Scarce water and population boom leads California to 'perfect drought'

A typical summer's day in Los Angeles: temperatures nudge the nineties, the sun blazes high in the sky, palm trees sway in the ocean breeze, and sprinklers spray a fine mist of water into the scorching air.

But if the predictions of climatologists, environmentalists, city planners and the head of the water board are correct, the sprinklers and many other of the comforts that have made southern California habitable may have to be turned off.

Experts across the city concur that the conditions are ripe in southern California for the "perfect drought". Los Angeles has recorded just 8.15cm (3.21in ) of rain in the year ending June 30, making it the driest year on record since 1877. According to the National Drought Mitigation Centre, southern California faces "extreme drought" this year, with no rain forecast before September. One climatologist referred to the temperatures in Los Angeles as "Death Valley numbers".

The Sierra Nevada mountains, which typically provide Los Angeles with 50% of its water, have provided just 20% of their normal volume this year, and the snowpack is at its lowest for 20 years. Pumping from an aquifer in the San Fernando Valley was stopped this month because it was contaminated with chromium 6.

While the waters dry up, demand for the scarce resource increases. Not only has southern California seen a growth in its population of two-to-four times the national average in the past 50 years, but neighbouring states such as Nevada and Arizona are also experiencing population booms. And they all claim water from the same source, the Colorado River.

"I call it the dry incendiary summer of 2007," says Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "Mother nature is converging with human nature. With population growth and the decline in the water there are the elements in the equation which you could call the perfect drought."
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