Sacramento should not build what it cannot sustain

It’s frightening sometimes how two headlines on the same day can have such resonance. The Bee’s Friday, March 13,edition (and yes, we did note the date with trepidation) featured two such headlines, right next to each other, on the front page: “L.A. water agency offers cash for Valley allotments” and “Natomas building activity ready to resume.”

We can only hope that other readers noticed the disconnect. Our water situation is so dire that Southern California is paying big bucks to buy up water allotments that would normally be used to plant rice. Yet, at the same time, it seems that a building boom—which will take plenty of water during construction and even more for a long time to come—is about to begin.

The day before, Jay Famiglietti, a professor of Earth science at UC Irvine and a senior water specialist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, penned an op-ed for the L.A. Times in which he pointed out that California is, quite simply, running out of water.

“We’re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we’re losing the creek, too,” he wrote.

His question—“Will you ration now?”—is a good one, given our dire state following this extremely dry season.

We can only continue to urge our readers and local officials: Don’t build what we can’t sustain. Consider the realities of our water resources before giving the go-ahead to further development. We can’t keep going on this way.