The thousands of drivers traversing Interstate 5 on any given day this winter can see for themselves: nothing even remotely like a water shortage currently plagues the State Water Project.

This is completely obvious from the major viewpoint off the east side of the interstate between Justine and Patterson, from which it’s clear that all major canals of the project just south of the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are full to capacity, or nearly so.

It’s much the same a few dozen miles southwest where the water project’s largest man-made lake, the San Luis Reservoir, is chock full. Sand-colored margins that grew steadily larger during the drought of the 2010-20 decade have long since been inundated, with the artificial lake shining bright blue on crisp, sunny winter days.

Water officials also promise San Luis will soon be expanded.

So why does California’s Department of Water resources persist in providing preliminary farm water allocations that can only be described as pikerish?

It may be due to insecurity, a sense that the Pacific Ocean is due for a long-running “La Niña” condition that could produce a new drought and lower water levels of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project to the dangerously dry levels of seven and eight years ago. Or it may simply be bureaucrats reminding farmers that they control the lifeblood of America’s most productive agricultural region, also one of the five largest industries in California.

But the reality — especially after heavy “atmospheric river” rains in mid-November and December drenched Northern California — is that farms will receive far more water than the 5% of requested amounts promised them in late December, when state officials behaved as if the November downpours would be the water year’s last precipitation.

Yes, it is the duty of water officials to husband California’s water supplies to make sure neither cities nor farms ever run completely dry. But 5% made no real sense.

It’s as if the bureaucrats who work for Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted to put the lie to his post-election pledges to pay more heed to the Central Valley and its interests, whose sense of being disrespected was one reason that region was the only major part of California carried by Donald Trump in last fall’s election.

This adds up to a need to change some practices, including a few outlined by Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources. “We need to prepare for any scenario, and this early in the season we need to take a conservative approach to managing our water supply,” she said.

But that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for farmers to plan crops unless they depend greatly on ground water, a resource becoming increasingly depleted while ground levels above aquifers subside. And they have subsided, as anyone can deduce from seeing onetime irrigation pipes that now rise several feet above current ground levels.

Better to compromise a bit in years following a few seasons of heavy rain, today’s situation. Another way to put this might be to ask why state bureaucrats push a number and then essentially wink at farmers to tell them what they’re hearing is nowhere near what will eventually govern. That’s what happened last year, too, when the initial estimate of what farmers would get was 10% of requests and the ultimate amount was 40% — still using conservative allocations to make sure — unnecessarily — that reservoirs and canals remained full all year round, rather than just partially full.

Even now, after a 2024 that was much drier than 2023 and an early winter with virtually no rain in Southern California, drinking water reservoirs remain nearly full. Diamond Valley Lake, near Hemet, the largest such potable water storage facility in Southern California, was at 97% of capacity shortly after Christmas.

All this makes it high time for California water bureaucrats to cut out their act and provide farmers and other citizens realistic supply estimates, rather than constantly reserving the right to leave water districts and their people and industries high and dry, even when supplies are copious.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.