More on the California water crisis

I've written recently about the coastal northern California water crisis, specifically in Mendocino County, a few times, here and here.  Now the Washington Post is also reporting from this scenic corner of the Golden State.  Scott Wilson reports under the headline, "In this California county, one town has no water. Another has enough to share."  Wilson contrasts what is happening in coastal, working class Fort Bragg, which has purchased a $335,000 water desalination plant, with what is happening down the road in Mendocino village the more picturesque tourist draw where residents are being encouraged to install 1000 gallon tanks.  But the bigger distinction is between these two coastal locales and the county seat, Ukiah, population 16,000, which is inland, across the coastal range.  There, water is plentiful, and trucks full of it are being dispatched to help their coastal counterparts. 

Here's an excerpt: 

The vastly different ways these small towns between San Francisco and the Oregon border are managing their water supplies highlight how uneven California’s brutal drought has been across the state — and even within a single county. Traditionally one of California’s wettest, Mendocino County is now a confused mountain-and-valley geography of damp and dry as the climate changes.

This was the first year in memory that Fort Bragg could not sell its surplus water to Mendocino Village, an old lumber town of historic Victorians and homegrown boutiques.

Postscript:  This story, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on October 25, suggests that Marin County, two counties to the south from Mendocino and just north of San Francisco, and sharing a Pacific Ocean fronting, will run out of water by next year.  The story, reported by Bloomberg's Todd Woody, highlights Marin County's wealth--it's the state's richest county.  Here's the lede: 

In Marin County, a $2-million house with an ocean view doesn’t necessarily come with a reliable water supply.

Water managers are taking extraordinary measures to keep faucets flowing should the state enter a third year of a punishing drought this winter. That this affluent redwood-studded ecotopia faces such a possibility, though, is a harbinger of a climate-constrained destiny that is fast arriving.

Woody quotes Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist at Stanford University's Water in the West program:   

These droughts are now on a new timeline. There used to be at least 10 years in between droughts in California, which was time enough for water ecosystems to recover.

Sadly, that's no longer the case.