Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, there is not enough snowpack. It's currently well below the seasonal average for the last 15 years [1], the average for that period is lower than the historical average was when California water policy was first established, and 2014 was the driest period California had experienced for the last 1200 years [2]. Only 2017 and 2019 provided some relief since then. Current models predict a warmer and wetter Californi…
I hope we start rolling out desalination at scale before things get dire. As far as powering that goes, we'd either have to start deploying as much renewable energy generation as physically possible or get over our collective fear of building more nuclear power plants. Or both. One of those self contained, passively safe tanker truck sized 100 MWe reactors that last 30 years that LLNL has proposed a few times sounds…
I'm skeptical that desalination will be enough to prevent a reckoning over water in the near future though. It eases the strain on parched coastal communities, but it's pretty hard to move a lot of water very far inland. It's also expensive, in both up-front and ongoing costs, and the predicted intermittent wet years are going to make the economics of desalination tricky. And then there's the environmental impact; it's a good bet that 40 years from now, the state will be even drier than it is now, and 40 years of brine dumped up and down the coastline may have more severe consequences than we are anticipating. (To their credit, the Carlsbad project has made a large effort to remediate this with the construction of 60 acres of wetlands.)
For perspective, the Carlsbad plant is the largest in the western hemisphere and it produces enough water for 400,000 residents in one county. It is, aptly, a drop in the bucket.