How much imported water comes from the State vs. the Colorado River?

Figuring it all out is hard because the 'numbers bounce all over the place.'

Determining what percentage of Southern California’s water comes from any single source is complicated. Situations vary considerably every year, according to Karl Seckel, the former chief engineer for the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC), the county’s water wholesaler.

Seckel now sits on MWDOC’s board of directors.

“You can see that the numbers bounce all over the place,” he said in a Feb. 2022 email full of statistics he had gathered at the request of SC Water Wars. “The accounting of water use is not consistent from source to source and there are many nuances.”

Photo gallery (left to right from top): Mono Lake today (State Water Board presentation earlier this year); Yosemite Falls 1964 (screen shot from 1964 8m home movie take by my father when I was 10yo); all other photos taken by the author at Hoover Dam in 2014. Click on any photo square to see the enlarged photos.