Opinion: Rocky water future ahead
Our view: Latest report on dwindling supplies is cause for concern, not alarm

Tuesday's report from two Scripps Institute of Oceanography researchers saying that there is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead and Lake Powell, two massive reservoirs along the Colorado River, will run dry by 2021 is a much-needed reminder that our way of life depends on environmental factors taking place thousands of miles away.

While we tend to obsess about local rain levels, San Diego County, and Southern California in general, is actually more dependent on snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies for its supply of water.

In fact, http://www.sdcwa.org/about/faqs.phtml#watercomefrom only 10 percent of our water comes from local sources.

The dwindling ability of the Colorado River to meet the demands of growing communities in California, Arizona and Nevada is not news, however.

Following an eight-year drought, Lake Powell and Lake Mead are already half-empty. According to federal hydrologists, they may never refill.

And the Scripps researchers are hardly the first to make the connection between decreasing snowfall, drought and global warming.

The researchers themselves made clear that their report is a warning, not a prediction.

Even at half-full, water authorities say they have enough water to supply California for two years, even if the Colorado River stopped flowing altogether.

And it's not as if the folks responsible for managing water supplies have been caught off guard. Water agencies across the West have for years been preparing for this expected decrease in water supplies.

But this report does give all of us an opportunity, once again, to think long and hard about changing our wicked water ways.

While conservation is certainly part of that equation, the most effective conservation program would include free market reforms that make water more expensive as it becomes more scarce, thereby -- as if by magic -- limiting consumption.

Of course, the western slope of the Colorado Rockies is seeing more snow than it has in years. Maybe this problem will solve itself -- but don't count on it.