“Even if it was for only a few more weeks than the previous year, for a farmer, particularly, that can be make or break,” said Elizabeth Salomone, general manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, which has contracts to disburse water from Lake Mendocino and the Russian River to farmers and water suppliers.Īn order to reduce flows further upstream shut the program down early, but the agreement’s architects hope to keep it ready to run again next year as they plan for the potential of another dry winter in California. This year, the project ran for about four weeks of the growing season, an abbreviated test run that allowed some grape growers to keep plants alive after years of scrimping. Very generally, in a normal year, users with older water rights are allowed first priority, and in times of shortage, junior users are the first to be cut back. The water left over can be passed on to other users in the area who have less priority and without the program may have been left with nothing.

Working through the state’s convoluted water rights system, the novel agreement inked this summer allows water users to voluntarily conserve. Creators say the program could become a prototype for accords elsewhere in the state and in the West, a beacon of collaboration in a place where water can be contentious. Now, the watershed and the reservoir where this drought began have become the proving ground for an innovative water agreement that aims to make more of scarce supplies. The lake reservoir where Newsom set his declaration supplies water to the Russian River, which in turn provides water for 600,000 people and to some of California’s best-known wineries. The state is contending with its driest three-year period on record. It was time for California to prepare for “what may be a prolonged drought at our doorstep.” “Climate change is intensifying both the frequency and the severity of dry periods,” he said. Newsom was there to declare a drought emergency. Instead, on this afternoon in 2021, the ground was dry and cracked. It was spring, which meant that the reservoir should have held water from the winter rains that in past decades provided water to millions of Californians. Gavin Newsom stood at a podium placed on the sandy bottom of Lake Mendocino, a basin built to hold more than 20 billion gallons of water.

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