Aquafornia

You’ve probably heard by now, but the Great Salt Lake is drying up. The lake reached record lows this summer, dropping to 4,190.1 feet in July. To put this in perspective, the lake was flexing about 3,000 square miles in the 90s. Now, it’s withered to less than 1,000.  There are some obvious things we can do about this, mostly on the agricultural side of things. But now we’re hearing of all kinds of less obvious ways we could save it, like amplifying snow storms or piping in water from California, among other ideas. … One of those ideas is called cloud seeding. The Utah Division of Water Resources explains it this way: “Ground-based seeders shoot silver iodide into winter clouds where it helps form ice crystals. 

November is historically one of California’s worst months for deadly, wind driven mega wildfires. This year, there has been far less large runaway wildfires statewide, rainy conditions are to thank. … Mother nature has been kind to California so far this year, there have been fewer extreme heat spells, far fewer wind events, and more humidity. … But, California is still in a dangerous drought. The state’s six giant mega reservoirs, Shasta, Oroville, Trinity, New Melones, Don Pedro and San Luis, on average are only at 33%  capacity. Normally, all six are near 54%.

Related articles: 

• NOAA: Warm, dry October intensifies U.S. drought
• Fresno Bee: Wet weather to continue in Fresno early this week. But is this storm a drought buster?
• Press Democrat: Editorial - Enjoy the rain, but don’t expect it to last 

A Los Angeles County judge on Monday advanced LA’s lawsuit against Monsanto over chemicals the city says have contaminated its water supply. Monsanto filed a demurrer — essentially a series of objections to the city’s complaint — arguing, among other things, that the city filed a public nuisance claim “for property located outside the city’s jurisdictional boundaries.” … The city sued Monsanto in March over polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a “probable” human carcinogen, and which were banned in 1979 but have nonetheless lingered in a variety of older products like paints, sealants and electrical equipment. According to LA’s complaint, and similar complaints filed by other California cities, rain causes those chemicals to seep into rivers, lakes and streams.

Millions of tons of riverine plastic waste enter the ocean via estuaries annually. The plastics accumulate, fragment, mix and interact with organisms in these dynamic systems, but such processes have received limited attention relative to open-ocean sites. In this Perspective, we discuss the occurrence and convergence of microplastics at estuarine fronts, focusing on their interactions with physical, geochemical and biological processes. Microplastic transformation can be enhanced within frontal systems owing to strong turbulence and interactions with sediment and biological particles, exacerbating the potential ecosystem impacts. The formation of microplastic hotspots at estuarine fronts could be a target for future plastic pollution mitigation efforts. 

Operations at one of Spain’s largest hydropower plants have been halted due to drought-like conditions, foreshadowing the future of the rapidly receding Lake Mead. Electric utility company Endesa SA has shut down its facility in Mequinenza, Zaragoza, Spain after its water levels receded below 23 percent capacity, Bloomberg reported. This is below the minimum required to produce electricity. The plant first opened in 1966, and until now, has never been shut down. Spain is suffering one of the most severe droughts seen in more than a decade, with around 32 percent of the country affected due to rising temperatures and lack of rainfall.

The state awarded $300,000 to the Allensworth Progressive Association, a local nonprofit, to “implement neighborhood-level projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve public health and the environment and expand economic opportunity for residents,” according to a press release from the Governor’s office. The money will be used, in part, for planning flood control and infrastructure for wastewater management. … Funding comes from the state’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which awarded $96 million to 10 disadvantaged communities throughout the state last month. The projects aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 64,000 metric tons, according to the press release.

City officials recently met with the Bureau of Reclamation about the current and forecasted conditions of the Colorado River Basin. Needles City Manager Rick Daniels, at the Nov. 1 Public Utilities Board meeting, said that as of Oct. 16 Lake Powell is 25% full and Lake Mead is at 28% — for a total system storage capacity of 33%. … BOR, he said, is forecasting that by the end of the year the Lower Colorado River Basin will be in a Level 1 shortage with a high possibility of being in a Level 2 shortage, which would mean “further cutbacks particularly in the more junior water rights states.”

A flash-flood warning mistakenly went out to a far larger area than intended Tuesday as a heavy storm continued to lash Southern California, killing at least one person and forcing multiple swift-water rescue attempts. The warning, which was meant for about 1,500 people in the Fish fire burn area east of Duarte, went wide when a “glitch” changed the small, targeted area to all of L.A. County, according to the National Weather Service. The warning was canceled, and a corrected warning was sent to those in the burn scar area. Although the weather service issues such warnings, the alerts that are sent to cellphones come from a separate, federally managed system that the weather service does not control, said John Dumas, a meteorologist with the Oxnard office.

Related articles: 

• NBC – Los Angeles: Evacuations, Water Rescues, Traffic: Election Day Storm Drenches SoCal

With a harsh desert climate fed only by a river over 80 miles away, water conservation is always on the minds of our Imperial Valley farmers, who demonstrate on a daily basis how to maximize water-use efficiencies while increasing their yields. Since 2003, IID has implemented and managed large-scale conservation programs that have yielded over 7.2 million acre-feet of conserved water to fulfill the obligations of the nation’s largest agriculture-to-urban water conservation and transfer program…. IID believes that the key to accomplishing Reclamation’s call for 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of Colorado River reductions to protect critical reservoir elevations is to develop cooperative solutions that respect the Law of the River, existing agreements and the water-rights priority system. 
-Written by Tina Shields, water department manager for the Imperial Irrigation District, which supplies Imperial Valley agriculture.