Devastating floods are almost annual
occurrences in the West and in California. With the anticipated
sea level rise and other impacts of a changing climate,
particularly heavy winter rains, flood management is increasingly
critical in California. Compounding the issue are human-made
flood hazards such as levee stability and stormwater runoff.
The United States suffers the world’s second-highest toll from
major weather disasters, according to a new analysis — even
when numbers are adjusted for the country’s wealth. The report
released late last month by Zurich-based reinsurance giant
Swiss Re, which analyzed the vulnerability and damages of 36
different countries, suggests that weather disasters may become
a heavy drag on the U.S. economy — especially as insurers
increasingly pull out of hazardous areas. Those disasters are
driving up insurance rates, compounding inflation and adding to
Americans’ high cost of living. … Some insurers have
stopped offering home insurance policies in California, which
has seen numerous large wildfires in the past few years.
Following a lawsuit filed by hundreds of Pajaro Valley
residents and business owners, farmers and agricultural
landowners and tenants have filed two lawsuits against local,
regional and state agencies they claim are liable for damages
connected to the 2023 Pajaro levee breach and subsequent
flooding. One suit is filed by about a dozen business entities
(and roughly 50 people who are trustees); another by Willoughby
Farms. Each case, filed on March 4 in Monterey County Superior
Court, names a long list of defendants: the counties of
Monterey and Santa Cruz; the Monterey County Water Resources
Agency; Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation
District; Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency; State of
California; and Caltrans. (The Willoughby Farms suit also names
the City of Watsonville and others.)
The Biden administration will be allocating more than $120
million to tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate
change, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. The
funding is designed to help tribal nations adapt to climate
threats, including relocating infrastructure. Indigenous
peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by
severe climate-related environmental threats, which have
already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and
traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner
of the U.S. “As these communities face the increasing
threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging
wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events,
our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience …”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of
Laguna, said in a Wednesday press briefing.
… For millennia seasonal wetlands dotted California’s Central
Valley … But as farms and towns have taken over the
landscape, nearly all those shallow, ephemeral water bodies
have disappeared, leaving avian migrants with scant options for
pit stops. With shorebirds rapidly declining along the Pacific
Flyway, conservationists and landowners have joined forces to
help turn the tide. Launched in
2014, BirdReturns runs via reverse auctions … Since
its inception, the program—jointly run by Audubon California,
The Nature Conservancy, and Point Blue Conservation Science—has
paid more than 100 farmers a total of $2 million to flood
60,000 acres throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.
Buoyed by a recent $15 million grant from the state, the
program is poised to greatly expand its reach.
The European Commission said on Wednesday it was taking Greece
to the EU’s top court for failing to revise its flood risk
management plans, a key tool for EU countries to prepare
themselves against floods. The action comes five months
after the worst rains in Greece flooded its fertile
Thessaly plain, devastating crops and livestock and raising
questions about the Mediterranean country’s ability to deal
with an increasingly erratic climate. Under EU rules,
countries need to update once in six years their flood
management plans, a set of measures aimed to help them mitigate
the risks of floods on human lives, the environment and
economic activities. Greece was formally notified by the
Commission last year that it should finalise its management
plans but the country has so far failed to review, adopt or
report its flood risk management plans, the Commission said in
a statement.
A new study by Cal State Fullerton researchers shows evidence
of two epic floods that occurred within the past 500 years in
Southern California during the Little Ice Age. Their
research is the first-ever, land-based, flood-event evidence
from 1450 to 1850 — a documented period of above-average
wetness in Southern California, said Matthew E. Kirby,
professor of geological sciences. According to scientists,
floods — not earthquakes — represent California’s single most
significant socioeconomic natural hazard risk.
… Climate models predict that the frequency of
large flood-producing precipitation events will increase in the
21st century due to climate change.
As floodwaters receded from the streets of southeastern San
Diego on Jan. 22, two things began to happen. Several local
nonprofits — not trained in disaster response — set up a victim
assistance center at the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA. At the
same time, county and city officials had a series of extreme
miscommunications that delayed the opening of a government-run
assistance center within city limits for nearly two weeks,
according to letters obtained by Voice of San Diego.
Normally in the wake of a disaster, government officials open
what they call a Local Assistance Center near the disaster
site. These assistance centers connect survivors with
government and non-government resources. A survivor could get
anything from a new driver’s license to food or unemployment
benefits.
Just south of Dos Rios Ranch, a much-praised effort at river
restoration, another such project is taking root. It will add
about 380 acres of floodplain and other habitat to the 1,600
acres at Dos Rios. They are near the confluence of the Tuolumne
and San Joaquin rivers, about eight miles southwest of Modesto.
The state-funded project, totaling about $20.8 million, is on
the former Hidden Valley Dairy. Annual feed crops are giving
way to oaks, cottonwoods, willows and other native plants. The
floodplain will take on high river flows that otherwise could
threaten nearby Grayson and downstream towns. The standing
water could recharge the aquifer below for use during droughts.
The place could offer food and shelter to fish, birds, mammals
and other creatures.
A powerful winter storm buried the Sierra last weekend, with
wet weather continuing for days in the Bay Area and Central
Coast. Thunderstorms Wednesday drenched Salinas, dropping
an entire inch in just 25 minutes. After historic weather last
year, intense California storms have persisted this winter,
with strong downpours causing widespread flooding in San Diego
and damaging landslides in places like Los Angeles. Many
ingredients contribute to extreme storm activity, but
scientists agree that climate change is already amping up
winter rains — and may bring even wilder weather in the
future.
A search continues for a woman last seen being carried
downriver in the Angeles National Forest, California sheriff’s
officials said. The 59-year-old woman lost her footing while
crossing a river near the Heaton Flats Trail at 9:51 a.m.
Saturday, March 9, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office said
in a news release. Strong river currents swept her downstream,
deputies said. She had been hiking with friends. … Some
teams have been airlifted to search areas because of the rugged
terrain and swift river currents, deputies said. The sheriff’s
office encouraged hikers to use “extreme caution” when crossing
rivers.
California has set ambitious climate goals, including phasing
out the use of fossil fuels and becoming carbon neutral by
2045. Our guest today is here to talk about the role nature can
play in meeting those goals. Laurie Wayburn is the co-founder
and president of the Pacific Forest Trust and the chair of the
California Natural and Working Lands Expert Advisory Committee.
She was also the lead author of a recent report suggesting the
state should invest “as much in nature-based climate solutions
as it has in clean energy and transportation.” With proper
forest management, California could capture 400 million tons of
carbon each year, lower wildfire risk and vastly improve flood
protection in the state.
A report released by the Navy confirmed concerns that for years
have been hanging over the radiological cleanup of San
Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard: that rising seawater
levels, and other environmental factors resulting from climate
change, could cause toxic materials that have long been buried
at the site to surface. The study, called Climate
Resilience Assessment, was included in an ongoing review
process that the Navy must undertake every five years to
evaluate its remediation plan for the former shipyard, which
has long been a designated Superfund site. The shipyard is
also slated for redevelopment into a new neighborhood, with
cleaning efforts by the Navy and its contractors underway for
more than a decade to prepare it for reuse. The report is
the first time that the Navy has studied the impacts of climate
change in relation to the shipyard, which spans hundreds of
acres and contains radioactive waste and other contaminants.
Almost three months after a January storm and flash floods
killed several people and displaced hundreds of San Diego-area
residents, the state is offering one-time
Disaster CalFresh benefits to help families
recover. To be eligible for disaster food benefits, people
must have lived or worked in storm-impacted areas on Jan. 21,
the day record rainfall swelled creeks and rivers, deluging
neighborhoods. About 600 people sought emergency shelter.
California’s Department of Social Services said it will provide
30 days of food benefits to families who qualify.
Anew time-lapse video shared on social media shows Tulare Lake,
California’s ghost lake, disappear after re-forming last year.
A series of atmospheric rivers hit California last year during
an abnormally wet winter season and caused the lake to reemerge
in the San Joaquin Valley. The original lake was once much
larger than Lake Tahoe and was known to be the largest
freshwater lake in the West, but it began to dry up in the late
1800s and fully disappeared 80 years ago when water was
diverted and the land was repurposed for agricultural
uses. Atmospheric rivers are a “long, narrow region in the
atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the
water vapor outside of the tropics,” according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
… Los Angeles desperately needs to become more like a
sponge. That will help to capture more stormwater locally when
rain does come and lessen devastating flooding, said Edith de
Guzman, a UCLA water equity and climate adaptation researcher.
… The Rory M. Shaw Wetlands Park Project will
turn a 46-acre landfill formerly used for materials such as
concrete and gravel into an engineered wetland that can boost
local water supply and alleviate local flooding. It’ll also
become a 15-acre park with a lake and walking paths.
… But now, the biggest barrier to completing the project
is funding, said Mark Pestrella, the director of L.A. County
Department of Public Works, which is spearheading the project
(after it’s constructed, the city of L.A. will take over
maintenance). The new goal is to complete it by 2028 or 2029.
Water management might look different in Marin County as
agencies partner to understand extreme weather better. The
North Marin Water District, the Marin Municipal Water District
and Marin County joined the Center for Western Weather and
Water Extremes Water Affiliates Group in January. The group
researches “atmospheric rivers” and other severe weather to
improve water management, mitigate flood risk and increase
water supply reliability. … The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration says atmospheric rivers are storms
that move most of the water vapor out of the tropics. According
to the Water Affiliates Group, heavy rainfall from these flows
of condensed water is responsible for almost 85% of floods on
the West Coast.
The oil and gas industry could be on the hook for billions of
dollars as a growing number of states consider making the
sector pay for climate impacts such as floods and sea-level
rise. At least four states are debating legislation, modeled on
the federal Superfund program for contaminated land, that would
hold major fossil fuel companies liable for damage caused by
the historical emissions of their products. In Vermont, which
saw record flooding last year, a majority of the House and a
supermajority of the Senate have signed onto the proposal, all
but ensuring it will pass. Similar bills have been introduced
in New York — where it already has passed the Senate — as well
as Massachusetts and Maryland.
The planet has experienced its ninth consecutive month of
record-breaking warmth, with a simmering February rounding out
the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest meteorological winter on
record, international climate officials announced this week.
The global surface temperature in February was 56.4 degrees —
about 0.2 degrees warmer than the previous February record set
in 2016, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate
Change Service. … While much of the Northern hemisphere,
including the United States, experienced its warmest
meteorological winter on record, parts of Southern California
and Los Angeles saw temperatures below their historical
average, according to a report from AccuWeather. The state
ended the month with a major winter blizzard that dumped
up to 10 feet of snow across portions of the Sierra
Nevada.
Wooden fence posts poking just above the surface and tall oaks
with their trunks submerged are sure signs that the land is
flooded. That word, “flooded,” has a negative connotation, an
association with destruction. But here it is positive – even
protective. And if the San Francisco Estuary Institute, Sonoma
County Water Agency, and Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation get
what they want, more water, not less, is destined for this
place. The Laguna de Santa Rosa drains much of urban Sonoma
County, a watershed of 250 square miles, and is the largest
tributary of the mighty Russian River. The more water that this
creek and its floodplain can slow and absorb, the less water
will rush downstream to threaten truly catastrophic flooding in
Guerneville, Monte Rio, and Rio Nido.
To adapt to climate extremes and become more water resilient in
California, modernizing the state’s water data—including the
way it is collected, stored, shared and used—may lead to more
informed decisions. Improving data practices to best manage
California’s water resources helped drive discussions last week
as state and local water managers, farmers, environmentalists
and others gathered in Sacramento for the 62nd annual
California Irrigation Institute Conference. … With a
theme of “Fluid Futures: Adapting to Extremes,” the Feb. 26-27
event focused on leveraging information and data technology to
help with water-management decisions. Erin Urquhart, water
resources program manager for the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, offered insights on the benefits of
Earth-observing missions that gather water data from space.
After a series of atmospheric river storms dumped record levels
of rain on Southern California, the region’s largest natural
freshwater lake has recovered in a major way. As of last week,
Lake Elsinore was deeper than it had been since June 2011,
according to data from the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water
District. Years of drought and the occasional wet winter have
caused wide variations in the lake’s depth. At 1,248 feet above
sea level, the lake is now more than 10 feet deeper than it was
in July 2022, and almost 15 feet deeper than at its lowest
recent point, in November 2018.
For too long, California and other states have viewed
stormwater as either a threat or an inconvenience — something
to be whisked away from cities and communities as quickly as
possible. But as traditional sources of water face worsening
strain from climate change, population growth, agriculture and
other factors, those unused gallons of rainwater pouring across
asphalt or down rain gutters are starting to be viewed as an
untapped resource that can help close the widening gap between
supply and demand. In a report released Thursday,
researchers with the Pacific Institute determined that every
year, 59.5 million acre-feet of stormwater go uncaptured across
the United States — or roughly 53 billion gallons per
day.
America’s rivers are changing rapidly due to climate change,
and fish are getting confused as a result, a new study has
found. The study, published in the journal Science by
scientists at the University of Leeds in the U.K., found that
climate change is disrupting the seasonal flows of rivers
around the world, which is posing a serious threat to water
supply and ecosystems. Rivers and their reservoirs provide
water for human use, whether for drinking or agricultural
purposes, meaning that changes to their flows can greatly
affect everyday life. … Climate change is also causing
more extreme weather patterns. An example of this can be seen
in California. The state was in the grips of a severe drought
for years, until last year the prolonged dry period was broken
by a deluge of intense storms. These storms caused severe
flooding and landslides that greatly disrupted local
communities.
Pain and hurt continue to linger through the Pajaro community
as the anniversary of the devastating floods approaches. On
Tuesday, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors approved the
final rollout plan for the $10 million allocated directly to
help survivors. … Six million dollars will be allocated
for individual households and $4 million for small businesses.
Residents who sustained damages to property can qualify for up
to $15,000 dollars, and small businesses up to $85,000. All
residents, regardless of citizenship status, will be able to
apply in person for aid. The county, ultimately decided how
much would be dispersed on a case-by-case basis.
Pacific Coast Highway closing during high tides or heavy
rainstorms near the Bolsa Chica wetlands is a common problem
for drivers in the area, and Caltrans officials say they are
looking to address the flooding problems in the future. When
asked if Caltrans had plans to address the flooding concerns
along that stretch of road at a recent Huntington Beach City
Council meeting, Caltrans District 12 Asset Manager Bassem
Barsoum said officials are working on a plan. Storms earlier
this month forced a 93 hour closure of the road in town to
traffic.
In Northern California, before European settlement it’s been
said that clouds of birds would block out the sun and one could
cross a river by walking across the backs of fish. According to
historic accounts, the Laguna de Santa Rosa was once such a
place. That’s the 22-mile-long network of wetlands that drains
the Santa Rosa plain. After a century of degradation,
restoration is underway. Once a thriving wetland, history
hasn’t been kind to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Historic dumping
of untreated sewage, industrial and agricultural waste and
cities growing up around it have all taken a toll. State health
officials still recommend limitations on eating certain fish
caught there, due to mercury and PCB contamination.
Federal tax deadlines have been extended until June 17 for San
Diego County residents affected by last month’s rainstorms, the
Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday. The amended
deadlines will offer relief “for individuals and businesses in
parts of California affected by severe storms and flooding that
began on Jan. 21,” according to the IRS. The relief extends to
any areas designated by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, which includes San Diego County.
During California’s March 5 primary election, voters in
Woodland will decide whether to approve a flood control
project. Measure M would allow the City of Woodland to accept
at least $300 million in state and federal funding to protect
the city against flooding. It would authorize the construction
of the Lower Cache Creek Flood Risk Management Project, which
would channel floodwaters away from Woodland to a bypass in the
east, away from homes and businesses. … While Woodland
has never flooded, Woodland mayor Tania Garcia-Cadena said it
is important to be prepared.
Scientists are sounding the alarm that a crucial component of
the planet’s climate system is in gradual decline and could one
day reach a tipping point that would radically alter global
weather patterns. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning
Circulation, or AMOC, is a system of ocean currents that
circulate water in the Atlantic Ocean like a conveyor belt,
helping to redistribute heat and regulate global and regional
climates. New research, however, warns that the AMOC is
weakening under a warming climate, and could potentially suffer
a dangerous and abrupt collapse with worldwide consequences.
… Considering the AMOC is the workhorse of the Atlantic,
the consequences of such a collapse would result in “hugely
chaotic changes in global weather patterns” that extend far
beyond the Atlantic, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist
with UCLA who was not involved in the study.
On a mid-winter morning in central California, Alyson Hunter
and Bruce Delgado gathered at the Marina State Beach parking
lot, the sea raging in the distance. Heavy rolling waves gushed
toward shore, crumbling before the dune. The temperature was in
the high 40s, though the morning sun was strong and the air was
nearly still. … Without a coordinated state-wide
plan for sea level rise, however, cities and towns have arrived
at vastly different approaches to their shared problem. This
lack of coordination along the coast could present additional
challenges down the line, sparing certain areas at first but
ultimately worsening the impacts of sea level rise for more
economically and environmentally vulnerable communities.
With its Mediterranean climate, California receives most of its
annual precipitation in just a few months, with the bulk of it
falling from December to February. That means that by the time
March 1 comes around, we usually have a good sense of how much
water we’re going to have for the rest of the year. The state
keeps track based on a “water year” that runs from Oct. 1 to
Sept. 30, so the whole winter rainy season will fall in the
same year’s statistics. As of Sunday, California had received
slightly more rain than usual this winter — 105 percent of the
average, according to state data. In some parts of the state,
though, it’s been much rainier than normal. Los Angeles, which
just endured one of its wettest storm systems on record, had
received 159 percent of its annual average rainfall as of
Sunday. San Diego was at 133 percent, and Paso Robles at 160.
The long-dormant lake that roared to life in California’s San
Joaquin Valley last winter, eventually swelling to nearly the
size of Lake Tahoe, has all but disappeared. Almost a year
after historic storms fueled its rebirth, Tulare Lake endures
today only as several small stretches of standing water. The
vast expanses of farms, roads and buildings unexpectedly
engulfed by the lake ever since March, between Bakersfield and
Fresno, have mostly resurfaced, albeit wet and very muddy. As
of early this month, water pooled sporadically over a total of
a few square miles, in contrast to the uninterrupted 180-square
mile lake that fanned out last spring, according to data from
the Kings County Office of Emergency Services.
When a water agency for most of California’s Inland Empire and
parts of Orange County started a pilot program to seed clouds
in the region in November to see if it could increase water
supplies, officials expected to face some questions and
skepticism. What officials didn’t expect was to be wrongly
accused by conspiracy theorists and critics of causing one of
California’s strongest storms in recent history — or, worse
yet, trying to poison the region.
From January to February, Southern California went from quite
dry to overwhelmingly wet, as a series of storms dropped more
than a year’s worth of water in just a few weeks, loading up
the L.A. River. Given that our dry months are coming up, just
how much of that stormwater were we able to hold on to? And
could we be doing better? The main way that we capture
stormwater is by letting it soak into the Earth and travel
through the soil into underground reservoirs. Back in the
day, this would happen all across places like the L.A. Basin,
but as we paved over much of the area, we lost much of our
ability to sequester rainfall. That’s where spreading
grounds, like those in the San Fernando Valley (seen below),
come in.
The Willow Bend wetlands have become a refuge for tiny salmon
as they mature into fish strong enough to survive the ebbs and
flows of migration to the ocean. The preserve also provides a
home for birds such as wood ducks and vultures, as well as
facilitating groundwater recharge and reducing the flood risk
for nearby communities.
More problems arose on the Central Coast following a
wild storm Monday that flooded the region and transformed
the runways at the Santa Barbara Airport into a flooded
plain. The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department
announced Thursday that it was closing two beaches in the
county indefinitely, after waterways were contaminated by
thousands of gallons of sewage spilling from a sewer line and
manhole that were damaged due to the storm. Goleta Beach
is closed from 1 mile east to 0.5 mile west of the Goleta
Slough outfall after “a release of approximately 500,000
gallons of sewage from a damaged force main sewer line near the
Santa Barbara Airport to the Goleta Slough during the
recent rain event,” the department wrote in a media
release.
Amid all the tragedy wrought by the series of atmospheric
river-fueled storms this winter in the West, there is a silver
lining. California’s winemakers are expecting a “bumper” crop.
“With the rainfall from last year and the high vigor of the
canopy in 2023, we are expecting even bigger yields for 2024,”
said Jordan Lonborg, Vineyard Manager at Tablas Creek Vineyard.
“The rainfall we have received thus far will go a long ways in
supporting the crop that will most likely be what we call a
‘bumper’!” The winery is in Paso Robles on the
Central Coast of California. Tablas Creek’s owner, Jason Haas
shared his vineyard manager’s optimism for the vines but said
people have been hit hard.
Four California lawmakers recently advocated for sustained
federal investment in the Pajaro River Flood Risk Management
Project in a letter to the Biden Administration. U.S.
Representatives Jimmy Panetta, CA-19, and Zoe Lofgren, CA-18,
along with U.S. Senators Alex Padilla, D-CA, and Laphonza
Butler, D-CA, urged the continued prioritization of the flood
risk reduction project critical to protecting disadvantaged
communities along California’s Central Coast. The Pajaro
River’s levees are about 12-miles long, were built in 1949 and
have broken several times in the decades since, causing
flooding and damage to communities and farmland. The Pajaro
River Flood Risk Management Project is the $599 million effort
to reduce flood risk from the lower Pajaro River and Corralitos
and Salsipuedes creeks.
A local agency has been awarded nearly $1 million in emergency
funding by the state to provide assistance to residents hit
hard by January’s storms, it was announced Thursday. With this
award, from the California Employment Development Department
and Workforce Development System, the San Diego Workforce
Partnership will collaborate with the county, city and San
Diego Labor Council on temporary job-creation projects. San
Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas said the
funding will provide “essential aid, including rental
assistance, legal services, transportation and childcare
support” to individuals and businesses in need.
… According to the workforce partnership, an estimated
20,000 employers and 80,000 jobs stand at risk from temporary
or permanent damages, the majority of which was to small
businesses.
At the start of the year, the California snowpack sat at an
abysmal 25% of average, but after a series of storms, the
Sierra is glittering white — over the last week, storms added
up to 4 feet of snow to the range. … Statewide, the
snowpack is now 86% of normal for this time of year. And
70% of the April 1 average, which is the end of the water year
and the typical height of the state’s frozen reservoir. Storms
over the last month more than doubled the size of the
snowpack. At his lab north of Lake Tahoe, over the past
week, more than 3 1/2 feet of snow fell during three February
storms.
Former Hurricane Hilary was actually no longer a tropical storm
but essentially had the same impact when its destructive
remnants entered California last August, according to a new
National Hurricane Center report. Damage from Hilary was
estimated at $900 million in the United States. Three deaths
were directly related to the storm, including two in Mexico and
one that occurred in California when a woman was washed away in
her home. Hurricane Hilary moved north off Mexico’s Pacific
coast and weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall
in northern Baja California in Mexico, where its center became
less defined as it encountered mountainous terrain and other
atmospheric conditions, the report said.
Visiting Death Valley today, it is hard to imagine nearly all
of it once underwater. It contains the lowest point in the U.S.
It is known for record-setting heat and aridity. But the land
there — and many of the basins that dot the Mojave and the
Great Basin — were once filled with water. During the last
Ice Age, in the late Pleistocene, a lake filled much of what is
now called Death Valley to a depth of about 600 feet. That’s
only a bit shallower than the modern-day Lake Huron (with a
max. depth of about 750 feet). It is believed that the body of
water, later described as Lake Manly, stretched 90 miles long
and 11 miles wide. And it was hardly alone. Further east, in
the heart of the Great Basin, Lake Lahontan and Lake
Bonneville, at their peak, stretched hundreds of miles.
Twelve years ago, a San Diego County grand jury urged the city
of Encinitas to find a long-term solution to improve the
existing stormwater infrastructure in Leucadia Roadside Park, a
neighborhood in Encinitas. Last month, historic flooding
across San Diego County damaged the homes and businesses of
more than 1,000 residents – Leucadia Roadside Park was one of
the communities hit hard. The area’s inadequate stormwater
infrastructure was a major reason why. … Five of those
businesses had substantial damage, four are still closed for
repairs, she said, and one of those businesses may not be able
to reopen. Repairs are costing some business owners tens of
thousands of dollars.
Kayakers and nature lovers are flocking to Death Valley
National Park in California to enjoy something exceedingly rare
at one of the driest places in the United States: Water. A
temporary lake has bubbled up in the park’s Badwater Basin,
which lies 282 feet below sea level. What is typically a dry
salt flat at the bottom of Death Valley has for months been
teeming with water after record rains and flooding have
battered eastern California since August. In the past six
months, a deluge of storms bringing record amounts of rain led
to the lake’s formation at the park.
After a torrential downpour, most post-storm damages are
impossible to miss: submerged cars, houses torn in half by
fallen trees, debris floating through the streets. But in
California, extreme weather is also mixing up a soup of rain
and disease. Climate-fueled outbreaks: In Southern California,
an atmospheric river unleashed more than a foot of rain in
parts of the region at the start of February. These types of
storms also ravaged the state last year, following a
decades-long period of drought. The climate-fueled cycle of
rain and drought is driving an uptick in a fungal disease known
as coccidioidomycosis, or Valley fever …
Heavy rain and flooding over the last year have caused roughly
$100 million in damage to Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power infrastructure and dust control systems in the Owens
Valley, according to officials, and that figure is expected to
climb as Southern California endures yet another atmospheric
river this week. Although heavy storms have dumped a bounty of
rain and snow along the southern Sierra Nevada, enabling Los
Angeles to draw millions of gallons of water for its residents,
the precipitation has also taken a heavy toll on systems
designed to prevent choking dust storms from developing on the
dry bed of Owens Lake.
What do Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Tula, Mexico (a city outside
Mexico City), have in common? Both have histories of
communities experiencing unequal flood exposure, unfair
recovery outcomes, and a limited ability to adapt to flooding.
These inequalities represent what we call flood injustice, and
they demonstrate how flood risk is shaped by politics and
policy as much as, or perhaps even more than, by weather and
climate change. Cedar Rapids saw a major flood in 2008 that
displaced more than 18,000 residents and incurred over $3
billion in economic losses. Flooding primarily occurred within
affordable housing and other residential areas west of
downtown.
The El Niño cycle bringing wet weather to California is one of
the strongest such cycles on record, according to researchers
from the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA). Their
assertions are corroborated by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s climate prediction center,
which also reported a 62 percent chance El Niño would
continue from April through June with historically strong
conditions early in the year. … Record-shattering
rains poured over sections of California this week, with
rainfall totals as high as ten inches (25 centimeters),
bringing widespread flash floods. As atmospheric rivers pound
California, olive growers face the challenge of potential
diseases and problems that may ensue.
CBS 8 is Working for You to investigate the Lake Hodges water
supply, after receiving a huge response to our report on the
release of more than 600 million gallons of water into the
ocean. Now, CBS 8 has learned, the city of San Diego has lost
its access to Lake Hodges water, due to a state order by the
Division of Safety of Dams, which shut down a pipeline operated
by the San Diego County Water Authority. The city of San
Diego is under the state order to keep Lake Hodges water
levels low – at 280 feet – because Hodges Dam
was found to be unsafe. Neighbor Michael Citrin was not
happy to learn that, since January, the city of San Diego
has released 619 million gallons of water from Lake Hodges, and
there is no end in sight as another storm is on its way next
week.
Rapidly rising seas are wreaking havoc on Louisiana’s
coastal wetlands, and could devastate three-quarters of
the state’s natural buffer against hurricanes in the
coming decades, scientists found in a study published
Thursday. The new research documents how a sudden
burst of sea level rise over the past 13 years — the type
of surge once not expected until later this century — has left
the overwhelming majority of the state’s coastal wetland sites
in a state of current or expected “drowning,” where the seas
are rising faster than wetlands can grow. … The news is
dire for a state that has already lost over 2,000 square
miles of wetland area since 1932, bringing the ocean ever
closer to New Orleans and other population centers and leaving
them more vulnerable to storms.
Winter storms have hammered the Bay Area in the past month, and
the active weather isn’t letting up anytime soon. Back-to-back
storms on tap for the holiday weekend will bring heavy rain,
gusty wind and a large swell to Northern and Central California
from Saturday through Monday. Before the rainmakers hit over
the weekend, Friday is shaping up to be a pleasant day, with a
mix of sun and clouds. … A quick-moving storm is expected to
hit the Bay Area on Saturday, but a long-duration rain event
will begin Sunday afternoon and last through at least Tuesday.
The culprit is a slow-moving weather system known as a cutoff
low.
A notoriously flood-prone section of southern Marin could soon
get its own defense against sea-level rise. Caltrans is
proposing protections for the area along Richardson Bay between
Marin City and Tamalpais Valley. The project would include the
Manzanita Park and Ride lot and the Highway 101 interchanges at
Shoreline Highway and Donahue Street. An online public meeting
to introduce the plans is set for 6 p.m. Feb. 29. The webinar
can be accessed at bit.ly/3ud2ovl. … The lower half of
the Manzanita lot is closed an average of seven to 12 weeks out
of the year because of frequent tidal flooding driven by
sea-level rise, according to Caltrans. Intense rains coupled
with high tides also flood the southbound Highway 101 offramp
at the Donahue Street interchange in Marin City, O’Donnell
said.
With a respite from stormy weather, farmers say they are
surveying for any damage and waiting for the ground to dry so
they can access fields and orchards to make repairs or do other
practices. Historic and deadly storms that brought two weeks of
rain and powerful winds to California led to mudslides,
flooding and widespread power outages and related evacuations.
A state of emergency was declared for eight Southern California
counties. In Santa Barbara County, farm manager Sheldon Bosio
of Goleta-based Terra Bella Ranches said three mudslides
affected about 40 avocado trees or about half an acre, which is
half of what was lost from mudslides caused by storms last
year.
California residents have received a welcome break from rain
and storms following the deadly mudslides that
tore through southern parts of the state earlier in the month.
The floodgates of the Pacific Ocean will again be flung open
as AccuWeather meteorologists project a storm duo to
provide a one-two punch of wet weather this weekend into early
next week. A brief storm will break the dry stretch for
Northern California around midweek. … Areas of
Southern California that received historic rain amounts from
the atmospheric river last week will be spared from
any precipitation with this round. However, AccuWeather experts
say the next pair of storms will take a path farther to the
south, increasing the risk of hard-hit areas receiving
additional rainfall.
If the floods, slides and landscape mayhem triggered by the
string of winter storms severely damaged your house in
California, there’s one bit of relief you can claim: a property
tax cut. Under state law, property owners who suffer at least
$10,000 in damage to their home’s current market value can
apply for a reassessment. They have to file an application with
their county assessor’s office within 12 months of the incident
unless their county offers a later deadline. … If your
home was substantially damaged or destroyed in the recent
storms, Proposition 19 from 2020 allows you to transfer the
taxable value to a newly purchased or constructed house
anywhere in the state within two years after you sell the
damaged property.
Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in
ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After
Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s
circulation and the catastrophic consequences. While
Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a
serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic
Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for
carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how
abrupt and severe would the climate changes be? Twenty years
after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the
Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean
starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has
observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its
weakest state in almost a millennium.
The coastal town of Pacifica is toeing a fine line, balancing
Coastal Commission regulations on sea-level rise and erosion,
which favors strict remodel standards and minimizing armoring
in threatened areas, with residents’ desire to protect property
and homes with physical barriers and redevelopment. Scientists
refer to a gradual pullback from the coastal shoreline to move
development out of harm’s way as “managed retreat” — a term the
Pacifica City Council rejected outright when preparing a 2020
draft of their Local Coastal Land Use Plan, a document which
regulates land use, resource protection and development along
the coast.
For many Southern Californians, [flooding and landslides are]
the new normal. Homes once prized for hillside views and
apartment complexes on low-lying urban streets alike are
increasingly under threat from severe flooding, mudslides and
heavy winds. Wildfires and earthquakes have long been the focus
of concern, but the consequences of wet storms are only now
beginning to generate similar levels of alarm. The Rivases [a
family in West Hills] had renters insurance when they
lived in a house a few doors down. But when they moved in
November, they couldn’t get a policy because of the location.
What’s been called the “disaster insurance gap” has become an
increasingly dire concern in recent years. Even those who have
insurance but live in imperiled places are often unable to
secure sufficient policies to protect their residences and
belongings.
Lawmakers want Californians to have the chance to vote on a new
measure they believe would save the Bay from future flooding.
On Friday, lawmakers and climate advocates on the Peninsula
proposed a vote to help protect people, homes and businesses
near the water. “Low-lying communities are all at risk but the
impacts of sea level rise will soon be felt by all residents of
the Bay Area,” said Assemblymemebr Damon Connolly.
Specifically, they’re pushing for a $16 billion climate
resiliency bond. It covers many issues, including wildfire
prevention, and clean energy – but it would also fund some of
the projects that non-profit Save the Bay says are urgently
needed.
Many California cities are already well ahead of their February
rainfall normals, but another turbulent weather pattern is
expected to push some areas toward monthly records this
week. … Wednesday will feature the first in a
weeklong series of wet weather systems. … By the
end of the storm sequence, Los Angeles could set a new February
precipitation record. … Californians planning to head to the
Sierra Nevada for Presidents Day weekend should prepare for a
few feet of snow. However, it’s too early for exact forecast
snowfall amounts.
After sending a letter of intention to the California
Department of Water Resources last June to begin collecting
flood water, Butte County is looking to set a plan in motion.
Butte County Water and Resource Conservation Assistant Director
Christina Buck is set to give a presentation about the proposed
Recharge Action Plan before the Board of Supervisors during
Tuesday’s meeting. According to the item attachment, the
presentation will go over the plan’s recharge goal along with
recommended actions. Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an
executive order to simplify local jurisdictions’ abilities to
claim floodwater for groundwater storage. The letter issued by
the county to DWR was the first step in coming up with a
long-term plan for the county to do just that.
The flooding caused by intensifying winter rainstorms in
California is helping to spread a deadly fungal disease called
coccidioidomycosis, or Valley fever. “Hydro-climate whiplash is
increasingly wide swings between extremely wet and extremely
dry conditions,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at
University of California, Los Angeles. Humans are finding it
difficult to adapt to this new pattern. But fungi are thriving,
Swain said. Valley fever, he added, “is going to become an
increasingly big story.” Cases of Valley fever in
California broke records last year after nine back-to-back
atmospheric rivers slammed the state and caused
widespread, record-breaking flooding.
A historic barrage of atmospheric rivers hit California. Across
the Sierra Nevada and down through the foothills into the
valley, rivers turned into raging torrents, overflowing their
banks and flooding entire communities. California’s Central
Valley turned into an inland sea, as low lying farms and
grasslands were incapable of draining the deluge. That was
1861, when one storm after another pounded the state for
43 days without respite. Despite impressive new
terminology our experts have come up with to describe big
storms in this century – “bomb cyclone,” “arkstorm,” and
“atmospheric river” – we haven’t yet seen anything close to
what nature brought our predecessors back in those
pre-industrial times over 150 years ago. But we are getting
rain this year. Lots of rain. According to the National
Weather Service, by the time 2024’s first two atmospheric
rivers are done with California, the state will have been
inundated with an estimated 11 trillion gallons of water.
That’s 33 million acre feet, in just 10 days. Are we harvesting
this deluge? -Written by Edward Ring, a contributing editor and
senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he
co-founded in 2013 and served as its first
president.
The current El Niño is now one of the strongest on record, new
data shows, catapulting it into rare “super El Niño” territory,
but forecasters believe that La Niña is likely to develop in
the coming months. … But this so-called super El Niño’s
strength won’t last long – it has reached its peak strength and
is headed on a downward trend, said Michelle L’Heureux, a
climate scientist with the Climate Prediction Center.
… A La Niña watch is now in effect, meaning conditions
are favorable for a La Niña to form within the next six months,
according to a forecast released by the CPC Thursday.
… The rain and subsequent flooding [in California] could mean
good things for the water crisis gripping the southwestern
U.S., though—especially the Colorado River and its basin if the
precipitation reaches the upper basin. The Upper Colorado River
basin covers Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, while the
lower basin covers Arizona, California, and Nevada. If the
moisture unleashed from the atmospheric river reaches the Upper
Colorado River Basin, it could improve its flows which have
been incredibly low in recent years.
While this week’s atmospheric river drenched Southern
California with record-breaking rainfall, some water managers
were busy capturing some of that runoff to save for dry days
ahead. Others were busy fending off an environmental disaster.
Los Angeles County Public Works captured 2.7 billion gallons of
stormwater as the rain fell in sheets, public information
officer Liz Vazquez told CNN in an email – enough water for
65,600 residents for a year. In all, stormwater capture
facilities across Southern California snagged around 15,000
acre-feet – or around 4.9 billion gallons – for recharge into
groundwater since Sunday night, according to Rebecca Kimitch, a
spokesperson for Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California.
After a slow start to California’s wet season, precipitation
has picked up dramatically in the past month, as winter storms
have driven heavy rain and snow across the state. The latest
tempest brought devastating impacts, including destructive
mudslides and at least three deaths. But the storms have also
provided benefits, making up precipitation deficits since the
beginning of the current water year, which is measured from
Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2024. That includes the Sierra
Nevada snowpack. … Statewide precipitation this water
year has been 98% of normal, according to the latest figure
from the Department of Water Resources.
The San Joaquin Valley of California, despite supplying a
significant percentage of the country’s food, is nevertheless a
dry, arid place. Fresno, at the heart of the valley, receives
just over 10 inches of rain a year on average, according to the
National Weather Service, and sometimes as little as
3. And yet, until the late 19th century, the San Joaquin
Valley held a lake more than 100 miles long and over 30 miles
wide. Tulare Lake “was the largest body of fresh water west of
the Mississippi River. It’s really difficult to imagine that
now,” says Vivian Underhill, formerly a postdoctoral research
fellow at Northeastern University with the Social Science and
Environmental Health Research Institute. In research
conducted while at Northeastern, Underhill describes the lake’s
recent, surprising return as a result of
2023’s atmospheric rivers over California, and the effects
the lake’s return has had on indigenous communities,
wildlife and agricultural workers in the San Joaquin
Valley.
Los Angeles County’s Byzantine flood control system has thus
far absorbed near-record precipitation — a feat that officials
say was made possible by extensive preparations, including the
massive dredging of key debris basins and clearing of storm
drains in areas deemed most susceptible to flooding. But as the
most intense period of rain passed into history Monday, the
concern among local engineers and officials was whether flood
infrastructure built over the last 100 years and based on 20th
century hydrologic records can continue to keep up with
increasingly frequent extreme weather events propelled by
climate change. … From Sunday and into Monday, the
sprawling network of 18 dams, 487 miles of flood-control
channels, 3,300 miles of underground storm drain channels and
dozens of debris basins managed to steer countless gallons of
water and flowing debris away from communities in historic
flood plains.
Beyond evacuations, mudslides, outages and road flooding, the
atmospheric river that drenched Southern California over the
last few days brought eye-popping rainfall totals to the region
— with still more to come Tuesday. Rainfall topped 11 inches in
some areas of Los Angeles County in three days, easily
surpassing the average amount recorded for the entire month of
February, according to the National Weather Service. “And
February is our wettest month,” said Ryan Kittell, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard… As
of 10 p.m. Monday, downtown Los Angeles had recorded 7.04
inches of rain over the prior three days. The February average
is 3.80 inches. That three-day total is nearly 50% of the
average amount of rainfall for an entire year for downtown Los
Angeles.
After a rainy and snowy start of February, California’s water
situation is starting to look promising for the year. All but
one of the major reservoirs are storing in excess of 100% of
their average, and five out of the 12 are nearing capacity,
since they are over 75% full. Also, no part of the state is
currently under drought conditions. But that doesn’t mean
California no longer faces chronic water shortages. Droughts
are becoming more common and more extreme as the climate crisis
intensifies, and communities dependent on depleted underground
aquifers and parched Colorado River supplies do not have enough
water to meet the demands of their farms and cities. . … Last
year’s Sierra Nevada snowpack tied with 1952 for the highest on
record at the end of the snow season. So far this year, on Feb.
5, the snowpack was 72% of average for that date.
Two far-flung corners of the world, known for their temperate
climates, are being buffeted by deadly disasters. Wildfires
have killed more than 120 people as they swept the forested
hillsides of Chile, and record-breaking rains have swelled
rivers and triggered mudslides in Southern California. Behind
these risks are two powerful forces: Climate change, which can
intensify both rain and drought, and the natural weather
phenomenon known as El Niño, which can also supersize extreme
weather. In California, meteorologists had been warning
for days that an unusually strong storm, known as an
atmospheric river, was gathering force because of
extraordinarily high Pacific Ocean temperatures.
Residents of Woodlake in Tulare County, traumatized by the
devastation of last year’s floods, watched in fear last week as
storms dumped water on their town, flooding streets. When
his street flooded last week, Joshua Diaz got word while he was
at work teaching at Porterville High School. He rushed
home to blockade his home with sandbags. Even though his home
wasn’t damaged again, the experience was too close for
comfort. “I honestly thought it was going to be a repeat
of last year,” said Diaz … Diaz’s house was inundated
last year, destroying much of the structure and his family’s
belongings.
An “extremely dangerous situation” was unfolding in the
Hollywood Hills area and around the Santa Monica Mountains
Monday, as a powerful, slow-moving storm triggered mud flows
and debris flows that damaged some homes and forced residents
to evacuate. Damage reports piled up early Monday as the storm
system steadily pummeled Southern California, and downtown L.A.
broke a 97-year-old rainfall record. On Sunday, downtown
had seen 4.1 inches of rain, which broke the record for the
calendar day set on Feb. 4, 1927, when 2.55 inches of rain was
recorded. Sunday was the third wettest February day on record
and tied for the 10th wettest day for any time of year since
record keeping began in 1877, the National Weather
Service said.
Every five years the California Department of Water Resources
updates its strategic plan for managing the state’s water
resources, as required by state law.
The California Water Plan, or Bulletin 160, projects the
status and trends of the state’s water supplies and demands
under a range of future scenarios.
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Biologists have designed a variety
of unique experiments in the past decade to demonstrate the
benefits that floodplains provide for small fish. Tracking
studies have used acoustic tags to show that chinook salmon
smolts with access to inundated fields are more likely than their
river-bound cohorts to reach the Pacific Ocean. This is because
the richness of floodplains offers a vital buffet of nourishment
on which young salmon can capitalize, supercharging their growth
and leading to bigger, stronger smolts.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
USACE Sacramento District has a proven track record of facing
challenges head-on. When 2020 brought with it the Novel
Coronavirus, the District responded quickly to address the
needs of a rapidly changing work environment…This year marked
the start of major construction on the [American River Common
Features] project, and the pandemic hit just as crews were
mobilizing, meaning both USACE and its contractors faced
unexpected public impacts.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
The islands of the western
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are sinking as the rich peat soil
that attracted generations of farmers dries out and decays. As
the peat decomposes, it releases tons of carbon dioxide – a
greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere. As the islands sink, the
levees that protect them are at increasing risk of failure, which
could imperil California’s vital water conveyance system.
An ambitious plan now in the works could halt the decay,
sequester the carbon and potentially reverse the sinking.
Many of California’s watersheds are
notoriously flashy – swerving from below-average flows to jarring
flood conditions in quick order. The state needs all the water it
can get from storms, but current flood management guidelines are
strict and unyielding, requiring reservoirs to dump water each
winter to make space for flood flows that may not come.
However, new tools and operating methods are emerging that could
lead the way to a redefined system that improves both water
supply and flood protection capabilities.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The Colorado River Basin’s 20 years
of drought and the dramatic decline in water levels at the
river’s key reservoirs have pressed water managers to adapt to
challenging conditions. But even more extreme — albeit rare —
droughts or floods that could overwhelm water managers may lie
ahead in the Basin as the effects of climate change take hold,
say a group of scientists. They argue that stakeholders who are
preparing to rewrite the operating rules of the river should plan
now for how to handle these so-called “black swan” events so
they’re not blindsided.
The majestic beauty of the Sierra
Nevada forest is awe-inspiring, but beneath the dazzling blue
sky, there is a problem: A century of fire suppression and
logging practices have left trees too close together. Millions of
trees have died, stricken by drought and beetle infestation.
Combined with a forest floor cluttered with dry brush and debris,
it’s a wildfire waiting to happen.
Fires devastate the Sierra watersheds upon which millions of
Californians depend — scorching the ground, unleashing a
battering ram of debris and turning hillsides into gelatinous,
stream-choking mudflows.
New to this year’s slate of water
tours, our Edge of
Drought Tour Aug. 27-29 will venture into the Santa
Barbara area to learn about the challenges of limited local
surface and groundwater supplies and the solutions being
implemented to address them.
Despite Santa Barbara County’s decision to lift a drought
emergency declaration after this winter’s storms replenished
local reservoirs, the region’s hydrologic recovery often has
lagged behind much of the rest of the state.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
Just because El Niño may be lurking
off in the tropical Pacific, does that really offer much of a
clue about what kind of rainy season California can expect in
Water Year 2019?
Will a river of storms pound the state, swelling streams and
packing the mountains with deep layers of heavy snow much like
the exceptionally wet 2017 Water Year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30,
2017)? Or will this winter sputter along like last winter,
leaving California with a second dry year and the possibility of
another potential drought? What can reliably be said about the
prospects for Water Year 2019?
At Water Year
2019: Feast or Famine?, a one-day event on Dec. 5 in Irvine,
water managers and anyone else interested in this topic will
learn about what is and isn’t known about forecasting
California’s winter precipitation weeks to months ahead, the
skill of present forecasts and ongoing research to develop
predictive ability.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Every day, people flock to Daniel
Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and
insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather.
Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the
Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the
term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe
the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the
West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from
California, intensifying the drought.
Swain’s research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause
droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme
weather events in a warming world. A lifelong Californian and
alumnus of University of California, Davis, and Stanford
University, Swain is best known for the widely read Weather West blog, which provides
unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the
western United States. In a recent interview with Western
Water, he talked about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, its
potential long-term impact on California weather, and what may
lie ahead for the state’s water supply.
Atmospheric rivers are relatively
narrow bands of moisture that ferry precipitation across the
Pacific Ocean to the West Coast and are key to California’s
water
supply.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
In a state with such topsy-turvy weather as California, the
ability of forecasters to peer into the vast expanse of the
Pacific Ocean and accurately predict the arrival of storms is a
must to improve water supply reliability and flood management
planning.
The problem, according to Jeanine Jones, interstate resources
manager with the state Department of Water Resources, is
that “we have been managing with 20th century
technology with respect to our ability to do weather
forecasting.”
Work crews repairing Oroville Dam’s damaged emergency spillway
are dumping 1,200 tons of rock each hour and using shotcrete to
stabilize the hillside slope, an official with the Department of
Water Resources told the California Water Commission today.
The pace of work is “round the clock,” said Kasey Schimke,
assistant director of DWR’s legislative affairs office.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
A hydrograph illustrates a type of activity of water during a
specific time frame. Salinity and acidity are sometimes measured,
but the most common types
are stage and discharge hydrographs. These graphs show how
surface water flow responds to fluxes in precipitation.
Prado Dam – built in 1941 in
response to the Santa Ana
River’s flood-prone past – separates the river into its
upper and lower watersheds. After the devastation of the
deadly Los
Angeles Flood of 1938 that impacted much of Southern
California, it became evident that flood protection was woefully
inadequate, prompting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to
construct Prado Dam.
Contrary to popular belief, “100-Year Flood” does not refer to a
flood that happens every century. Rather, the term describes the
statistical chance of a flood of a certain magnitude (or greater)
taking place once in 100 years. It is also accurate to say a
so-called “100-Year Flood” has a 1 percent chance of occurring in
a given year, and those living in a 100-year floodplain have,
each year, a 1 percent chance of being flooded.
California’s seasonal weather is
influenced by El Niño and La Niña – temporary climatic conditions
that, depending on their severity, make the weather wetter or
drier than normal.
El Niño and La Niña episodes typically last 9 to 12 months,
but some may last for years. While their frequency can be quite
irregular, El Niño and La Niña events occur on average every two
to seven years. Typically, El Niño occurs more frequently than La
Niña, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA).
This 30-minute documentary, produced in 2011, explores the past,
present and future of flood management in California’s Central
Valley. It features stories from residents who have experienced
the devastating effects of a California flood firsthand.
Interviews with long-time Central Valley water experts from
California Department of Water Resources (FloodSAFE), U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Central Valley Flood
Management Program and environmental groups are featured as they
discuss current efforts to improve the state’s 150-year old flood
protection system and develop a sustainable, integrated, holistic
flood management plan for the Central Valley.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the State Water Project provides
an overview of the California-funded and constructed State Water
Project.
The State Water Project is best known for the 444-mile-long
aqueduct that provides water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agriculture and southern California cities. The guide contains
information about the project’s history and facilities.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Flood Management explains the
physical flood control system, including levees; discusses
previous flood events (including the 1997 flooding); explores
issues of floodplain management and development; provides an
overview of flood forecasting; and outlines ongoing flood control
projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
With the dual threats of obsolete levees and anticipated rising sea levels,
floodplains—low
areas adjacent to waterways that flood during wet years—are
increasingly at the forefront of many public policy and water
issues in California.
Adding to the challenges, many floodplains have been heavily
developed and are home to major cities such as Sacramento. Large
parts of California’s valleys are historic floodplains as well.
When people think of natural
disasters in California, they typically think about earthquakes.
Yet the natural disaster that residents are most likely to face
involves flooding, not fault lines. In fact, all 58 counties in
the state have declared a state of emergency from flooding at
least three times since 1950. And the state’s capital,
Sacramento, is considered one of the nation’s most flood-prone
cities. Floods also affect every Californian because flood
management projects and damages are paid with public funds.
Overview
During heavy rains and atmospheric rivers that barrel through
California, large rivers as well as smaller streams and creeks
can become dangerous. Most of the state is vulnerable to
flooding. Areas adjacent to rivers are prone to flooding as are
lowland coastal regions. Parts of Southern California often
experience flash floods.
The Central Valley, bordered by the Sierra Nevada on the east and
the Coast Range on the west, is similar to a large bowl that
collects most of California’s rainfall. More than 1.3 million
Californians live and work in the floodplains of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin valleys, where flood risks are among the
highest in the nation.
Watch a video of the
Sacramento weir and the Yolo Bypass.
Flooding in California is not caused only by hard rains. In the
Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta, there are approximately 1,100 miles of levees
protecting 700,000 acres of lowland. In the Suisun Marsh, at the western edge
of the Delta, there are approximately 230 miles of levees
protecting over 50,000 acres of marshland. According to the
California Department of Water Resources, a 6.5-magnitude
earthquake in the western Delta could produce more than 30 levee
breaches on 16 Delta islands, causing about $30 billion in
damages.
The Delta is particularly vulnerable to flooding because of its
aging, insufficient levees. On a sunny day in 2004, a levee
crumbled and sent surging river water into Upper and Lower Jones
Tract west of Stockton, causing $90 million in damages, including
millions of dollars in direct flood-fighting and levee-repair
costs and millions more in losses of crops and property.
Upstream dams have done much to reduce flooding
risks in California, but whether downstream levees can provide
adequate protection in some areas is a big concern. These
concerns deepened in 2005 after the destruction of New Orleans by
Hurricane Katrina brought new attention to levees throughout the
United States, including California.
Situated at the confluence of two major rivers, the city of
Sacramento is considered the second-most flood-prone major city
in the United States after New Orleans. State laws enacted
in 2007 to implement better flood management policies and
practices also required that Central Valley communities ensure
they can safely withstand a 200-year flood by 2025.
In 2018, Sacramento received about $1.8 billion in federal money
to strengthen levees, raise Folsom Dam and widen the Sacramento
Weir, which channels flood waters into the Yolo Bypass.
Challenges
Flood management is inextricably intertwined with politics,
economics and values. Meanwhile, historic floodplains have been
heavily developed for agricultural, commercial and residential
use.
The effects of climate
change further complicate flood risk management in
California. Precipitation and runoff patterns are changing, which
could affect the timing and magnitude of flows. Expected effects
include more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. An
earlier melt to the winter snowpack is also expected. In
addition, the California Climate Change Center says more coastal
floods are expected due to increasingly severe winter storms,
rising sea levels and high tides. These severe weather events are
expected to cause more frequent and more severe flooding, erosion
and damage to structures along the coast.
California’s flood protection system
is facing unprecedented challenges, including increasing
floodplain development, rising flood peaks, higher costs that
delay fixing problem levee sites,
the need for environmental protection and greater state liability
for levee breaches.
Through the years, California voters have approved water bonds
with flood protection elements, including 2018’s Proposition 68,
which, among other things, included $1.3 billion for flood
protection improvements.
In 2022, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board updated the
2017 Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, setting out a $25-$30
billion blueprint for managing Central Valley flood risk over the
next three decades to better respond to a changing and more
volatile climate. Among the revisions laid out in the update are
plans to strengthen urban levees to protect populated areas and
set back levees in more rural areas to allow flood waters to
spread out, slow down and sink into the ground. The update also
calls for using weather forecasts to more flexibly operate flood
control reservoirs, capturing and storing flood waters in
aquifers and reservoirs, and more multi-benefit flood
improvements that mesh with other statewide water priorities.
Management Issues
As impacts of climate change become more apparent, flood
management is increasingly critical in California, particularly
when heavy winter rains fall. Compounding the issue are
human-made flood hazards such as levee instability and stormwater
runoff. Flood management includes giving constricted rivers more
breathing room by setting back levees, reducing floodplain
development and giving equal weight to environmental and economic
factors in making management decisions.
Flood management is often in conflict with water supply practices
and needs. Flood control managers must keep enough reservoir
storage space available to accept runoff surges and reduce the
risk of floods downstream, while water suppliers hope to keep
enough water in reservoirs to protect against drought. New
strategies, known as Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations
(FIRO), are being implemented that give reservoir operators more
flexibility to determine storage needs based on what the weather
forecast holds instead of sticking with an inflexible guideline.
Additionally, flood control involves many different local, state
and federal agencies [see list at bottom of the page], and their
management philosophies change with the political and economic
times. The state also has many local flood management agencies
responsible for the day-to-day operations and maintenance of
facilities, development and implementation of flood management
and stormwater drainage plans, and coordination with other state
and federal agencies.
Regional Management Efforts
In Sacramento, the Sacramento Flood Control Project consists of a
system of levees, overflow weirs, pumping plants and bypass
channels. In times of high flows, the Sacramento and Yolo
bypasses divert vast amounts of water from the Sacramento River.
The Central Valley has a flood
protection network that includes 23 reservoirs with flood
detention space and more than 1,760 miles of federally designated
levees, overflow weirs and channels. In addition, a series
of dams were built on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade mountain ranges for both flood control and water supply.
These include Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River, Oroville Dam on
the Feather River and Folsom Dam on the American River.
In the more arid Southern California region, flash floods
prompted the formation of the state’s first flood control
district in 1915 in Los Angeles. Today, the Los Angeles County
Department of Public Works, in coordination with the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, operates 14 dams, 115 debris basins, 26
groundwater recharge facilities, 524 miles of major channels, 29
pump plants, 77,990 catch basins, and 2,800 miles of tributary
storm drains.
The state also has more than 2,600 miles of levees and sloughs
that fan out from the San Pablo Bay northeast of San Francisco up
to Sacramento and Stockton. Many of the state’s levees are simply
mounds of river mud constructed in the 1800s and not designed to
protect buildings.
Despite progress, flood management still faces significant
obstacles. Many floodplains already are developed, and providing
rivers with more room to roam is controversial, expensive and
difficult. Virtually all of the natural floodplains along the Los
Angeles River are urbanized. Much of the city of Sacramento lies
in the historic floodplain. Other areas throughout the state are
experiencing rapid development.
Key Agencies in Flood Management
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is
the primary federal flood management agency, developing
guidelines for flood management storage in federally funded
reservoirs and monitoring reservoir operations. The Corps also
constructs flood management projects, operates multiple-purpose
projects, and provides resources, equipment and personnel for
emergency floods.
The Bureau of Reclamation operates several
multipurpose projects throughout the state, including the Central
Valley Project and the Colorado River system.
The National Weather Service
(NWS)issues weather forecasts and flood
warnings. It helps communities establish flood warning systems
and conducts flood hazard analyses and provides other technical
assistance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) runs the National Flood
Insurance Program, disaster planning and recovery programs. FEMA
works closely with states and communities and provides financial
and technical assistance, flood hazard maps and data to better
manage floodplains.
The California Department of Water
Resources (DWR) operates the State Water Project,
runs the state-federal Flood Operations Center and assists the
NWS in flood forecasting. It is responsible for the operation and
maintenance of the Sacramento and San Joaquin flood management
projects. DWR funds flood management projects outside the Central
Valley, carries out the state’s floodplain management laws and
coordinates the floodplain management aspects of FEMA in
California.
The Central Valley Flood Protection Board
cooperates with the Corps in the planning, construction,
operation and maintenance of flood management projects in the
Central Valley. Once a project is completed, the board holds the
federal government harmless, accepts legal responsibility for its
maintenance and then turns the maintenance responsibility over to
a local agency or DWR. The board also controls, through a
permitting process, activities and development in
state-designated floodways.
The California Office of Emergency Services
(OES) may allocate funds for investigation, estimates, reports
and repairs regarding disaster recovery financial assistance for
flood management works that do not come under the provisions of
another authority. It runs FEMA’s hazard mitigation program in
California.
Flood forecasting allows flood control managers to predict,
with a high degree of accuracy, when local flooding is
likely to take place.
Forecasts typically use storm runoff data, reservoir levels and
releases to predict the rise in river levels.
In Northern California the National Weather Service, in
cooperation with the state’s California-Nevada River Forecast
Center in Sacramento, forecasts flooding.
Yolo Bypass occupies a historic floodplain between Davis and
Sacramento, California. The Yolo Bypass is part of a larger
engineered system developed on the Sacramento River to
provide bypass flood areas, which act as catch basins to
deter flooding in communities such as Sacramento and West
Sacramento.
Liability for levee failure in California took a new turn after a
court ruling found the state liable for hundreds of millions of
dollars from the 1986 Linda Levee collapse in Yuba County. The
levee failure killed two people and destroyed or damaged about
3,000 homes.
The collapse also had long-term legal ramifications.
The Paterno Decision
California’s Supreme Court found that, “when a public entity
operates a flood management system built by someone else, it
accepts liability as if it had planned and built the system
itself.”
Dams have allowed Californians and others across the West to
harness and control water dating back to pre-European settlement
days when Native Americans had erected simple dams for catching
salmon.
This printed issue of Western Water This issue of Western Water
looks at climate change through the lens of some of the latest
scientific research and responses from experts regarding
mitigation and adaptation.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water discusses several
flood-related issues, including the proposed Central Valley Flood
Protection Plan, the FEMA remapping process and the dispute
between the state and the Corps regarding the levee vegetation
policy.
Levees are one of those pieces of engineering that are never
really appreciated until they fail. California would not exist as
it does today were it not for the extensive system of levees,
weirs and flood bypasses that have been built through the years.
This printed copy of Western Water examines climate change –
what’s known about it, the remaining uncertainty and what steps
water agencies are talking to prepare for its impact. Much of the
information comes from the October 2007 California Climate Change
and Water Adaptation Summit sponsored by the Water Education
Foundation and DWR and the November 2007 California Water Policy
Conference sponsored by Public Officials for Water and
Environmental Reform.
This issue of Western Water examines the extent to
which California faces a disaster equal to or greater than the
New Orleans floods and the steps being taken to recognize and
address the shortcomings of the flood control system in the
Central Valley and the Delta, which is of critical importance
because of its role in providing water to 22 million people.
Complicating matters are the state’s skyrocketing pace of growth
coupled with an inherently difficult process of obtaining secure,
long-term funds for levee repairs and continued maintenance.
Is the devastating flooding that occurred in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast an ominous warning to
California? That’s the question policymakers are facing as they
consider how to best protect lives, property and the integrity of
the state’s water supply from the forces of raging floodwaters.
This issue of Western Water analyzes northern California’s
extensive flood control system – it’ history, current concerns,
the Paterno decision and how experts are re-thinking the concept
of flood management.
Some time in the next month or two, slight, temporal changes in
the upper atmosphere will augur the beginning of the rainy
portion of California’s Mediterranean climate. The high pressure
and sunny days should gradually give way to rain and snow,
replenishing the vast reservoir that is the state’s precious
water supply.
For many of us in northern California, some of the hope and
optimism that fills each New Year’s eve was shattered on New
Year’s Day 1997 when rain from a series of huge tropical storms
began dumping what would eventually be a total of 25 inches of
rain over the region in eight days. People were riveted to their
televisions as the disaster, which took 9 lives, unfolded.