MELISSA MELENDEZ: : Drought here to stay if we don't take action now

By MELISSA MELENDEZ / Contributing writer

Published: Dec. 17, 2015 Updated: Dec. 18, 2015 9:26 a.m.

   

If you’ve listened to the news lately, you have probably heard there is an El Niño storm cycle heading to California this winter. It means rain, and lots of it.

A winter of heavy rain may sound like the answer to end our ongoing drought. But one wet winter alone won’t solve the problem. In fact, this winter’s El Niño cycle may actually create new problems like flooding and mudslides. At the same time, we don’t have the infrastructure in place to capture and save much of the expected winter rains.

This drought will continue to linger on well after a wet winter because misguided policies from Sacramento have made it nearly impossible for us to make the most of the coming downpour. While we may not be able to take full advantage of this heaven-sent rainfall, the state must act now to prepare California for the future.

In the short term, this means better flood control and storm preparation. Recently, I joined with my fellow Republicans in sending a letter to President Obama and Gov. Brown calling on them to allocate the proper resources and make the necessary preparations on the federal and state levels to protect our communities during this El Niño winter.

In 2014, California voters passed the Proposition 1 water bond. In addition to providing funding for long-term water supply projects, the bond included $395 million for flood protection. But a year later, almost none of this money has been spent. The state has acted as though the drought would last forever. We’re now at risk of going from troublesome drought conditions to dangerous flood conditions. We don’t have to be rocket scientists to know that after experiencing no rain for this long, a sudden deluge will cause significant problems if we are not prepared.

The water bond also included $2.7 billion for new water storage. Increasing our storage capacity is a long-term drought solution. It has been more than 40 years since California has completed a major water storage project and during that time our population has nearly doubled.

The problem is that building a new reservoir in California is extremely difficult. Several new reservoirs have been on the table for years, but have been caught up in bureaucratic red tape and endless environmental reviews. This year, I supported Assembly Bill 311 to streamline the litigation review process for new water storage projects. Unfortunately, AB311 was killed in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on a party-line vote. Without streamlining the process, we won’t see any new storage projects completed for years.

Ironically, the Democratic majority’s blockage of our proposed preparations for the coming El Niño season could cause considerably more environmental and property damage when the rains eventually do fall. California’s soil and water containment systems are woefully unprepared for the coming onslaught.

As we sit here and wait, the threat of flash floods and mudslides continues to grow, making the cost of fixing this problem considerably more expensive than if we had been proactive. Californians are sick of this endless cycle of Sacramento’s problem politics, whereby a completely foreseeable problem is ignored until it becomes a crisis and, of course, the citizens of California are expected to bankroll their government’s failure to prepare.

The unfortunate truth is that, at the same time the majority party in Sacramento was killing the .