California Copes with Worsening Drought

In an aerial view, water is reddened by micro organisms that are the result of the rising salinity of an evaporation pond at Owens Lake on July 20, 2021 near Lone Pine, California. Once one of the biggest inland bodies of water in the United States, Owens Lake was doomed in 1913 by a plan to the divert Sierra Nevada mountains water that fed it to be sent to Los Angeles by an aqueduct. The lake was dried up by the mid-1920s as winds blowing across the exposed lakebed created the largest single source of hazardous PM10 dust pollution. After about $2 billion spent in recent decades to undo the damage, worsening drought conditions have drastically reduced the Sierra snow pack upon which both the depleted lake and the city of Los Angeles depend. Large portions of the West are now in the most extreme drought category, and fire officials are warning of another devastating wildfire season in California.