More people are coming. More water probably isn’t.
Sacramento area leaders are planning for hundreds of thousands of new homes in the coming decades, pegging the region’s economic growth to population growth and new housing starts. Those new residents – along with their houses and lawns – could gulp 50 billion additional gallons of water per year by 2035, if population projections hold and if they consume in the same manner as current residents.
At the same time, California and the Sacramento region are gripped by historic drought. Water districts around the region are calling for residents and businesses to cut water use by at least 20 percent. Farmers throughout the Central Valley are fallowing fields and drawing down groundwater stores because the state and federal water systems that distribute surface water in California have none to send. Folsom Lake, one of the region’s primary reservoirs, is so low that some water agencies say they may not have enough water to meet typical demand come summer.
Read more the Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/23/6181571/the-sacramento-region-plans-to.html