For the vast majority of California, the record-breaking, five-year drought is over, but some cities like Ojai in Ventura County are not so lucky. With its human-made reservoir, Lake Casitas, still at levels not seen in half a century, some locals have been asking, “Can the Ojai Valley run out of water?”
Acknowledging the real possibility California American Water’s Monterey Peninsula desalination project could be delayed by litigation or other means, and miss critical state water board milestones, Peninsula water officials on Monday night considered their options to deal with the possibility.
Pat Brister sits at a conference table and ponders the subject that preoccupies her professional life: water. Brister, the council president in St. Tammany Parish, a county north of New Orleans, calculates that more than a third of her workday is spent thinking about the quietly lapping waters of Lake Pontchartrain outside her door and the intemperate Gulf of Mexico that feeds it.
As glaciers melt and oceans warm, experts say the Pacific waters surrounding California are now rising 30 to 40 times faster than in the last century. The surge—driven by global climate change—will gobble up beachfront and overwhelm coastal cities. A recent U.S. Geological Survey report estimated that up to two-thirds of Southern California beaches could vanish within this century.
While Jack London State Historic Park has not burned, staffers have removed items of critical cultural significance and treated buildings with Thermo-Gel, a fire retardant compound; the park will remain closed until further notice. Historic structures at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, including the observatory, visitor center and a venerable barn, have escaped the flames, and were likewise treated with Thermo-Gel.
Across Napa and Sonoma, vintners finally were able to return this past weekend to fire-scarred Wine Country to see firsthand the fate of their wineries and vineyards.
Work has begun on CalPlant 1 LLC, which will eventually be turning post-harvest rice straw into fiberboard for furniture construction. For weeks, truck after truck has been delivering baled rice straw to the plant site on Highway 162 west of Willows.
In late August, Hurricane Harvey brought record rainfall to Houston. In mid-October, the city’s two large federal reservoirs have finally been emptied of the massive amount of water that had filled them up to their brims.
Raw sewage is pouring into the rivers and reservoirs of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. People without running water bathe and wash their clothes in contaminated streams, and some islanders have been drinking water from condemned wells.
Lightning started a forest fire one August afternoon near this Oregon tourist town, and it was spreading fast. … Just a few months earlier, the U.S. Forest Service and a group of locals representing environmental, logging and recreational interests arranged to thin part of the overgrown forest, creating a buffer zone around Sisters.
In the wake of the drought, California has made tremendous progress on climate-smart water solutions. But even as communities are forging ahead with recapture and reuse projects, we are seeing a gold rush of corporate water projects designed to profit off drought fears.
The farm bill, which is up for congressional reauthorization in 2018, provides a ready-made opportunity for lawmakers to strengthen rural economies. Indeed, that goal was the impetus for the very first farm bill in 1933, which was passed to support struggling farmers who had lost their farms, crops, and earnings in the wake of the Dust Bowl—a period of severe dust storms brought on by drought, poor land management, and soil erosion that devastated the agriculture and ecology of the Great Plains.
Today [Oct. 17], the State Water Board adopted a new statewide policy establishing strict environmental standards for cannabis cultivation in order to protect water flows and water quality in California’s rivers and streams. … “We are establishing the environmental protection rules of the road needed to deal with the expected expansion of cannabis cultivation statewide,” said State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus.
In an about-face, the federal government has given Cadiz Inc. the go-ahead to lay a pipeline for its proposed desert water project in an existing railroad right-of-way.
In its most far-reaching decision in more than 50 years, Silicon Valley’s largest water provider will vote Tuesday on whether to embrace or reject Gov. Jerry Brown’ s $17 billion plan to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
With just more than two weeks until the initial reconstruction of the main spillway at Lake Oroville is supposed to be completed, the Department of Water Resources released operations plan for the reservoir for this coming flood season.
John T. Racanelli, a retired California justice whose pioneering opinions had a profound impact on disability rights and the environment, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. … His most ground-breaking ruling, eponymously known as the Racanelli decision, came in 1986, which established for the first time that the government must protect not just the water rights of farmers and municipalities but also the needs of fish and wildlife.
The way water is acquired and distributed throughout the Santa Clarita Valley changed forever Sunday when Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill creating one new all-encompassing water district for the SCV.
Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill from a Riverside assemblyman inspired by a massive warehouse complex planned for Moreno Valley. Brown’s office announced the veto of AB 890 on Monday, Oct. 16.
