Wednesday April 30, 2025
UCLA Anderson Review —
The summer of 2022 brought worrying news for California’s water supply.
Shasta Lake (seen above in 2024, having filled back up), the state’s largest reservoir and a critical source of water for millions, saw its levels drop to 38% of capacity in July — a historic low for that time of year. That drought laid bare a growing challenge: how to balance immediate water demand with long-term supply in an era of increasing climate uncertainty.
In a working paper, UCLA Anderson’s Felipe Caro, University of Mannheim’s Martin Glanzer and UCLA Anderson’s Kumar Rajaram develop a model for the management of reservoir systems over the long term. It’s designed to minimize societal costs of a water shortage. In a case study of California’s Sacramento River Basin, the authors’ management policy reduced average shortage costs — the cost of getting water from other, last-resort, sources — by 40% compared with the current policy, potentially remarkable savings.