As the atmospheric river continues to drench Southern California, causing flood warnings across many counties, one expert tells KNX News' Chief Correspondent Charles Feldman - the state could be doing more to collect the massive rainfall to prepare for future droughts.
UC Irvine Professor David Feldman, specializes in water resources management and policy. He said efforts to harvest rainwater from storm surges have increased in recent years; however, there are some things to keep in mind.
"A lot of these projects will take time, years, perhaps before they come to fruition. Another thing to bear in mind is that this atmospheric river is a relatively one-off kind of phenomenon," he said.
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Professor Feldman said some scientists believe that with climate change, more extreme weather events are in our future, "And if so, it will become very challenging to be able to harvest all of this water before it goes to the ocean."
Quicker action and stronger political will are, in Professor Feldman's view, vital to developing a more robust rain collection system, but a lack of storage locations seems to be a significant hurdle.
"In many cases, it's simply the availability. We have a lot of paved surfaces in Southern California, and in order to store this water, particularly underground, we're gonna have to figure out how to get the water underground. So it means that we're gonna have to remake a lot of our physical landscape," said the professor.
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