid desert. That being so, it has also been astonishing to observe how when most people turn on their faucet or sprinkler, they give little thought as to where that water is coming from. For decades, people have been consuming water in levels that are anything but sustainable. On a larger policy perspective, lack of foresight and proper planning by our governments has left us in a state where water scarcity is becoming impossible to ignore and these habits, on all levels, need to be changed. This topic was chosen for the simple reason that it affects everyone in the Southern California region and will be an even bigger issue in the future as water shortages are being experienced on a global scale. There is no denying the fact that proper action must be taken in regards to this for a resource that is so vital to our survival is already being referred to as “liquid gold”. This study is being performed in hopes that it will help shed light on this serious issue of water scarcity and will offer possible sustainable solutions that policy makers could possibly implement in their plans and will hopefully make Southern California’s future seem a little less menacing and a little less dry.
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Southern California’s water crisis has recently been gaining a lot of attention from both academics and the media but it is by no means a recent issue. The county of San Diego has suffered for over a century in attaining water resources for its citizens and agricultural production. Los Angeles, on the other hand, has always been in much more of a comfortable position in regards to water access. This study will attempt to find why this is so by comparing the water histories of both counties. The study is important for it will also analyze which sustainable solutions serve as viable options for implementation in San Diego. Studying historical documents, census data, reading interviews, and analyzing scientific journal articles will accomplish this. The research will contribute to current literature about sustainability sciences and will provide city-implementation possibilities for policy makers to study and integrate into their own plans.
Southern California’s water crisis has been gaining a lot of attention lately but is by no means a recent issue. For over a century, the County of San Diego has struggled with attaining water resources while Los Angeles has always been in much more of a comfortable position in regards to water access. After studying historical documents, census data, and reading interviews, the root causes of this disparity were revealed. Research shows that the causes of this issue go beyond water consumption levels. Instead, they can be traced back to early planning decisions made by government officials. Being so, while technological solutions such as desalinization plants could help ease the issue, effective change toward the better must come with political and policy action as well. The research contributes to current literature about sustainability sciences and provides city-implementation possibilities for policy makers to study and integrate into their own plans.
Upon reviewing the water history of San Diego, it was found that the causes of the current water shortage were not related solely to increased water consumption as a consequence of increased population. In fact, it was learned that San Diego’s water crisis is not recent at all and is deeply rooted in its natural geographic climate and its rich history that can be traced back to its earliest days. Historical analysis also showed that the causes in disparity between access to water in Los Angeles and San Diego were primarily embedded in the government’s overall lack of foresight and poor decisions that left the growing city little option but to establish a dependence on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. As time progressed, this dependence magnified as the San Diego government seemed very hesitant in creating strict water policy to deal with the issue. Analysis on historical drought conditions and projected increases in population and water demands, it is clear that this sort of mindset will not suffice. While technological sustainable solutions provide possibilities of action that can be taken on both the regional and local level, in the case of San Diego, it remains quite obvious that true change must come about through policy measures. In the present day, it appears that the local government is taking a pro- active approach to improving the water situation in San Diego, but it is difficult to imagine that full independence in water attainability can ever be attained.
The research for this study will be split up into two major portions. First, there will be a historical analysis of the water system development in both the counties of San Diego and Los Angeles in order to understand the root causes of their current situations. The second portion will focus on the present day actions that are being taken and on the sustainable technologies and infrastructures that are being developed and could possibly be implemented in order to help ease the current water shortage issue. Being that the water shortage issue is a topic that has been covered extensively in scholarly literature, most of my sources will be in the form of documentation. Scientific journals will be studied as far as the sustainable solutions and historical journals (such as the Journal of San Diego History) and archival records in relation to water will be studied in an effort to learn about the progression of the water shortage. The drought history of both San Diego and Los Angeles will be studied as well as archival U.S. Census data from 1980 to the present day, which will be analyzed to observe the growth of the counties. Being that there are two main sides to this issue (the consumers and the government officials), interviews will be used in order to show the different opinions of this issue. Lastly, in order to study some of the current responses to the water shortage, specific examples will be analyzed in the form of reviewing a case study in each San Diego (related to desalinization) and Los Angeles (related to implementation of water restrictions).
Though it is quite clear that the water shortage issue we are facing is global, the main focus of this project will be on the semi-arid Southern California region and specifically, the County of San Diego. For purposes of evaluation and in-depth analysis, comparisons will be made to Los Angeles in order to better understand the differences in planning which have led to their overall success. When looking at the present day context and what is needed to improve the current water conditions of San Diego, successful technological innovations and planning developments that have sprung up internationally will be studied and put into the “San Diego” context to determine whether they serve as viable sustainable solutions. The key spatial factors that have a bearing on this study consist of a wide array of dimensions ranging from water sources and water distributors to water consumers in the counties of Los Angeles and San Diego. First, are the actual sources of water themselves. In order to properly analyze the water shortage in Southern California, it is important to identify where the water supplies are coming from (The Colorado River, etc.). Second, being that they play a major role in the planning and decision-making of water sources and distribution, the Municipal Water District and other governmental bodies and their jurisdictions will serve as a key spatial factor in this study. Third, the water consumers serve as key spatial factors in relationship to this study and one of the most significant consumers in the realm of water usage is agriculture. Therefore, the farms and agricultural production in both counties must be identified. Lastly, a fourth spatial component of this study are the residential locations for they too act as a main water consumer and have also had a great impact on our water supply.
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