Colorado River collapse alarms Southern California water agency Play

Southern California's main water agency says it is alarmed by the conditions on the Colorado River, which may actually not have enough water to generate electricity this summer.

The federal government is ready to cut the water delivered to Arizona and Nevada by 40 percent as projections for the Colorado sink to new lows. That's bad.

But there was so much rain in Northern California this year that the major dams up there are 99 percent full. That's good.

But the Sierra Nevada is in extreme drought. We only got 18 percent of our normal snowpack this year, and all that snow has melted. That's bad.

With the full dams, Sacramento has increased allocations to 45 percent of requests for the State Water Project. The allocation establishes how much water the state plans to deliver to the 29 public water agencies served by the SWP, which provides water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. That's good.

Call all this the whipsaw effect of global warming on California's water supply, and it will have an effect on Malibu. But for now, with all that water stored at the dams up north, it looks like Malibu will have no water shortage this fall.

As for the collapse of the Colorado River — which also supplies the LA area — the Metropolitan Water District calls that alarming. But the MWD says its investments in Northern California water supplies, as well as storage, increased water efficiency and new local supplies, has prepared us for this.