California policymakers are the last line of defense against the federal government’s attempt to facilitate a water heist from beneath our Mojave Desert. Cadiz Inc. seeks to extract 50,000 acre-feet of water from an underground basin in the Mojave each year and pump it to urban users near the coast.
In a recent letter to The Sacramento Bee, Felicia Marcus, Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, wrote “hundreds of thousands of Californians lack access to clean water for drinking, bathing, and cooking.” She goes on to say that it is her “job to champion the concerns of ordinary Californians and deliver life’s basic necessities.”
In July, I [Mark J. Spalding] spent four days at The Klosters Forum, an intimate small-town setting in the Swiss Alps that fosters more innovative collaborations by bringing together disruptive and inspirational minds to tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. … This year, 70 of us gathered to talk about the future of plastic in our world, especially as to how we can reduce the harm from plastic pollution to the ocean.
At the populous edges of the nation, red, color of danger, billows through forest and sea. The uncontrolled wildfires in California and red tide in Florida have darkened summer in the states named for gold and sunshine. Burned-up homes and belly-up marine life stretch for miles in some of America’s most-famous respites, emptying the white-canvas tents of Yosemite and the white-sand beaches of southwest Florida.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced today the selection of approximately $2 million in Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency grants for Fiscal Year 2018. Combined with local cost-share contributions, approximately $4 million in water management improvement projects will be implemented during the next 24 months.
A vital reservoir on the Colorado River will be able to meet the demands of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest for the next 13 months, but a looming shortage could trigger cutbacks as soon as the end of 2019, officials said Wednesday.
The State Water Board is making it clear that it won’t vote next week on a much-disputed proposal to require higher river flows for improving water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta. Felicia Marcus, who chairs the water board, said in a letter Wednesday to the California Natural Resources Agency that final action will be taken at a board meeting later.
Repair and renovation work at the Moccasin Reservoir and dam in Tuolumne County is under way nearly five months after a punishing rainstorm pushed it to the brink of failure, prompting the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people.
More than 260 California water suppliers — many of them small systems in disadvantaged communities — don’t meet safe drinking water standards. One solution to getting those communities clean water is as simple — and as complicated — as connecting them to a larger supplier nearby. At the Foundation’s 35th annual Water Summit Sept. 20 in Sacramento, Camille Pannu, director of the Water Justice Clinic at UC Davis’ Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies, will discuss the complexities of water system mergers and a program underway in the Central Valley that has facilitated more than a dozen such mergers.
About 20 parents and others urged the Simi Valley City Council this week not to let the city use groundwater as drinking water for residences, arguing it is contaminated by the nearby Santa Susana Field Laboratory and is likely cancer-causing.
The Bureau of Reclamation finished Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, obliterating one of the most spectacular red-rock canyons in the Southwest and altering the flow of the mighty Colorado River.
Over the weekend, sheriff’s deputies with help from California Highway Patrol, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Forest Service held a “proactive enforcement detail” in the Tule Canyon area located east of Springville on Highway 190 — between Springville and Camp Nelson in Giant Sequoia National Monument.
Bird populations have collapsed in the desert along the Nevada-California border, and climate change could be to blame, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past century, the number of bird species has fallen by an average of 43 percent at survey sites across an area larger than New York state.
Once threatened with near extinction, one of California’s most beautiful waterfowl is making a comeback along the Kern River thanks to farsighted environmental management, hunting regulations and citizen volunteers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, extinction of the wood duck was described as imminent.
It’s shaping up to be another rough year for aquatic birds, as witnessed by the nonprofit International Bird Rescue headquartered in Fairfield. So far this year, the waterbird rescue organization has treated more than 2,500 aquatic birds at its San Francisco Bay-Delta Wildlife Center in Fairfield and at its second rehabilitation unit in Southern California.
Conditions have been ripe for the erratic fire behavior that has led to explosive growth of the Ranch fire, which along with the River fire makes up the 364,145-acre Mendocino Complex. The days are so hot and dry that whatever gains firefighters see overnight when the humidity goes up quickly fade when the sun hits the fuels and sucks the moisture out.
Every February, white petals blanket first the almond trees, then the floor of the central valley, an 18,000-square-mile expanse of California that begins at the stretch of highway known as the Grapevine just south of Bakersfield and reaches north to the foothills of the Cascades.
High levels of indicator bacteria, which test for fecal contamination, showed up in samples taken on Monday at Monterey Municipal Beach, Asilomar State Beach and Carmel Beach.
Humboldt Pet Supply staffers and local volunteers will be working together Saturday to help reduce the community’s environmental paw print by cleaning up abandoned pet waste at the Arcata Marsh.
Now that plastic straws may be headed for extinction, could Americans’ love of balloons be deflated? The joyous celebration of releasing balloons into the air has long bothered environmentalists, who say the pieces that fall back to earth can be deadly to seabirds and turtles that eat them.
