A chilling statement from the Orange County Grand Jury provides the context of urgency for why residents need to become more self-sufficient and less wasteful with one of our regions most valuable resources:
The residents of Orange County do not seem to understand the perilous conditions within which they live. The assumption that … we will continue to find new sources of water … is wrong. Those days are over …. Every source of water coming into southern California from afar … is increasingly unreliable.” Further more, the Grand Jury has learned from multiple, expert sources that Orange County’s water supply is very vulnerable to extended outages from catastrophic disruptions and other long-term system failures. These are issues above and beyond concerns of drought. Critical parts of the water supply infrastructure upon which much of California and Orange County relies is in a deplorable state of disrepair and neglect. … Water pricing to pay for the various, necessary, costly supply sources, under even the best-case scenarios, will rise to levels never before seen. In this water-scarce region, consumers are facing dire circumstances regardless of population growth and housing construction. … Public awareness of water supply issues is far below acceptable levels and must be improved (Orange County Grand Jury 2008-2009).
On top of being oblivious to water supply issues, Orange County residents are not widely aware that Southern California is known as one of the smoggiest regions in the nation. California, as a whole, produces roughly 1.4 percent of the world's, and 6.2 percent of the total U.S., greenhouse gases (California Government Climate Change Portal 2010). In Southern California, on-road mobile source emissions are responsible for about 76% of carbon monoxide (CO), as well as 45% of volatile organic compounds (VOC), and 63% of nitrogen oxides (NOx), the precursors to ozone and other components of photochemical smog (South Coast Air Quality Management District, 2003).
Much of the city planning in Orange County developed around the automobile. Unlike most metropolitan areas Orange County is not connected by one large public transit system. Getting to and from any given destination is roughly a twenty-minute drive and the public transportation that there is, is not a time efficient option. Though Orange County is a metropolis built of many large cities, many residents find work outside of the county lines. An average commuter who makes the common daily drive from Orange County to Los Angeles puts roughly 21,120 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air each year. The best scientific evidence is that the increase of this gas in the atmosphere will have a variety of effects on worldwide climate, including increase of average temperature, rising sea level, and increasing weather-related disasters (Texas State Energy Conservation Office 2011). One Southern Californian commuter’s yearly carbon contribution alone would take over 1000 trees to absorb – multiply that by millions of commuters and the problem becomes epic.
California's Climate Change Research Center states that:
During the last 50 years, winter and spring temperatures have been warmer, spring snow levels in lower and mid-elevations have dropped, the snowpack has been melting one to four weeks earlier, and sea levels are projected to rise. Not only will there be a change in average temperatures but there is a projected increase in extreme conditions such as a rising incidence of "heat storms." While these trends will impact all of us, they will have an especially large consequence for California's agricultural industry. The impact on the energy infrastructure in the state is likely to be significant as well. Lower levels of snowpack and associated decreases and changes in the spring runoff will affect hydroelectric generation. A large number of critical power plants are located at sea level along the California coast to take advantage of nearby cooling water and even small rises in sea level will impact those facilities. Increased use of air-conditioning in homes (especially those built further inland and away from coastal areas) creates rising demand for electricity, as well as additional load on transmission and distribution lines to transport power to these areas. The increase in inland home construction also creates a feedback effect in terms of increasing emissions from automobiles traveling greater distances to transport people to work in urban coastal areas (California Government Energy Commission 2009).
