Please Note: The headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here, and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
Employees of the state Department of Water Resources, with the help of firefighting crews, were cutting brush and watering down landscapes around Lake Oroville to prevent the 117,000-acre blaze from damaging the reservoir’s infrastructure, including the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam.
This is a wet place by California standards. It averages about 55 inches of rain a year, thanks to its prime location in the verdant foothills of the Sierra Nevada, which wrings rain out of Pacific storms. But when the Camp fire sparked last Thursday, Paradise was parched. … Across California, the lack of autumn rain is having dire consequences.
Both nature and humans share blame for California’s devastating wildfires, but forest management did not play a major role, despite President Donald Trump’s claims, fire scientists say.
The blaze came on the heels of one of the hottest summers on record for the region, after years of drought that left the woodlands in the Santa Monica Mountains bone dry. … During the firefight, Los Angeles County Waterworks District No. 29, which serves Malibu, saw a significant loss of pressure in its water distribution system, something that didn’t go unnoticed by residents.
President Trump, who toured Southern states after deadly hurricanes in recent months, has not scheduled a visit to California as the state battles deadly fires. But he did issue a declaration late Monday clearing the way for federal aid to flow to fire victims.
The House Natural Resources Committee, soon to be under Democratic control, is gearing up to hold the Trump administration accountable on environmental issues.
The Klamath Tribes on Thursday announced they have withdrawn a lawsuit regarding lake levels in Upper Klamath Lake against the Bureau of Reclamation. The lawsuit was awaiting a court date in Portland, after being moved from a federal court in San Francisco court in July by U.S. District Judge William Orrick.
Seven candidates are poised to make their case next week to replace retiring Monterey Peninsula Water Management District director Bob Brower Sr., a position that could play a key role in influencing the future of the water district’s public buyout effort involving California American Water’s Monterey-area water system as mandated by Measure J.
The Marin Municipal Water District Board of Directors has selected Bennett Horenstein, a longtime Bay Area water and wastewater official, to become its new general manager.
Eyes peeled and necks craning, underneath the eucalyptus trees people milled about in a mutual quest to see the migrating monarchs, their voices uniting in a chorus of oohs and aahs as a flurry of brightly colored wings took to the sky. Monarch season at Santa Cruz’s Natural Bridges State Park has officially arrived.
More than 120 special districts — including several metropolitan, a few library and a couple of ambulance, hospital, housing, cemetery, water and recreation districts — asked voters for relief under Colorado’s Gallagher Amendment.
Prompted by a court ruling restricting their access to groundwater, private water tankers in Chennai went on strike in October, a move that shut down hotels, IT firms, and other businesses and affected thousands of households that rely on water delivered by the trucks.
Until 2014, handwashing facilities were scarce across much of Liberia. The 14-year conflict that ended in 2003 wiped out the country’s water pipe infrastructure, even in the capital, Monrovia. Most of LIberia’s 4.7 million people were left without access to running water, and the taps of hospitals and health facilities ran dry.
The Department of Water Resources announced last week that they had met their goal of reconstructing the main spillway at Oroville Dam by Nov. 1. They’re prepared for the upcoming winter, spokespersons for DWR said.
During the 2012-2016 drought, the state received more than 2,500 domestic well failure reports, the majority of which were in the Central Valley (DWR 2018). This left thousands of people without a reliable source of drinking water for months and, in some cases, years. The crisis drew national attention as well as local and state investment and intervention in many communities.
At Colorado Mesa University’s Upper Colorado River Basin Water Forum this week in Grand Junction, a distinguished panel of the Colorado River Basin brain trust cheerfully dodged an audience question about what the basin states’ Plan B is if Arizona can’t come to the internal agreement needed to sign on to a Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of New Mexico released a draft report on Friday about the possibility of someday reusing or recycling wastewater from the oil and gas industry. According to the draft white paper compiled by the EPA and three state agencies, “Given that drought is no stranger to New Mexico, decisions about water are growing ever more complicated and meaningful.”
California voters on Tuesday rejected a water bond for the first time in almost 30 years, disregarding pleas from its backers that the money would fix crumbling infrastructure, bring clean drinking water to disadvantaged communities and kick-start badly needed environmental restoration projects.
The Klamath Tribes have dismissed a pending lawsuit against a federal agency over several endangered fish species in the Upper Klamath Lake, but the tribes maintain the agency’s actions have brought the fish close to extinction.
