The drought that has been socking Western states and farms for years has also dried up the mountain snowpack, prompting experts this week to call for a whole new system to collect rare rainfall.
The influential American Farm Bureau, citing climate change, said a shift to collecting rain must happen now because it could take up to 30 years to build a new infrastructure.
At a meeting in San Diego, California Farm Bureau Federation President Paul Wenger said that up to now about 70 percent of water storage has been in mountain reservoirs filled with melting snowpack.
“As climate change comes, we have to adapt, and that means we’d better have lower-level capturing systems to be able to capture that water, because it’s going to come as rainfall, not snowpack,” he warned, at a workshop at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 96th Annual Convention and IDEAs Trade Show.
The comments were distributed by the American Farm Bureau.
Robert Johnson, executive vice president of the Washington-based National Water Resources Association, said global warming models suggest a continued drought trend in the West.
“Solutions take time,” he said. “Major infrastructure projects take 20 to 30 years to develop, so things have to move.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
