Photo: The Canadian Press

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday expanded a drought emergency to a large swath of the nation's most populous state while seeking more than $6 billion in multiyear water spending as one of the warmest, driest springs on record threatens another severe wildfire season across the American West.

The Democratic governor said he is acting amid “acute water supply shortages" in northern and central parts of California as he called again for voluntary conservation. Yet the state is in relatively better shape than it was when the last five-year drought ended in 2017, he said, as good habits have led to a 16% reduction in water usage.

His emergency declaration now includes 41 of 58 counties, covering 30% of California's nearly 40 million people, and he said a further expansion is likely as conditions worsen. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows most of the state and the American West is in extensive drought just a few years after California emerged from the last punishing multiyear dry spell.

“We’re staring down at what could be disastrous summer and fall, with the potential of communities running out water, and fires," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, who accompanied Newsom to the announcement made before a Central Valley reservoir with a deep bathtub ring of dry earth surrounded by browning grass.

Like most of the state's extensive interconnected system of reservoirs and canals, the San Luis Reservoir is at less than 60% of its seasonal average as scarce winter rain and snow turns to a dry summer that Newsom said is imperiled by climate change.

Officials fear an extraordinarily dry spring presages a wildfire season like last year, when flames burned a record 6,562 square miles (16,996 square kilometres).

“The hots are getting a lot hotter in this state, the dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom said. “We have a conveyance system, a water system, that was designed for a world that no longer exists.”

That requires the state to envision “a much more resilient, a much more vibrant, much more dynamic water delivery system,” he said, noting that the one largely constructed in the last mid-century to carry water from Northern California to the south, “helped us build the world’s largest middle class" by enabling the state's population and agricultural growth.

The governor is asking state lawmakers to approve what he said is a record $5.1 billion over four years for water projects, plus another $1 billion to help an estimated million Californians who are behind on their water bills in part because of the economic hardship of the pandemic.

His proposed water spending includes $1.3 billion for drinking water and wastewater systems, prioritizing smaller and poorer communities.

Another $200 million would go to repair canals damaged when the ground beneath them sank as more groundwater was pulled from wells.

Other projects would address groundwater cleanup, water recycling, fish and wildlife habitat, flood preparedness, weather forecasting, and agricultural water use.

His expanded drought emergency declaration includes the counties in the Klamath River, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Tulare Lake watersheds across much of the northern and central parts of the state.

The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides about a third of the state’s water, was at just 59% of average on April 1, when it is normally at its peak.