California has only one year of water left: Scientist

New York, March 15
The state of California has only about one year's worth of water left in storage and its groundwater is rapidly depleting, a NASA scientist has found.

According to Jay Familglietti, the state has been running out of water since the current years-long drought and storage levels have been falling since at least 2002 as revealed by satellite data, the Los Angeles Times reported.

He has called for an immediate rationing of water, including for domestic, municipal, agricultural and industrial uses.

Other solutions to rationing are desalination plants.

San Diego is building the largest ocean desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.

The $1-billion project will deliver 50 million gallons of drinking water a day and is scheduled to open in 2016.

California had the driest January this year since record-keeping began in 1895, with groundwater and snowpack levels at all-time lows.

Californians use an average of 181 gallons of water each day and a total of around 2.5 trillion gallons a year.