With historic droughts strangling the world, from California to
Africa, Senator Paul Simon’s book Tapped Out: Water: The Coming
Crisis and What We Can Do About it, is now available in
paperback and as an eBook published by Inprint Books. …
In Brazil, the current drought is one of the worst ever
recorded. … In Madagascar, drought has left hundreds of
thousands of people malnourished, pushing the
country to the edge of famine. In the last two
decades alone, the United Nations estimates drought has
affected 1.5 billion people and led to economic
losses of at least $124 billion.
Brewers from Colorado to Wyoming to California are watching
nervously as [drought] grows more acute. …
[Mitch] Steele, who spent a decade as brewmaster at Stone
Brewing outside San Diego, says most of Southern California’s
water blends Colorado River water with Sierra Nevada mountain
snowpack transferred via the California Aqueduct. Extreme
drought conditions in California results in suppliers upping
the blend percentage from the Colorado River, which picks up a
large quantity of minerals as it travels the long distance.
California is immersed in a third year of drought, with
January, February and March of 2022 experiencing the lowest
precipitation on record. Weather whiplash of big storms
followed by dry spells makes every drop of rain, every flake of
snow, and every water molecule vital this year for families,
farms, the environment and the economy. But outdated
infrastructure and the orientation of the pumping facilities in
the south Delta limits our ability to capture available water
from storm events. The Delta Conveyance Project would help
resolve this limitation.
The large, intense wildfires that have scorched the Pacific
Northwest in recent years are altering the seasonal pattern of
air pollution and causing a surge in unhealthy air pollutants
in August — as well as undermining clean air gains and posing
potential health risks to millions across the continent, a new
study found. The research, helmed by scientists at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and published this week
in Nature Communications, pointed to a sharp increase in carbon
monoxide levels during the month of August — a time when
carbon monoxide levels have historically remained low.
This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a fortress
of 80-foot bluffs is a California tourism poster if there ever
was one. Nothing disturbs the pristine, sunny view, except –
once you’re aware of them – the nurdles. But you have to look
close – on-your-hands-and-knees close – to see one. And once
you do, you see another and another – so many that you may not
think of this, or any beach, the same way again. Mark
McReynolds is trying to bring into focus these tiny
preproduction plastic pellets that manufacturers melt down to
mold everything from car bumpers to toothpaste caps.
During Gov. Gavin Newsom’s visit to Butte County on Tuesday,
Newsom said he will ask the legislature for $750 million to
help with drought conditions. At the Hyatt Powerplant at Lake
Oroville, which shut down last year due to record low lake
levels, Newsom spoke about how the state needs a different
approach to water conservation. Newsom already invested $5.2
billion in the past three years for water security for all
Californians.
Growing up in a Northern Californian fishing town, Nate
Mantua’s family owned a business connected to the local salmon
fishing industry. When one of the worst El Niño events ever
recorded hit the West Coast in 1982 and 1983, the salmon
fishery his family relied on suffered. Nate would go on to
study how to predict El Niño events in graduate school, years
later. Now he works to understand the impacts of climate
change. Nate leads a team of salmon ecologists, biologists,
freshwater and ocean experts at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest
Fisheries Science Center.
This Friday marks Earth Day. This year the drought and
dwindling water supplies top the list of environmental
challenges here in the southwest. Scientists remain at odds
over Gov. Doug Ducey’s plan to help solve Arizona’s water
issues by desalinating water from the Sea of Cortez. Ducey
unveiled the idea in his State of the State address earlier
this year. He proposed a $1 billion project to draw treated
water to Morelos Dam near Yuma, but the challenges to the idea
remain difficult to solve.
The controversial Kings County water pipeline saga pitting two
of the region’s largest water players has turned into a
campaign issue for Kings County elections. Water giant
Sandridge Partners, led by John Vidovich, began installing a
sprawling water pipeline system that would be part of a larger
interconnected conveyance system that will run from north of
Highway 198, west of Lemoore, to the Blakeley Canal, south of
Stratford.
It’s the proverbial star of the show at Joshua Tree National
Park, and while Joshua Trees look peculiar, with ragged
scraggly limbs, they’re actually quite special. … But
[Dr. Cameron Barrows at UC Riverside] said Joshua Trees
are starting to disappear due to climate change.
… Barrows said due to climate change, many have stopped
reproducing.
Several years ago on this site, we celebrated the 20th
anniversary of the Center for Watershed Sciences—what we termed
a “really good idea.” That blog described the founding
principles of the Center that live on today. A few years
after starting the Center, we had a second really good idea—a
course called Ecogeomorphology. For us, the most
rewarding aspect of the Center was the opportunity to
collaborate with colleagues from different disciplines to try
and address complex water management problems.
Arizona’s top water official says he never thought this day
would come so soon. Federal officials are warning that the
West’s escalating water crisis could put some Arizona
communities’ ”health and safety” at risk, by cutting off
their supply of drinking water.
As California sinks deeper into drought conditions, Dahle does
not favor imposing mandatory water use reductions … He raised
particular concerns, as a farmer, that harsh restrictions would
further devastate California agriculture by forcing farms to
fallow hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Dahle said the
state should put a greater emphasis on increasing water storage
by building the proposed Sites Reservoir. He also has a novel
idea to improve water supply by thinning forests, a policy that
would offer other benefits such as providing timber and
reducing wildfire risks.
Hundreds of millions of new federal dollars are headed to the
region to help fund the massive Natomas levee project.
President Joe Biden has signed legislation that includes $157
million for an existing project in the Natomas Basin, as well
as $17.9 million to begin construction in West Sacramento. In
addition, Biden’s budget proposal for fiscal 2023, the 12 month
period that begins Oct. 1, includes another $172 million for
the levee project and $79.7 million to help the West Sacramento
project.
A new UC Riverside study shows it’s not how much extra water
you give your plants, but when you give it that
counts. This is especially true near Palm Springs, where
the research team created artificial rainfall to examine the
effects on plants over the course of two years. This
region has both winter and summer growing seasons, both of
which are increasingly impacted by drought and, occasionally,
extreme rain events.
Despite being the largest estuary on the West Coast and
supporting both a highly diverse ecosystem and a multi-billion
dollar economy, the San Francisco Bay Estuary was not getting
its fair share of federal funding for restoration, according to
local lawmakers and environmental organizations. That changed
this year after Congress and President Joe Biden approved more
than $50 million in funding to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for projects to restore lost wetlands,
improve water quality, address pollution and bolster sea-level
rise defenses throughout San Francisco Bay.
A new study warns that the benefits of California’s Water
Resilience Portfolio Initiative might not be evenly distributed
without proper structure to the agreements. Partnerships
between water utilities, irrigation districts and other
stakeholders in California will play a critical role in funding
new infrastructure under the Water Resilience Portfolio
Initiative announced in 2020 by the state’s governor, Gavin
Newsom.
As Clean Up The Lake nears completion of their 72-mile project,
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak joined the crew on Monday to thank
them for their progress thus far. On Monday, April 11, Sisolak
joined officials from the Nevada Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources, along with staff and volunteers from CUTL
and project sponsors Tahoe Fund and Tahoe Blue Vodka, at
Nevada’s Sand Harbor State Park to celebrate the historic
initiative to remove underwater trash and debris from nearshore
areas across the entire Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Over the past few months, the state has ramped up
communications efforts around the Save Our Water campaign
focused on encouraging Californians to reduce water use as
drought conditions worsen. This week, the campaign rolled out
new content across various multimedia platforms including
social, digital and streaming platforms, out-of-home, and
radio. The multilingual ads communicate the urgent need to save
water and provide actionable steps Californians can take.
La Niña continues in the tropical Pacific, with both the ocean
and atmosphere clearly reflecting La Niña conditions. The
current forecast favors the continuation of La Niña through the
summer (59% chance), with a slightly lower chance into the fall
(50-55% chance). A third-year La Niña would be pretty
unusual—we’ve only seen two others since 1950. I’ll run the
numbers to see how current conditions add up and what’s
factoring into the odds for La Niña later this year.
