Stretching along the eastern edge of the state, the Sierra Nevada
region incorporates more than 25 percent of California’s land
area and forms one of the world’s most diverse watersheds.
It features granite cliffs, lush forests and alpine meadows on
the westside, and stark desert landscapes at the base of the
eastside. Wildlife includes bighorn sheep, mule deer, black bear
and mountain lions, hawks, eagles, and trout.
The majority of total annual precipitation – in the form of rain
and snow – falls in the Sierra Nevada. Snowmelt from the Sierra
provides water for irrigation for farms that produce half of the
nation’s fruit, nuts and vegetables, and also is a vital source
for dairies, which have made California the largest milk producer
in the country.
In addition, Sierra snowmelt provides drinking water to Sierra
Nevada residents and a portion of drinking water to 23 million
people living in cities stretching from the Bay Area to Southern
California.
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although
human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity —
the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth
and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s
— even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon. …
The American West is once again facing drought, one of the
worst on record. Across a vast region encompassing nine states
and home to nearly 60 million people, the earth is being wrung
dry. -Written by Farhad Manjoo, NY Times opinion columnist.
In the 1950s, when University of California forestry professor
Harold Biswell experimented with prescribed burns in the
state’s pine forests, many people thought he was nuts. “Harry
the Torch,” “Burn-Em-Up Biswell” and “Doctor Burnwell” were
some of his nicknames from critics, who included federal and
state foresters and timber groups. Six decades after Biswell
preached an unpopular message to those who advocated full-on
fire suppression, he is seen not as crazy but someone whose
ideas could save the U.S. West’s forests and ease wildfire
dangers.
California’s severe drought was made worse this year by a
shocking surprise. Every year, much of the drinking water that
flows through the taps of millions of Californians begins in
the Sierra Nevada. Snow and rain fall on the vast mountain
range during the winter months, and the water moves downhill
into streams, rivers and reservoirs in the spring and summer.
But this year, in a trend that startled water managers, much of
that runoff simply vanished. … [T]he ground was so dry
that the water soaked in before making it down the
mountain.
Due to the extreme drought conditions and risk of wildfire,
Sierra Pacific Industries is closing its California forest
lands to public access. This closure began Monday, June 21, and
will remain in effect until further notice. … The
public’s use of SPI roads and walk-in access to their
privately-owned lands will not be allowed. SPI will regularly
evaluate the situation; however, it is anticipated the closure
will remain in effect into fall.
As California’s drought worsens, over 93% of all known giant
sequoia trees currently exist in areas experiencing
“exceptional drought” conditions — the most severe drought
classification established by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). … [H]uman activity and
climate change threaten their continued existence. And now with
drought conditions worsening across the West Coast, virtually
every single one of the massive trees is now rooted in an area
under exceptional drought conditions, leaving them prone to
damage from wildfires.
Before last year’s devastating fire season, Gov. Gavin Newsom
directed firefighters to clear huge lines of trees and shrubs
near more than 200 communities to help stop or slow a potential
blaze. Much of the work was done in the Bay Area. These widely
promoted fuel breaks, a centerpiece of the governor’s
billion-dollar strategy to protect California from catastrophic
wildfire, however, have had limited success, according to data
reviewed by The Chronicle.
In early April, just over 700 Owens pupfish were relocated by
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to River
Spring Lakes Ecological Reserve in Owens Valley. The move is
seen as a significant step forward for the rare North American
fish, once declared extinct in 1940, that has been considered
on “life-support” since it was re-discovered in
1964.
California is in a megadrought, with its key reservoirs falling
to their lowest points in history. Wildfire season is already
here, and officials are bracing for yet another catastrophic
year. Meanwhile, rural communities remain in desperate need of
viable, sustainable economic futures. One climate-smart
solution that addresses all these needs is watershed
restoration.
The Bay Area enjoyed a significant cooldown on the first day of
summer as the first major heat wave of the year subsided Sunday
— but forecasters are predicting another record-breaking hot
spell by next weekend. Last week’s heat wave saw a strong area
of high pressure build from the Southwest desert, strengthening
as it baked the central and southern regions of California
… Experts said the heat is likely to
intensify California’s already dire drought
conditions and bring potential wildfire danger.
A few years ago, filmmaker Emmett Brennan discovered that the
once-lush Owens Valley that sources water for Los Angeles is
now mostly a stark desert, and he had to do something. The
result is a meditative new feature-length documentary called
“Reflection: A Walk with Water” that traces a 200-mile trek by
foot along the entire length of the L.A. aqueduct to raise
awareness about the way we use and misuse water. The film, with
original music by Jacob Collier and Justin Kauflin, is
streaming through June 23 as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.
Lake Pillsbury… is located in the northeast part of Lake
County. Filled in 1922, impounded by the Scott Dam, it is part
of the Potter Valley Project that assures water security for
hundreds of thousands of people in the three counties of
Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin for drinking, farming, aquifer
replenishment and recreation….On March 17, 2021, FERC issued
a Study Plan Determination and per the order the Two Basin
Solution Partnership must analyze the effects of removing Scott
Dam on the communities around Lake Pillsbury, tribal interests,
recreation and other activities on the Eel River …
Last fall, the Maidu Summit Consortium, a nonprofit composed of
nine Mountain Maidu tribal member groups, installed 73
BDAs—beaver dam analogs—in Yellow Creek, a tributary to the
North Fork Feather River and a state-listed heritage trout
stream. … The idea behind the structures, which mimic beaver
dams, is to slow erosion, catch sediment, and build up the
river bottom to reverse the incised channel—without importing
soil and other materials or emitting carbon from heavy,
diesel-powered equipment.
It might be tempting to shrug at the scorching weather across
large swaths of the West. This just in: It gets hot in the
summer. But this record-setting heat wave’s remarkable power,
size and unusually early appearance is giving meteorologists
and climate experts yet more cause for concern about the
routinization of extreme weather in an era of climate change.
These sprawling, persistent high-pressure zones popularly
called “heat domes” are relatively common in later summer
months. This current system is different.
Summer has not officially started yet, but wildfire season has
already arrived in the US. Now an intense heat wave coupled
with extreme drought is threatening to make things worse. Large
wildfires have already burned 981,000 acres this year to date,
more than the 766,000 acres burned by the same time last year,
according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Arizona,
more than 208,000 acres have burned, sending smoke into
Colorado.
A heat dome is baking Arizona and Nevada, … At Lake Mead,
which supplies water for 25 million people in three
southwestern states and Mexico, water levels have plunged to
their lowest point since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s.
In California, farmers are abandoning their thirstiest crops to
save others, and communities are debating whether to ration tap
water….And it’s not even summer yet.
Los Angeles is a pretty hot and dry place, and in fact,
California is suffering from increasing impacts of drought, so
how does the water we use every day get here? Let’s take the
journey your water takes from the source to your mouth with
these 5 things to know:
The drought facing the Western United States is
bad. Really bad. It’s become worse faster than the last
one. As more of the United States suffers from drought
conditions and water supplies are diminishing, water
demands are rising. Smaller water supplies combined with
increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and other effects
of climate change pose an enormous threat by creating a
feedback loop that exacerbates drought conditions and
increases wildfire risk across the United States.
Riparian forests, those tree-filled regions running next to
rivers and streams, host a breadth of important wildlife — but
water management practices focused on meeting the needs of
growing communities and agriculture may be putting their future
in jeopardy. These woodlands serve to protect water quality and
stream integrity, host wildlife and control flooding along
water ways, but the ecosystems they support are in danger of
failing in the coming decades.
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee last week marked up and advanced H.R.
1915, the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of
2021. … By 2035, the City of Los Angeles expects to
recycle 100 percent of its water supplies and reduce its
reliance on costly imported water from the Colorado
River. Truckee Meadows Water Authority in Reno is planning
13-mile pipeline to provide 1.3 billion gallons of recycled
water annually to the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, home to
Tesla, Switch and Google, and ensure 20,000 jobs remain in
Nevada.
While fuel reduction can play an important role in limiting the
severity of wildfire, lack of funding often hinders forest
management efforts. The Upper Mokelumne River Watershed
Authority (UMRWA), a joint powers authority comprised of
Alpine, Amador and Calaveras counties and six water districts,
recently initiated a novel funding approach to improve forest
resilience to wildfire and safeguard communities and water
resources.
With a worsening drought gripping the West and wildfire season
looming, California is bracing for the most severe heat wave of
the year — one that promises to tax the state’s power supplies
while also offering a grim preview of challenging months to
come. The heat wave will bring triple-digit temperatures to the
valleys and inland regions of Southern California as well as
many parts of the rest of the state, heightening fire risks. It
comes as parts of Northern and Central California are turning
to water restrictions as the drought rapidly alters the
landscape.
California’s drought is accelerating the start of the 2021
wildfire season — and intensifying the pressure on PG&E
Corp. to prevent more mega-fires of the sort that drove the
state’s largest utility into bankruptcy. Pacific Gas and
Electric Co. executives said Wednesday they’ve begun gearing up
for wildfire season weeks earlier than usual, including putting
helicopters in the air to practice for PG&E’s “public
safety power shutoffs.”
Those watching the level of Lake Tahoe know it is dropping
quickly, and it’s not just because of a lack of snowfall this
year and another year of drought. Understanding why the lake
drops, and who causes it to drop (yes, there is a person – the
watermaster), is key to knowing why the lake should be at its
natural rim of 6,223 feet above sea level by the beginning of
August. As of June 8 the lake is two feet above that rim.
The Union has printed several opinion pieces by Idaho-Maryland
Mine Project opponents. The majority of these columns present
“information” that’s either biased or misleading and based
neither on science nor logic. Here are the facts.
… Recent columns erroneously suggest that groundwater
impacts cannot be accurately predicted. Numerous expert
hydrogeologists and a century of mining at the Idaho-Maryland
say otherwise. … The actual conclusion is that no wells
would be drained… -Written by Ben Mossman, president of Rise Grass
Valley and CEO of Rise Gold Corp., U.S. corporations.
Water is like electricity. Most people don’t think about it
much until it’s gone. Now, as California and other Western
states find themselves heading into a severe and worsening
drought, a new interactive map is providing a breathtaking
journey that shows where America’s water comes from and ends
up. The project is called River Runner. It allows anyone to
click on any place where a raindrop would fall in the United
States, and then track its path through watersheds, into
creeks, rivers, lakes and ultimately the ocean.
Storms from the Pacific set to swing into the rain-starved West
Coast this week may end up turning detrimental, AccuWeather
forecasters say, by whipping up gusty winds and heightening the
risk of lightning-induced wildfires. With over 87% of the
Western states in moderate to exceptional drought, the news of
Pacific storms poised to sweep onshore may sound good on the
surface. However, the pattern will be a double-edged sword.
Each storm is expected to arrive with “very limited moisture,”
according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex
Sosnowski.
According to U.S. Congressman Jay Obernolte’s (R-Hesperia)
office, last Tuesday, June 1, he introduced a bill, HR 3649,
titled the Mono Lake Kutadika’a Paiute Tribal Recognition Act
that would grant federal recognition to the Mono Lake
Kutzadika’a tribe as a distinct Native American Tribe. The
legislation was originally introduced by former Rep. Paul Cook.
The bill would address the tribe’s decades-long struggle for
indigenous sovereignty and would afford them the services,
benefits, and rights provided to federally recognized tribes,
says the communique.
They were expert hunters, gatherers and basket weavers who
lived for thousands of years on a trade route over the Sierra
Nevada connecting them with the rest of California. The modern
history of the Mono Lake Kutzadika Paiute people is told mostly
through economic hardship, displacement and a 150-year fight
for federal recognition as a distinct Native American tribe — a
step needed to establish a sovereign land base to call home.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proudly
partnered with the United States Forest Service (USFS) to clean
up National Forest System lands at Grant Lake Reservoir in Mono
County. The clean-up effort, which also included installing
signage to ensure current fire restrictions and sustainable
recreation practices are observed, was meant to prepare the
area for the upcoming summer recreation season.
Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest are
seeking commentary from the public on their plan to restore
wetlands in the Ackerson Meadow, which they said have been
drained as a result of a century of domestic water
diversion. The plans include a complete fill of the
gullies developed over the last century by ranchers and
agriculturalists who utilized water flow, or the the
installation of manmade beaver dams to partially restore the
wetlands.
Annual rainfall totals illustrate how the naturally harsh
desert environment is becoming even more stressed. [Jim]
Cornett, who meticulously studies weather data compiled by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said less than
1 inch of rain has fallen at the Palm Springs airport since
Nov. 1, well below averages of roughly 4.5 inches for the
period over the last half-century, which were down from a
5.5-inch average before that.
Drought conditions in California remain at record highs, with
most of the state now classified in “extreme” or “exceptional”
drought, reflecting conditions across the Southwest, according
to a new report from climate scientists. Much of the Bay
Area and the northern Central Valley have been included in the
most severe “exceptional drought” zone, along with much of
southeast California, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported.
A water war is under way in Sacramento right now that could
have far-reaching impacts on families in the Central Valley.
… Hearings got under way Wednesday, as Semitropic Water
Storage District in Kern County makes its administrative appeal
to the State Water Resources Control Board for water rights to
the Kings River. It filed its first petition in 2017, asking
for access to 1.6 million acre feet of floodwater from the
Kings River.
Lake Powell is within just a few feet of its low level ever
observed since it was first filled. Early season fires have
already torched over 400,000 acres in Colorado and California’s
reservoirs are 50 percent lower than they should be at this
time of year before summer has even officially begun. A year
after the skies over San Francisco glowed a hazy red as
wildfires choked the Bay Area, 2021 is shaping up to be the
year of real climate reckoning with drought in the western US
at historic levels.
Hidden from view when driving by is the [Rise Gold]
mine that is filled with water contaminated with
byproducts of hard rock mining. The water now forms a murky
lake several hundred yards wide. Rise Gold plans to pump out
3.6 million gallons of water every single day for six months
and after that another 1.2 million gallons a day for up to 80
years from this site. Let that sink in. Get your mind
fully around this. This is real. They will dump this water
into the little creek alongside the site and send it on its way
down Wolf Creek to the Feather River to the Sacramento River to
San Francisco Bay … -Written by Billy Packard.
Earlier this year, the State Water Resources Control Board
released a report, Recommendations for an Effective Water
Rights Response to Climate Change, that considered how the
State Wate Board could include climate change when considering
new water right applications. Since the report’s release,
it has been the subject of much discussion and has sparked
concerns amongst existing water right holders. At the
Kern County Water Summit, hosted by the Water Association of
Kern County, a panel addressed the topic.
In May, Lake Tahoe watercraft inspectors have identified
numerous boats carrying harmful aquatic invasive species and
added them to the list of boats that had to be decontaminated
before launching, according to the Tahoe Regional Planning
Agency and the Tahoe Resource Conservation District, which
manage the inspection program. As of press time, 14 of the more
than 1,000 boats inspected were found to have aquatic invasive
species in, on or attached to the boat, boat trailer, dock
lines or on-board recreational equipment, according to a press
release.
The Predictive Services 4-month outlook for the North Ops
region calls for drier and warmer than average weather through
September. There is some indication of a semi-regular low
pressure trough positioned along the west coast much of the
summer, which could lead to shorter stretches of intense dry
heat. Fuels, both dead and live and of all size classes, are
expected to dry to critical values earlier than usual at all
elevations, leading to a start to the active fire season 4-6
weeks earlier than usual.
Will the current drought increase the chances of another bad
fire season this year? We talked to Scott Stephens―a fire
ecologist at UC Berkeley and a member of the PPIC Water
Policy Center research network―about the risks, and what can be
done.
Already one of the most productive watersheds in the state in
terms of runoff per square mile, the Yuba River watershed is
especially vulnerable to the impacts of atmospheric rivers and
the heavy, prolonged rainfall they bring. … Recognizing the
central role that atmospheric rivers play in both flood risk
and water supply — two of Yuba Water’s core mission areas –
the agency is investing in new research and tools to better
understand, forecast and manage these powerful storms.
With California’s rivers running low after two consecutive dry
winters, state officials and local water agencies have pumped
out a steady stream of drought declarations and calls for water
conservation in recent weeks. It’s clear the Golden State is in
a drought and it could escalate to a crisis, but, you may be
wondering, just how bad is it?
Nearly half of the country — from the Pacific coast to the
Great Plains and upper Midwest — is experiencing moderate to
exceptional drought conditions. That’s expected to get worse
throughout the summer. … UCLA climatologist Park Williams:
“This drought is far from over. 2021 is shaping up to
potentially be the driest of all of the drought years in the
last century, and definitely one of the driest of the last
millennium.”
Multiple earthquakes rattled the Lake Tahoe region on Friday,
the latest in a sequence that began in late April. … Tahoe
sits on major fault lines more than a thousand years overdue to
rupture… A huge shake could even lead to a Tahoe
tsunami, but he says for now – it’s still highly unlikely. But
in the event of something major, Kent recommends not wasting
any time getting away from the water.
Assembly Joint Resolution 4 passed both houses of the Nevada
Legislature. The resolution now urges Congress and the
President to protect certain land containing swamp cedar trees
in Spring Valley, Nevada by designating the site a national
monument or expanding the Great Basin National Park to include
the area.
The Kern River Conservancy received a $23,000 grant to study
whether last year’s Sequoia Complex Fire harmed the water
quality in the wild and scenic section of the Kern River. The
Virginia and Alfred Harrell Foundation awarded the grant to the
non-profit conservancy, Gary Ananian, the conservancy’s founder
and executive director, told the Kern Valley Sun.
In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone
from bad to terrible. Sacramento residents have been asked to
cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River
are being told to reduce their consumption 20%. Farmers across
the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and
dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of
massive fish kills on the Sacramento River. After
a warm spring dried up practically the entire Sierra
Nevada snowpack — and robbed California of enough water to fill
most of Folsom Lake — state and federal officials have been
forced to dramatically ramp up their drought response plans.
A new grant will help Twain Harte turn stormwater into a
resource, say community leaders. The $3.75 million in funding
was awarded to the Twain Harte Community Services District
through the State Water Resources Control Board’s Stormwater
Grant Program. It will be used to construct the Twain Harte
Community Stormwater Enhancement Project. The district called
it an “amazing win” for the community in a press release.
[P]rivate and public stakeholders must hold Rise Gold Corp.
accountable when it promises to deliver drinkable water — a
promise it’s made — and in particular, investigate what primary
and secondary drinking water standards mean. According to the
Environmental Protection Agency, national primary drinking
water regulations are legally enforceable standards applied to
public water systems. In contrast, secondary drinking
water standards are “non-enforceable guidelines regulating
contaminants that may cause cosmetic or aesthetic effects.”
Cosmetic effects are detailed as affecting skin or teeth color,
and aesthetic effects refer to water’s taste, odor, or color.
After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water
repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after
rainfall events – a phenomenon that many scientists have
attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry.
But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by
wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new paper
from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada.
A crippling drought — largely connected to climate change — is
gripping the Western United States, affecting over 70 million
people and around 40% of the U.S. … Farmers,
scientists, tribal officials, foresters and other groups
affected by the worsening drought testified at a House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing on
Tuesday, asking lawmakers for both short-term relief and
long-term solutions from the worsening conditions.
Wildfires have burned roughly 14,000 acres in California
this year as a deepening drought grips the Southwest — more
than five times the acreage charred by the same time last
year. It’s a worrying trend that has fire officials taking
a proactive approach — from more funding to wildfire
prevention to hiring additional crews — after the state saw
its worst fire season ever in 2020. Only five
months into the year, a total of 2,340 fires have burned 14,340
acres, an increase of 1,284 fires and 11,793 acres over the
same period in 2020, according to new data from Cal Fire.
California’s drought, already rated “severe” to “extreme” for
most of the state, is expected to worsen throughout the summer,
combining with higher-than-average temperatures and dry
vegetation to steadily increase the risk of wildfires,
according to the interagency National Integrated Drought
Information System. That assessment comes in the wake of the
state’s worst wildfire season on record, 2020, which saw five
of California’s six largest recorded infernos and
extended the trend of wildfire seasons here growing longer
and more intense.
The 2021 legislative session is an anomaly. Notwithstanding
COVID, the bad water bills died early and the good ones pressed
on. That is not the norm. But it appears that more folks are
beginning to believe these are not normal times. Indeed,
this year is different. Long-time foes are singing kumbaya in
praise of AB356. The legislation, which passed both
chambers, saves 10 billion gallons of water annually in
Southern Nevada –– defending the dwindling supply of Colorado
River water by mandating the removal of all non-functional turf
by 2027 in Southern Nevada. -Written by Kyle Roerink, executive director of
the Great Basin Water Network.
California’s new drought is worsening. After two severely dry
winters, reservoirs are shrinking, fire danger is rising and
water supplies are looking more tenuous. The past two years
have been the driest in nearly half a century, since 1976-77.
How did the state find itself in a new crisis just as the COVID
pandemic is fading? Scientists say California’s parched plight
largely comes down to two words: “atmospheric river.” An
increasing body of research is showing that the state’s water
supply each year depends almost entirely on a handful of big
make-or-break storms. And the last two winters, too few
arrived.
As Elizabeth “Izzy” Martin retires after 19 years as CEO of The
Sierra Fund, the foothills celebrate the legacy and lament the
loss of one of their greatest advocates. The fund is a
nonprofit dedicated to restoring the ecosystem and building
community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada. In a year marred for
many by financial strain, the nonprofit is in a strong and
stable position to transition to new leadership, Martin
explained, which is part of the reason she’s leaving. Martin
said her career and mission have evolved with society’s
understanding and appreciation for environmental issues since
she began her vocation as an advocate on the very first Earth
Day celebration in the San Francisco Bay area in 1970.
The scale of the drought hitting the American West is beginning
to crystallize as Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona experienced
their driest year in terms of precipitation on record,
according to the National Center for Environmental Information.
In Utah and California, it was the second-driest winter on
record. For Wyoming, it was the third-driest ever. For
Colorado, only three winters were ever drier in the 127-year
history of record-keeping at the center.
The 2020 fire season was brutal for California. Wildfires
wreaked havoc across the state, burning more than 4.2 million
acres, the most in recorded history, and resulting in the
deaths of 33 people and the destruction of more than 10,000
structures. The outlook for the 2021 fire season isn’t any more
promising. A Chronicle analysis shows multiple measures of fire
danger all pointing in the same direction — California is
headed toward alarming, perhaps record-setting, dryness, and
heightened risk of wildfires.
Fossils dating back some five to ten million years have been
found in the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada
foothills in what’s being called one of the most significant
fossil discoveries in California history, researchers announced
Tuesday. California State University, Chico and the East Bay
Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) said the trove of fossils
was found in areas along the Mokelumne River near the town of
Valley Springs. The watershed provides drinking water to
EBMUD’s 1.4 million customers.
Updated timing on this late spring storm shows snow arriving in
the Tahoe Basin around noon Thursday. The chance of snow will
continue through Saturday with overnight snow levels dropping
as low as 4,500 feet in some areas. The heaviest accumulation
will be on Thursday with lighter showers Friday and Saturday.
Totals will range from 1-6 inches on the passes.
More wildfires. Hotter days. Drought. Sea-level rise. Those
conditions are an increasing reality in California, which is
steadily becoming an altered state. But if the grimmest
predictions of experts about our state and climate change
become true, the conditions will become far worse.
Despite the dry year, outdoor recreationists who enjoy
California rivers and streams should remain aware of
dangerously cold swiftly moving water. Although California’s
snowpack is about half of normal, rising temperatures are
accelerating the snowmelt. Pacific Gas and Electric Company
(PG&E) urges those who choose to venture near or in water
to take extra precautions, especially around hydroelectric
facilities and dams, where water flows can change rapidly.
Anglers also are encouraged to take precautions as trout season
has opened for most California rivers.
Californians are gearing up for what could be another dangerous
wildfire season, particularly in light of significant drought
conditions. Grasses, shrubs, and forests are drying out early
due to a lack of precipitation, providing potential fuel for
wildfires. Red flag warnings—when high winds and low humidity
increase fire risk—have already been issued this year across
broad swaths of the state. Small spring wildfires have put
firefighters and communities on edge. Is the state prepared for
another bad wildfire season? And how much progress has been
made to improve the resilience of vulnerable communities and
headwater forests?
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and
pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and
soul.” Sierra Club founding member John Muir penned those words
more than a century ago as he launched a decades-long battle to
advocate for preservation of the American West. … More than a
century later, Muir’s legacy of environmental awareness lives
on through his great-grandson, Reno attorney Ross de Lipkau,
one of the state’s leading water rights experts.
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
As California descends deeper into drought, state regulators
are planning to do something they’ve done few times in modern
history: order thousands of people, farms, and even cities and
towns that hold historic water rights to stop drawing water
from the rivers, lakes and ponds they rely on. The move is
intended to make sure the dwindling flows in California’s
waterways are reserved for those with the most senior water
rights, as well as for fish and other wildlife. Many of those
with lesser rights would have to turn to storage, groundwater
or another source, if they have it.
The city of San Francisco is reviving a long-simmering feud
with the state over water, filing a lawsuit Friday that charges
state regulators with trying to take away the city’s coveted
Sierra Nevada water supplies. The suit claims the state water
board is demanding the city forfeit too much water from the
Tuolumne River as part of a licensing deal for two dams in the
faraway basin. State regulators have said the water is needed
to maintain proper river flows and support struggling salmon,
but city officials contend the demands would leave Bay Area
residents and businesses vulnerable to water shortages.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to throw $11.8 billion of California’s
money at climate change and the hazards it poses to the state.
The governor’s gargantuan revised budget proposal, released
Friday, includes expenditures to fight and prevent wildfires,
combat sea-level rise, put more Californians behind the wheel
of an electric vehicle and speed up the transition to a
carbon-free electricity grid. Nearly half of his climate change
package — $5.1 billion — would go toward easing the effects of
California’s newly-declared drought and remedying long-term
water supply problems, such as crumbling canals.
We asked some colleagues for lessons that might be useful in
managing the California’s new drought. Here is a first sampling
of thoughts. … Katrina Jessoe. Agricultural and Resource
Economics, UC Davis: Climate models indicate that
California’s droughts will become more frequent and severe.
Warming temperatures will further reduce surface water
availability, by increasing evaporation from soil, reservoirs,
and irrigated land. While reductions in surface water supplies
will be costly to agriculture, residential users and the
environment, these costs could be substantially reduced through
the reallocation of scarce supplies. Supplying water to those
who value it most will not eliminate the costs of drought, but
will make them less painful.
It’s only May, and I’m already having to write about wildfires
forcing Californians to evacuate their homes. Around 1,000
people were displaced from their homes Sunday as the Palisades
Fire in Los Angeles County grew to more than 1,300 acres. The
blaze, which was 0% contained as of Sunday afternoon, carved a
path through dense, old-growth chaparral that hadn’t burned in
more than 50 years, the Los Angeles Times reports. As such, it
embodied both California’s worsening drought and the grim
reality that its fire season is starting earlier and earlier
even as its conflagrations get larger and larger.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced
on Thursday that a key weather feature that affects global
temperature and precipitation has shifted into a “neutral,” or
average, state. La Niña, one of the factors behind last year’s
extremely active Atlantic hurricane season and a contributor to
below-average rainfall in the South and Southwest, has faded
away….In California, any drought relief associated with the
end of La Niña won’t come during the dry season that runs well
into next fall.
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla (both D-Calif.)
today joined with Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky
Rosen (both D-Nev.) to introduce bipartisan legislation to
extend authorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. The
original Lake Tahoe Restoration Act was passed in 2000 and
authorized $300 million for the restoration of the lake and
surrounding basin. The current authorization, which was passed
in 2016, will expire in 2024. Reauthorizing the bill will
prevent an interruption in conservation and restoration
planning.
As Californians can tell by the already beige hills, the early
fire weather warnings and the dusty umbrellas sitting deep
inside closets, it’s been drier than usual this winter. And
according to decades worth of precipitation data, that’s the
new normal. What’s considered “normal” for baseline rainfall
amounts is determined by a 30-year average that gets
recalculated every decade. The latest recalculation, according
to Jan Null, a forecaster who runs Golden Gate Weather
Services, “show a noticeably drier state” through 2020 compared
to the previous “normal” calculation covering 1981 through
2010.
Tiny specks of degraded plastics have been documented in the
snowpack around Lake Tahoe — and in the lake itself. They
have been found in the Las Vegas Wash. The phenomenon is not
unique to Nevada. Microplastics, the end product of our plastic
consumption, have been found in ecosystems across the
world, even in remote areas. Microplastics are small
— less than 5 millimeters — but they are not uniform.
They can have different shapes and vary in size. Microplastics
from clothing can appear as synthetic fibers, whereas degraded
plastic from bags or water bottles might take on a different
composition.
Spring is generally a time of renewal for the watersheds of the
western United States. Warmed by the lengthening days, the
region’s towering mountain ranges shed their mantle of snow,
releasing freshets of water into welcoming streams and
reservoirs. This year, though, the cycle is in disarray.
Outside of the Olympic and Cascade ranges of Washington state,
winter snows were subpar. The spring melt has been a dud. From
the Klamath to the Colorado and Rio Grande, watersheds are
under stress once again, and water managers face difficult
tradeoffs between farms, fisheries, and at-home uses.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial water source for
California’s cities and farms, has already dwindled to next to
nothing this year, adding to the state’s worsening drought
situation. The latest data from the state Department of Water
Resources on Tuesday showed California’s snowpack was just 6%
of normal for May 11, and 4% of the normal average for April 1.
That date is typically when California’s snowpack is the
deepest and has the highest snow water equivalent — the depth
of water that would result if the snow melted upon falling …
Amid drought conditions across the Sierra Nevada and
California, Lake Tahoe is 2.5 feet lower than it was at this
time last year, according to water data collected in Tahoe City
on May 11. … Lake Tahoe’s water typically gets a boost
from spring’s snowmelt. But as of May 11, the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevada has virtually melted, and Lake Tahoe’s water
levels are the lowest they’ve been in five
years, according to USGS data. Snow surveys on May 11
indicate California’s snowpack is just 6% of average for this
date. Barring significant precipitation this summer, Tahoe
is on track to reach a critical low point …
The state is facing major water impacts, but for those reliant
on water wells — in mobile home parks, rural communities, and
areas where water district access is limited — the concern is
growing. The Department of Water Resources has created
a website that can help those who rely on well water
to figure out just how much at-risk they are of a water
shortage. The site was created after the last drought, but
with California’s drought only recently worsening, it had not
been widely used or needed until now. The interactive map
allows users to explore their area and keep tabs on their well
water situation.
Ed Russo, CEO of RussKap Holdings LLC, announced today that his
company stands ready and able to assist California in its
ongoing quest to fight forest fires. “By using atmospheric
water generators we can have constant water flowing into
traditionally dry parched areas which will help prevent a
simple spark from igniting into a large brushfire.” … In
addition to eliminating the terrible environmental degradation
caused by fires, this solution would cost a tiny fraction of
what the power and insurance companies spend to replace damaged
homes and businesses annually.
Well, unfortunately, the overall drought trajectory has not
changed since the last post: it’s still getting worse. And
pretty rapidly worse, at that, across much of NorCal. There,
virtually no precipitation at all has fallen in places that are
usually still pretty wet in April/May, and unusually
persistent/recurrent north/northeast “blow drier” winds have
resulted in even more evaporation and snowmelt across the
landscape.
Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded his drought emergency declaration to
39 more counties Monday, underscoring the rapid deterioration
of California’s water supply in recent weeks. The governor
broadened his earlier drought order, which was limited to two
counties on the Russian River, to cover most of parched
California, which is plunging into its second major drought in
less than a decade. The new order covers the Sacramento and San
Joaquin river watersheds, the Tulare Lake basin region and the
Klamath region in far Northern California. About 30% of the
state’s population is now covered by the declarations…
California’s drought conditions have gone from bad to worse in
scarcely a month. In the weeks following April 1, the
traditional end of the rainy season, warm temperatures have
burned off most of the Sierra Nevada snowpack and left the
state’s water network gasping. Instead of delivering a generous
volume of melted snow into California’s rivers and reservoirs,
the snowpack has largely evaporated into the air or trickled
into the ground.
Bakersfield raised a brew, literally, to the State Water
Resources Control Board on Friday in honor of the Kern River.
An iced down package of seven locally made craft beers was
delivered to board members as part of the latest outreach
effort by Bring Back the Kern, a local group advocating for
water to flow through Bakersfield in the Kern River.
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year,
and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t
realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond
the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking
water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the
blaze. … Since 2017, multiple fires have
impacted drinking water systems … including the CZU
Lightning Complex, Camp and Tubbs fires in California.
Thousands of private wells have been affected too.
Every year, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) relies on
data from monitoring stations strategically located across
California to provide information that will aid the
decision-making process regarding the flood control and water
supply operations of California’s State Water Project (SWP).
The Feather River watershed, located in Northern California’s
Sierra Nevada mountains south of Mt. Lassen, is a key location
for collecting data. It is the largest watershed in the Sierra
Nevada, covering 2.3 million acres or 3,200 square miles.
The drought situation in the Bay Area has officially gone from
bad to worse. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire
Bay Area is now in the “extreme” drought category, along with
nearly three-quarters of California. According to the latest
summary, precipitation in the state for the water year that
began Oct. 1 is well below normal, in the bottom 10th
percentile, and the greater Bay Area is “experiencing record or
near-record dryness.”
After one of the most destructive and extreme wildfire seasons
in modern history last year, a widening drought across
California and much of the West has many residents bracing for
the possibility this season could be worse. Anemic winter rain
and snowfall has left reservoirs and river flows down
significantly, even as the state experiences its driest water
year in more than four decades. Today, wildfire fuels in some
parts of California are at or near record levels of dryness.
In many American communities, rivers irrigate the farms that
feed families, quench people’s thirst—rivers are the source of
more than two-thirds of the drinking water in the U.S.—sustain
wildlife habitat, and provide an economic boost for
communities. Yet only a very small portion of those waterways
are protected from threats ranging from pollution to damming,
which would wreck the water’s natural flow.
… California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards
have authority to designate ONRWs but to date have done so for
only two bodies of water: Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake. However,
the state did initiate an analysis of the Smith River as
an ONRW but has not completed the effort. The Smith is a
Pacific salmon stronghold.
Many miles of streams and rivers in the United States and
elsewhere are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff
draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments
have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A
new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in
the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow
affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within
10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work. The four
mining-impacted watersheds—located in mountain mining regions
of California, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana—were all designated
as Superfund sites …
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
A recent spate of spring blazes announced an alarmingly early
start to California’s wildfire season, which is fast occupying
too much of the year to fit any conventional understanding of
the word “season.” With historically low moisture measurements
suggesting vegetation is particularly primed to burn, too many
Californians are about to find themselves in wildfires’ way.
… The prospects for a respite aren’t hopeful. Following
California’s third driest rain season on record, Gov. Gavin
Newsom is tiptoeing toward acknowledging a statewide
drought.
The beaver does more to shape its environment than nearly any
other animal on Earth. They can cause incredible amounts of
destruction to infrastructure; downing power lines, and
blocking and rerouting waterways. But their dam-building also
can improve water quality, reduce flood risk, and create the
conditions for complex wetland habitats to form —providing
refuge for wildlife and storing carbon in the process.
California is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,
and the San Diego region is one of the most diverse in
California, but we are losing our biodiversity at an alarming
rate. The coming summer months and dry conditions are going to
further hurt that richness of life here. Conserving our water
resources directly and indirectly benefits our wildlife and is
consistent with the overall conservation ethic in San Diego,
which is why we need to prepare in case drought conditions
worsen.
-Written by Chuck Bonham, director of the CA Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
California could get 600,000 new acres of federally protected
wilderness under legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate
recently. The designation would ensure the lands remain free of
development, vehicles and commercial activity. … It
would also designate more than 583 miles of river — including
45 miles of San Gabriel River tributaries, as well as Little
Rock Creek — as “wild and scenic rivers,” a protection that
prohibits dams or new mining.
Dry, hot weather and strong winds have triggered a “red flag”
fire warning for parts of northern California, the first time
the National Weather Service has issued such a warning for the
region in the month of May since 2014. Temperatures in northern
California and the Bay Area are expected to peak 15F above
average on Monday and Tuesday, with 20- to 35mph wind gusts
expected in some parts, prompting the NWS to warn of dangerous
fire conditions in the Sacramento region. The red flag warning
is expected to expire after 11am Tuesday.
California is grappling with drought again, facing many of the
same conditions and challenges that were features of the
2012–16 drought—including stressed ecosystems, depleted
reservoirs, hard-hit farms and rural communities, threats to
urban water supplies, and the potential for extensive
wildfires. Knowing what’s different and what’s similar to our
last major drought can help us better prepare the most
vulnerable sectors for ongoing dry times. To put this drought
in context, this is only its second year. Historically,
droughts have lasted up to six years. Our most recent one
lasted five.
Last year’s devastating wildfire season was barely in the
rear-view mirror when the red flag warning hit Sunday for a
large swath of Northern California. In another example of the
Golden State’s new normal, the National Weather Service issued
a surprisingly early-in-the-year fire alert for the area from
Shasta Dam to just north of Los Banos, touching on the eastern
fringes of the Bay Area. … The state’s persistent
drought, combined with low humidity and strong northeasterly
winds Sunday, signaled an early start to the fire season even
without the triple-digit temperatures of late summer.
Roseville is the recipient of $33 million in low-interest
financing from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)
Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA)
program. This funding will accelerate water supply planning and
implementation under Roseville’s Water Future Initiative. …
WIFIA program funding and utility operation funds will advance
two critical efforts under Water Future. We will increase the
number of groundwater wells and examine how we can expand water
recycling over time.
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
The Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors is
pleased to announce it has unanimously appointed Jennifer
Hanson as its new General Manager during today’s Board of
Directors’ meeting. … Hanson will be NID’s 15th General
Manager and its first female in the District’s 100-year
history. Hanson comes to NID from the City of Lincoln, located
in South Placer County, where she served as its City
Manager. During her tenure as City Manager, Jennifer was
responsible for the daily operations of the full-service City
and for implementing the City Council’s strategic priorities.
The US Forest Service is taking public comments on a proposed
exploratory mining operation near the headwaters of Hot Creek
in the Eastern Sierra that could lead to harmful open pit
mining near this fishery. We need your help to stop it. This
project is problematic and disastrous in many ways: KORE
Mining wants to drill around Hot Creek for gold with no plan or
guarantee that gold exists in that area. Dredging,
excavation, and hydraulic mining will cause dramatic
stream degradation. The proposal for the exploratory operation
provides no information on how much water is needed, the depth
of drilling, or the negative impact on the wildlife and the
environment.
It’s been another dry year in California. Governor Gavin Newsom
has declared a drought emergency in two northern California
counties and the Sierra snowpack is well below normal. All that
does not bode well for this summer’s wildfire season. To get a
sense of what to expect this year, KAZU’s Doug McKnight spoke
with Cal Fire Battalion Chief Issac Sanchez…
California is once again in a drought, just four years after
the last dry spell decimated ecosystems, fueled megafires and
left many rural communities without well water. Droughts are a
natural part of the landscape in the American west, and the
region has in many ways been shaped by its history of drought.
But the climate scientist Peter Gleick argues that the droughts
California is facing now are different than the ones that have
historically cycled through the Golden State.
Predicting the effects of forest fuel treatments is difficult
and uncertain — it is unclear whether the treatments are more
helpful to forest health or streamflow. According to new
research by disturbance ecohydrologist Ryan Bart and his
colleagues at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI), the
answer is both, though not at the same time. Fuel
treatments for forest management include prescribed burns, tree
thinning and pruning, for example, each of which are done to
reduce fire risk and severity.
At this point, it seems like almost a given that California
will see another historic fire season. A meager rainy season is
in the rearview mirror. Snowpack is depleted. Vegetation and
soils are parched. … But there are still some key variables
that haven’t yet taken shape. Weather events, human behavior
and even luck will dictate whether 2021 goes down in the record
books like 2020, when California wildfires burned an area
larger than the state of Connecticut.
The Marin Municipal Water District on April 20 enacted a series
of water conservation rules, including banning home car washes,
no watering of outdoor lawns between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and no
refilling decorative pools or fountains. A day later,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for
the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Marin County borders Sonoma. Newsom chose to make the
declaration in those two counties only, rather than statewide,
as some officials and farmers in the agricultural-rich Central
Valley had hoped. But Newsom said a broader drought declaration
could come as conditions change.
With a snowpack at 20-percent of normal, as of April 1, Inyo
County and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power begin
a month of discussion over the proposed pumping plan for the
2021-22 run-off year. LADWP intends to pump from 64,600 to
78,980 acre-feet of water from well fields in the Owens Valley.
Inyo’s Water Commission will meet this evening at 6 p.m. for
its initial discussion of the plan, laid out with proposed
volumes from Laws to Lone Pine.
California is in the second year of a drought. Governor Newsom
this week made his first drought declaration. Just how dry is
this drought, so far? What are some likely
implications? And what might State and local governments
do about it?
A storm system is bringing rain to the Valley and snow to the
High Sierra. Several inches of snow accumulation are expected
by the time the storm is through. There was light snowfall in
Shaver Lake Sunday evening, but not much was sticking.
… The National Weather Service in Hanford said even
though this storm is bringing in snow in the High Sierra, it
will not make a dent in the precipitation deficit we’ve been
seeing.
California is bracing for what’s likely to be another
destructive wildfire season in light of record-dry conditions.
A number of hot spots are in the Sierra Nevada, where rural
communities are still reeling from unprecedented wildfires last
year in both size and severity. … The research center
has never seen April fuel moisture levels so low in many
California places.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
The Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) has acquired five new
miles of canal and associated facilities from South Sutter
Water District (SSWD) after an agreement between the two
agencies was approved by the PCWA Board of
Directors. Located in the Auburn Ravine, the newly
acquired Moore and Pleasant Grove canals have long served
PCWA’s agricultural customers west of the City of Lincoln, who
primarily grow rice and provide habitat for waterfowl and other
species.
Lake Tahoe is known for its mesmerizing clear, blue water.
But there are multiple threats to the lake that may
someday change the color and worse, downgrade the quality
of the water. Some of the most difficult of these threats to
address are invasive species, specifically two types of
aquatic plants that are not native and are moving from an area
of the lake known as the Tahoe Keys into Lake Tahoe
itself. The plants are Eurasian watermilfoil and
curly-leaf pondweed.
Let me introduce myself. I am a California water drop. I
condensed from billions of water vapor molecules in the air
above the North Pacific Ocean to become embedded in the clouds
that evolved into a large storm system. Through alternating ups
and downs, and freeze and thaw cycles, I was carried in a
rotating middle latitude wave cyclone as it drifted southeast
and toward California. As the storm swept across the Golden
State, I was forced to rise higher over the mountains and I
grew as a giant ice crystal until I fell as a
fluffy-turned-heavy snowflake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
As extreme drought conditions continue to expand across the San
Francisco Bay Area, a leading climate researcher issued a new
warning Thursday of another sign that a water supply crisis is
developing across the region. Dan McEvoy, a researcher
with the Western Region Climate Center, told KPIX 5 he was
startled to discover that several locations in Sierra had seen
the biggest decline in snowpack’s water content on record for
the time span covering the first three weeks of April…. [T]he
snowpack in the central Sierra has declined significantly to
just 37% of average. … Much of Northern California
experienced temperatures 4-degrees above average for the
period.
A burst of rain is expected to drench the Bay Area this
weekend, bringing much-needed moisture to a parched region. The
rains will likely be intense — but short-lived, tapering off to
another stretch of warm, dry conditions by the middle of next
week, meteorologists said. Showers were expected to start in
the North Bay as early as Saturday evening, with steady
rainfall pounding much of the Bay Area Sunday. Lingering
showers were expected in the central coast through Sunday
night, according to the National Weather Service.
A weather pattern change will bring much-needed rain and
mountain snow to parts of the drought-stricken West, including
California, into the weekend. So far this month, the jet stream
has often taken a huge detour northward over the eastern
Pacific Ocean, effectively blocking Pacific storms from
reaching the West Coast.
More than 20 years ago, aquatic ecologist Michael Bogan
interned with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in
Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevadas. It was 1998, a wet year for
California, and the idea of studying water in the desert lodged
in his brain. Desert streams are approachable subjects,
especially compared to, say, a massive and murky system like
the Mississippi River, says Bogan, now a professor at the
University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the
Environment: … For Bogan, studying those small systems over
the past two decades has meant witnessing their decline.
As drought conditions worsen across Northern California, the
Marin Municipal Water District is about to become the Bay
Area’s first major water agency to make the leap to mandatory
water restrictions. The utility is expected to adopt a plan
Tuesday that would require nearly 200,000 residents of southern
and central Marin County to limit outdoor watering to one day a
week as well as to stop washing their cars, refilling their
swimming pools and power-washing their homes, among other
things. Offenders could face fines of up to $250…
California has entered another drought. But depending on who
you ask, the last one may have never really ended. Some
researchers believe the region is actually more than two
decades into an emerging “megadrought” — a hydrological event
that is on par with the worst dry spells of the past
millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate
change is driving its severity — and will make it that much
harder to climb back out of.
For the past four years, a Canadian mining company has been in
Nevada County, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento,
collecting samples of what it suspects is one of the world’s
highest-grade underground gold deposits, potentially worth
billions. … The legacy of gold, while widely celebrated, is
not something that many in this area, now home to more retirees
and Bay Area transplants than men in hard hats and overalls,
want to revisit. … [T]he scars it left on the landscape
remain visible, and unwanted. Creeks still get mucked up
with iron and sulfuric acid from old mines. Soils contain
arsenic left over from drilling. …
The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) today
launched California Nature to engage
Californians in advancing the State’s commitment to conserving
30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030 (30×30) and
enlisting nature-based solutions to combat climate change. The
website and a new online questionnaire are aimed at gathering
input from a broad cross-section of Californians.
Water is one of the world’s most vital resources. So is there
reason to freak out now that profit-hungry hedge funds and
other investors can trade it like a barrel of oil or shares of
Apple? That’s exactly what CME Group recently did in California
when it launched the world’s first futures market for water in
December 2020. Put simply, a futures market lets people place
bets on the future price of water.
-Written by Ellen Bruno, of University of
California, Berkeley and Heidi Schweizer, of North
Carolina State University.
Drought-riddled California will spend over $500 million in the
coming months cutting fuel breaks, lighting prescribed burns
and conducting other wildfire prevention tactics under
legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. The Democratic
governor said the $536 million budget deal is the first of many
preventative steps he will authorize with the Golden State
careening toward another expected brutal wildfire season.
There’s just one week left to register for our Water 101
Workshop, which offers a primer on the things you need to know
to understand California water. One of our most popular events,
this once-a-year workshop will be held as an engaging online
event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday,
April 23.
Earlier this month, camera crews once again gathered in the
Sierra Nevada to watch a man plunge a pole through the snow.
The pole was removed and, following a tense few moments,
Californians learned we experienced another dry winter, and we
are plunging further into drought. These snowpack surveys are
quaint rituals, but they’re also a jarring reminder of how
little technological innovation has occurred in California’s
water sector. -Written by Danielle Blacet, deputy executive
director at the California Municipal Utilities Association,
and Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy
at the Bay Area Council.
Despite bipartisan calls to declare a state of emergency over
California’s deepening drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom sidestepped
questions Tuesday about when he may issue a proclamation. The
governor said his administration is talking with federal
officials daily about the status of the state’s water supply
after two years of minimal rainfall that have dried out much of
California.
Climate change affects our weather patterns, sea levels,
wildlife populations, and global temperatures, but very few
people understand the ramifications it’s had on the human
population. Believe it or not, our food, water, and air quality
have all been seriously affected by climate change, and as a
result, climate change has affected human health in a number of
dangerous and potentially deadly ways. … [D]roughts cause
wildfires, which are contributing to air quality problems.
We’ve already seen what the immense plumes of smoke created by
wildfires can do to air quality
in California and Australia.
Californians received a double dose of not so happy water news
last month; cutbacks were made to water allocations and a key
water price index surged higher. … The state’s Department of
Water Resources has wasted no time in sounding alarm bells;
officials have already announced 50 percent cutbacks from
December 2020’s projected water allotments to State Water
Project allocations for the 2021 water year. California
residents were warned “to plan for the impacts of limited water
supplies this summer for agriculture as well as urban and rural
water users.”
The chamise plants that blanket California’s shrubby chaparral
should have grown new sprouts by now, flowering after winter
rains before baking in the arid summer heat. They are highly
flammable and abundant in wildland areas — and, for that
reason, a bellwether to wildfire researchers. This month, a San
Jose State University team analyzing moisture levels was
shocked at what it found at study sites in the Santa Cruz
Mountains. At two locations researchers found no new growth to
cut from the shrubs. It’s an ominous sign of just how dry the
vegetation is around California, where boundless numbers of
plants and trees have been starved of life-sustaining water
thanks to an entire winter of paltry precipitation. Those dry
plants are fuel for wildfires, and they’re primed to burn
explosively.
The state is slipping further into more serious levels of
drought as it enters the second year for dry conditions and the
records the third driest rainy season on record. The US
Drought Monitor has downgraded areas in far Northern
California, the Central Coast, and Southern California to
reflect recent drought data. The top level “Exceptional”
(D4) drought remains at 5% in the Owens Valley and Mohave
Desert. Extreme (D3) drought now covers 35% of the state, an
increase from 32% last week. Most of the direct impacts
from various stages of more severe drought impact agriculture
and grazing areas. Many areas have only seen 50% of normal rain
or less. Areas that receive snow have seen well below average
snowpack levels.
After the worst fire season in California history and as
drought conditions raise fears of what’s to come, Gov. Gavin
Newsom and legislative leaders unveiled a $536-million proposal
Thursday to boost efforts at firefighting and a variety of
prevention measures, including vegetation management and the
construction of fire-resistant structures across the state. The
proposal, which the Legislature could send to the governor’s
desk as soon as Monday, marks an early agreement by the
governor and lawmakers to spend more than half of the $1
billion in wildfire funding Newsom called for in his state
budget proposal in January. The gravity of the issue became
clear last week after state officials reported the water
content in the Sierra Nevada snowpack stood at 59% of the
average for early spring.
Lack of monsoon rainfall last summer and spotty snowfall this
winter combined to worsen the Western drought dramatically in
the past year, and spring snowmelt won’t bring much relief.
Critical April 1 measurements of snow accumulations from
mountain ranges across the region show that most streams and
rivers will once again flow well below average levels this
year, stressing ecosystems and farms and depleting key
reservoirs that are already at dangerously low levels. As
the climate warms, it’s likely that drought conditions will
worsen and persist across much of the West. Dry spells between
downpours and blizzards are getting longer, and snowpack in the
mountains is starting to melt during winter, new research
shows.
Rainstorms grew more erratic and droughts much longer across
most of the U.S. West over the past half-century as climate
change warmed the planet, according to a sweeping government
study released Tuesday that concludes the situation is
worsening. The most dramatic changes were recorded in the
desert Southwest, where the average dry period between
rainstorms grew from about 30 days in the 1970s to 45 days
between storms now, said Joel Biederman, a research hydrologist
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Southwest Watershed
Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has marked
2021 as the third-driest water year, a period marked from
October to March, on record for the Golden State, potentially
setting up another deadly wildfire season after last year’s
record setting blazes. The department’s annual snow survey
released this month recorded precipitation levels at 50 percent
the annual average for the water year. The dry conditions
can also be seen in the state’s water supply, with the
department reporting that California’s major reservoirs are at
just 50 percent of overall capacity.
For the first time since her historic ascension as the nation’s
first woman vice president, Kamala Harris returned to her
native Oakland on Monday to promote the Biden administration’s
ambitious proposal to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and
create jobs…. Harris toured the East Bay Municipal Utility
District’s water treatment plant, speaking to employees and
touting the district as the kind of operation that should be
emulated. …. Harris highlighted the water portion of the
[Biden] plan, saying the goal is to invest in jobs that can
build up, replace and modernize water infrastructure — all with
the goal of getting clean drinking water to everyone.
California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a
few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history
left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered
major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle
their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating
megafires. … Just four years since the state’s last
drought emergency, experts and advocates say the state isn’t
ready to cope with what could be months and possibly years of
drought to come.
The idea of cloud seeding and weather modification has been
around since 1940. There were federally funded programs in
the 1960s—one named Project Skywater that ultimately
had mixed results. In the 1970s and 1980s, the US government
began experimenting on how weather modification could be used
as a war tool. But outside of ski resorts like Vail, where the
technology is used to help increase snow during snowstorms,
interest in cloud seeding largely dropped off.
… According to the North American Weather
Modification Council, there are currently several projects
being run in California, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Utah, among
other states with a project here or there.
In this episode John Howard and Tim Foster welcomed the
longtime but soon-to-be-retired Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California head honcho Jeff Kightlinger for a
wide-ranging discussion that covered the status of the Delta
Tunnel Project, climate change and the snow survey, the
drought, working from home, jukeboxes, his punk rock roots and
Dan Walters‘ connection to the Zasu Pitts Memorial
Orchestra.
It was in 2016 that the state of California declared a
four-year drought had finally come to an end. Now, in 2021, it
could be entering another very dry season. It is in the winter
season that folks on the West Coast welcome dreary days packed
with cloud and rain. California usually sees the most rain and
snow in the month of February. This year, however, was
different: It was quite dry all of the winter season, and we
can blame La Niña for this pattern. … Thirty per cent of
California’s water supply comes from the snowpack in the Sierra
Nevada mountain ranges and only 57 per cent of normal
precipitation has fallen this season. This, coupled with lower
than average snowpack for 2020 as well, could spell trouble
down the road when it comes to water supply.
In the wake of California’s worst-ever wildfire season,
researchers are exploring how mushrooms can help detoxify
polluted soil and water. Scientists and volunteers at
CoRenewal, a nonprofit dedicated to ecological restoration, are
conducting the experiment in burn zones along high-risk
waterways in Northern California. Burned and melted plastics,
metals, electronics, and building materials leave behind toxic
ash, which then washes into water systems. For instance, in the
months following the Tubbs Fire in 2017 and Camp Fire in 2018,
authorities found toxic levels of benzene—a cancer-causing
chemical—in local drinking water.
In 2016—after two years of rigorous scientific study by
CalTrout and its partners in the Sierra Meadows Partnership—the
Sierra Meadows Strategy for restoring and protecting our
state’s Sierra Nevada meadows was officially released. A key
piece of CalTrout’s source-waters-to-sea approach to combatting
the effects of drought and climate change, this strategy
developed among a broad coalition of conservation partners aims
to restore and conserve meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada,
protecting a major source of our state’s water supply and
critical habitats to fish and other species.
As California emerged from a historically tough five-year
drought in 2017, then-governor Jerry Brown signed two new laws
that required local water agencies to limit water use to 55
gallons per person per day, with water-use allotments dropping
to 50 gallons by 2030. Despite some misreporting to the
contrary, these limits on individuals were not
enforceable. Instead, the state imposed fines on districts
that failed to meet the new targets. It was pretty clear what
direction the state was taking: Since then, California has gone
all in for extreme conservation measures that could eventually
lead to rationing as water-use allotments drop. Unless
something changes, it may be only a matter of time before such
policies lead to personal restrictions on lawn-watering,
car-washing, and even showering.
-Written by Steven Greenhut, the western-region
director for the R Street Institute and a columnist for the
Southern California News Group.
Rain is scarce in much of California, and most of California’s
people live in water-starved regions. And yet the state is, by
some measures, the fifth largest economy in the world. How?
Because during the last century, California has built a complex
network of dams, pumps and canals to transport water from where
it falls naturally to where people live. But climate change
threatens to upend the delicate system that keeps farm fields
green and household taps flowing. In this episode of the UCI
Podcast, Nicola Ulibarri, an assistant professor of urban
planning and public policy who is an expert on water resource
management, discusses how droughts and floods have shaped
California’s approach to water…
The huge, lush green meadows that stretch between the S.R. 203
junction with U.S. 395 and Crowley Lake may seem like they have
been there forever but in reality, their existence has been
under threat for several years after the Los Angeles Department
of Water and Power threatened to withdraw much of the water
from the meadowlands a few years ago, stating it needed the
water for its own uses. If implemented, the proposed
‘de-watering’ of much of the massive meadows would have turned
them into sage and dust, destroying wildlife habitat, historic
cattle grazing leases, the fishing habitat along Hot Creek and
the Upper Owens River and much more.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has
agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty for discharging comingled
stormwater at Mule Creek State Prison, in violation of the
Clean Water Act. The penalty was assessed for unpermitted
discharges between January 2018 and April 2019 to Mule Creek, a
tributary to Dry Creek and the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. The case began three years ago when the Central
Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Central Valley
Water Board) received a complaint that the prison was
discharging wastewater into the nearby creek. Central Valley
Water Board staff confirmed discharges were occurring from the
prison to Mule Creek.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today conducted the
fourth snow survey at the Phillips Station snow course. The
manual survey recorded 49.5 inches of snow depth and a snow
water equivalent (SWE) of 21 inches, which is 83 percent of
average for this location. The SWE measures the amount of water
contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s water
supply forecast. Measurements from DWR’s electronic snow survey
stations indicate that statewide the snowpack’s SWE is 16.5
inches, or 59 percent of average for the date. April 1 is
typically when California’s snowpack is the deepest and has the
highest SWE.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said the state will
hire nearly 1,400 additional firefighters as an unusually dry
winter stokes fears of another devastating wildfire season.
California depends on snowfall in the mountains for much of its
water. But the latest snow survey recorded a statewide “snow
water equivalent” of just 15 inches, or about 54% of average
for April 1, when the state’s snowpack is the deepest. The
state had a similarly dry winter last year. What followed was a
record-setting wildfire season where more than 4% of the
state’s land burned, destroying nearly 10,500 buildings and
killing 33 people.
California’s wet season is coming to a close without a
much-sought “March miracle” storm, setting the stage for a
painful escalation of drought in the coming months. The April 1
snow survey, which measures the peak accumulation of snow in
the Sierra and southern Cascades just before it melts, will
show only about 60% of average snowpack. … The grim survey
results expected Thursday, which mark a second straight year of
significantly dry conditions, reinforce concerns about a
difficult fire season ahead and bolster the expanding calls for
water conservation.
Emerging technologies will be at the forefront of this summer’s
launch of the ten-year, multi-agency effort to address aquatic
invasive species (AIS) as laid out in The Lake Tahoe Region
Invasive Species Action Agenda. Published in late 2019,
Phase I of the Action Agenda aims to aggressively treat and
control-test mitigation measures of AIS in the Tahoe Keys from
2021-2025. The environmental assessment and control-testing
outcomes from Phase I will then guide the implementation of
Phase II’s reduction and eradication measures from 2026-2030.
Aquatic invasive species offer a complex and unique set of
challenges for experts looking to find the best mitigation
strategy for their Action Agenda.
New forest management plans that could be in effect for the
next 15 years in California’s Sierra Nevada are almost complete
– using public comments made prior to the catastrophic Creek
Fire that burned nearly a third of Sierra National Forest. The
aftermath of that wildfire – the largest single fire in
California’s history – isn’t prompting big changes in national
forest plan revisions that have been in the works for years,
federal land managers said. … Aside from air
quality, these forests directly affect the lives of millions of
people in California most prominently via billions of gallons
of water that annually flow from these forests into the central
San Joaquin Valley.
As the rain season comes to a close across Northern California,
water districts are keeping a close eye on rain totals that are
below average, and water managers are explaining what another
“dry water year” means for our region. According to
California’s Department of Water Resources, or DWR, the state
is well into its second consecutive dry year. That causes
concern among water managers. However, it comes as no surprise.
… With the memory of drought years between 2012 and 2016 not
too distant, [DWR information officer Chris] Orrock explained
how lessons learned from that time period are still being
implemented.
Another advantage to “feeding” the soil in a region plagued
with persistent drought involves the tremendous water savings.
… With below-average precipitation in California,
its reservoirs are showing the impacts of a second dry year.
Lake Oroville stands at 55% of average and Lake Shasta,
California’s largest, now stands at 68%. Most
eco-conscious activists agree that, with the climate’s changing
patterns that lead to decreasing water supplies and die-offs of
pollinators, a lot more needs to be done to help keep our water
and food supplies plentiful.
The lack of rain and snow during what is usually California’s
wet season has shrunk the state’s water supply. The Sierra
Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water as it melts over the
spring and summer, is currently at 65 percent of normal. Major
reservoirs are also low. Two state agencies warned last week
that the dry winter is very likely to lead to cuts in the
supply of water to homes, businesses and farmers. The federal
Bureau of Reclamation also told its agricultural water
customers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to
expect no water this year.
It may surprise you (it surprises me all the time) but a lot of
young people are deeply interested in how our world runs.
Especially young people who also have a passion for journalism.
One of those young people, Jonathan Horwitz, a graduate fellow
at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism, contacted me some months ago
asking about water. He wanted to do a multimedia project on the
subject and eventually settled on the complexities of the Kern
River. Below is a link to his finished product, which I think
deserves an A+.
Vandals caused thousands of dollars in damage to a Calaveras
County water authority’s supply system and now the public’s
help is being sought to catch the suspects. The crime occurred
sometime during the weekend of Saturday, March 6th at the Utica
Water and Power Authority’s (Utica) public water supply system
east of Forest Meadows near the end of Pennsylvania Gulch Road
in the Murphys area. Authority officials note that this is the
only water supply for more than 10,000 residential, commercial
and agricultural customers between Murphys and Angels
Camp.
The second consecutive dry winter has prompted state water
managers to reduce allocations to the state water project that
supplies millions of Californians and 750,000 acres of
farmland. The state Department of Water Resources
announced this week that it will only be able to deliver
5% of the requested allocations following below-average
precipitation across the state. That figure is down from the
initial allocation of 10% announced in December. Many of
the state’s major reservoirs are recording just 50% of average
water storage for this time of year, and won’t see a major
increase due to a snowpack that is averaging just 65% of
normal, according to state statistics..
California’s drought conditions might normally prompt calls for
shorter showers and shutting off sprinklers. But Californians
are in no mood to hear it after a year of pandemic deprivation.
Especially from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is facing an almost
certain recall election after imposing multiple rounds of
business closures and constantly telling residents to stay
home. … California is particularly parched because 2020
was not only dry, but extremely hot. Experts think the state is
about where it was in 2014, when former Gov. Jerry Brown asked
Californians to reduce their water use by 20 percent.
From the very first gold miners making claims to divert streams
in the Sierra Nevada foothills to the later wrangling that
enabled irrigation of Central Valley farmland and drinking
water to be sent to growing cities in California, water rights
are an indispensable cornerstone of the state’s water supply
and delivery system.
State and federal water officials have delivered their most
dire warning yet of California’s deepening drought, announcing
that water supply shortages are imminent and calling for quick
conservation. Among a handful of drastic actions this week, the
powerful State Water Board on Monday began sending notices to
California’s 40,000 water users, from small farms to big cities
like San Francisco, telling them to brace for cuts. It’s a
preliminary step before the possibility of ordering their water
draws to stop entirely.
It wipes out entire communities in a matter of moments, weakens
our lungs and even taints our drinking water, yet federal
strategy to combat wildfires remains outdated and largely
ineffective. The Biden Administration has an opportunity to
rewrite the playbook on combatting wildfires, according to
Stanford University science and policy experts whose research
on a range of related issues points toward bipartisan
solutions.
In 2020 wildfires ravaged more than 10 million acres of land
across California, Oregon and Washington, making it the largest
fire season in modern history. Across the country, hurricanes
over Atlantic waters yielded a record-breaking number of
storms. While two very different kinds of natural disasters,
scientists say they were spurred by a common catalyst – climate
change – and that both also threaten drinking water supplies.
As the nation already wrestles with water shortages,
contamination and aging infrastructure, experts warn more
frequent supercharged climate-induced events will exacerbate
the pressing issue of safe drinking water.
While a supermajority of Americans finally believe we are
warming the world, a 2020 Yale Climate Opinion survey shows
that most people still aren’t very worried about it.
… But Californians do. Reeling from a decade of
record-shattering drought, heat waves, and wildfires, people in
the Golden State overwhelmingly tell Public Policy Institute of
California pollsters that the effects of global warming have
already begun. Indeed … researchers can now link climate
change with some of today’s extreme events [including the
wild swings in precipitation that cause intense rainstorms at
one end and severe droughts at the other] beyond a
reasonable doubt.
With annual fires in the west, hurricanes and floods in the
east, and extreme colds in the south of the United States,
climate catastrophes seem to occur more frequently and at a
higher caliber each year. … [C[limate disasters have been
increasing since the 1960s, with a steep 35 percent increase
recorded since the 1990s. In 2020 alone, the United States
endured 30 record-breaking named storms during hurricane
season, 4 million acres of California’s land burned by
wildfires during fire season, and the global average surface of
the Earth overall in 2020 tied for the warmest year on record
with 2016.
With three-quarters of the US west gripped by a seemingly
ceaseless drought, several states are increasingly embracing a
drastic intervention – the modification of the weather to spur
more rainfall. … Cloud seeding experiments have taken
place since the 1940s but until recently there was little
certainty the method had any positive impact.
But research last year managed to pinpoint snowfall
that “unambiguously” came from cloud seeding … Others are now
looking to join in, including the “four corners” states – Utah,
Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico – that have been ravaged by
the most extreme version of the latest drought.
California farmers relying on State Water Project water were
warned Monday to prepare for potential shortages by reducing
water use and adopting practical conservation measures.
A Biden initiative expected to pour up to $3 trillion into
repairing America’s decrepit infrastructure and funding other
programs has sparked a scramble across the nation for the
federal funds — with California expecting to reap the biggest
piece. …Rep. John Garamendi, a Northern California Democrat
who is a senior member of the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee…spent more than an hour with Biden
in recent weeks and came away convinced that the program will
be broad enough to improve most areas of the nation’s
infrastructure: highways, passenger rail, electric grids, dams,
sewers and water systems, ocean terminals and
airports….
Under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the USDA Forest Service closed 77 large-capacity
cesspools (LCCs) it operated in Arizona and California. The
Forest Service met the deadlines set forth in the agreement and
closed the cesspools, which can be sources of harmful water
pollution, in 11 national forests across the two states.
… Cesspools collect and release untreated raw sewage
into the ground, where disease-causing pathogens and harmful
chemicals can contaminate groundwater and surface waters that
are sources of drinking water.
Much of the U.S. West is facing the driest spring in seven
years, setting up a climate disaster that could strangle
agriculture, fuel deadly wildfires and even hurt power
production. Across 11 western states, drought has captured
about 75% of the land, and covers more than 44% of the
contiguous U.S., the U.S. Drought Monitor said. While
drought isn’t new to the West, where millions of people live,
grow crops and raise livestock in desert conditions that
require massive amounts of water, global warming is
exacerbating the problem — shrinking snowpack in the Rocky
Mountains and extending the fire season on the West Coast.
A Nevada town founded a century ago by pioneers lured to the
West by the promise of free land and cheap water in the desert
is trying to block the U.S. government from renovating a
115-year-old earthen irrigation canal with a plan that would
eliminate leaking water that local residents long have used to
fill their own domestic wells. A federal judge denied the town
of Fernley’s bid last year to delay plans to line parts of the
Truckee Canal with concrete to make it safer after it burst and
flooded nearly 600 homes in 2008.
As of 2021, California is home to 31 distinct kinds of native
salmon, steelhead and trout species, 20 of which are found only
in our state. These fish are prized for their economic and
cultural significance by local communities, and for their
recreational attributes by anglers from around the world. But
these fish face an alarming threat that can’t be ignored. If
current trends continue, nearly half of these fish will be
extinct within the next 50 years. How do we know this? And
perhaps an even better question: what can be done about
it?
As more people move into the Truckee River watershed, demand
for water is increasing while more and more nonpoint source
(NPS) pollution is making its way to the river. Nearly half a
million people get their water from the Truckee River, and
nonpoint source pollution threatens the quality of not just the
drinking water, but the greater ecosystem of the entire
watershed. Nonpoint source contaminants are the largest single
source of water pollution in Nevada and across the
nation. Here in the Truckee Meadows, things such as
fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, motor oil, engine
coolant, septic tanks, chemical runoff , silt from erosion, and
e. Coli bacteria, to list a few, all affect the overall quality
of ground, surface, and ultimately, drinking water.
With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or
worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for
relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought
has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture
officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California
and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key
reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to
wheat crops.
Of all the existential threats California parks face —
dwindling budgets, more visitors and costly, long-deferred
maintenance — now comes a climate-driven conundrum: When is a
park no longer a park? When its namesake trees disappear in a
barrage of lightning strikes? When its very land is washed away
by ever-rising seas? The California Department of Parks
and Recreation is coming to terms with this dilemma after a
climate-reckoning moment last August, when more than 97%
of Big Basin Redwoods, California’s oldest state park, was
charred by a lightning-sparked wildfire.
Crews on Lake Tahoe’s South Shore continue work to remove
aquatic invasive plants from the Taylor Creek and Tallac Creek
marshes. A new fence was recently installed around the project
area and officials are asking recreators to respect the
protected area for safety and to ensure the greatest chance of
success for the project, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency
said in a press release. The fencing is intended to protect
large tarps that will be staked to the marsh bottom as part of
a project to remove Eurasian watermilfoil from the marsh
ecosystem…
Storm activity has been bittersweet for Valley farmers. In some
cases, hail has damaged crops, making them unusable, while snow
and rainfall are helping Central California recover from a
water deficit. … Eric Engelman inspected his almonds in
Fresno County after the recent back-to-back storms brought
heavy rain and even quarter-sized hail to parts of the Valley.
For foothill communities like Coarsegold, they even brough
snowfall. … It’s a detrimental part of the almond
growing process to experience hail. Any damage that was done
won’t be known until closer to harvest.
As March begins to drag on with little precipitation in the
forecast and few weeks left in California’s traditional wet
season, we are in another dry year. This is California’s second
dry year in a row since the 2012-2016 drought.
Statistically, California has the most drought and flood years
per average year than anywhere in the US. This
statistical fact seems to becoming increasingly extreme, as
predicted by many climate change models.
A judge has ordered the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power to continue providing historic quantities of irrigation
water to lessees of its pasturelands east of Yosemite, despite
the agency’s assertion that climate change is making water
resources in the Sierra Nevada watershed increasingly
unreliable.
Many people in Grass Valley, Calif., live and work over the
Idaho-Maryland Mine without realizing it. A lot of information
about the location of the two surface sites and the project
features has been circulated, but not much has been shared
about the sheer size of the project underground and how that
may affect us. … Wells are of even greater concern. Due
to dewatering of the mine, there will be lowering of the ground
water levels in the area.
The forested watersheds of the Sierra Nevada are the origin of
more than 60 percent of the state’s developed water supply.
Sierra Nevada megafires that kill all, or nearly all,
vegetation across large landscapes pose serious risks to this
system. In the immediate aftermath of a fire, high-severity
burn areas lack vegetation to stabilize soils. … The
resulting sediment enters nearby creeks and rivers, degrading
water quality and adversely affecting regional aquatic
habitats.
The Western US is in the midst of yet another dangerous dry
spell. The drought has been building over the past year, and
since November, a greater stretch of the West has been in the
most severe category of drought than at any time in the 20
years that the National Drought Mitigation Center has been
keeping records. … Ryan Jensen saw the impacts of
California’s last major drought firsthand while working for the
Community Water Center in the San Joaquin Valley. When
residential wells ran dry, students had to shower in their
school locker rooms. To keep toilets running, some rural
households relied on hoses slung over fences from their
neighbors.
Thunderstorms dumped anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters
of an inch of rain in the Sacramento area Wednesday as the
region was pelted by dime-sized hail that filled streets and
front lawns. A cold weather system moved north along the
California coast before it combined with warm temperatures near
the ground and created the right conditions to form scattered
thunderstorms throughout Northern California, said Eric Kurth,
a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in
Sacramento.
Hail and rain blanketed much of the Greater Sacramento Area
this week, though experts say it’s not likely to play a major
role in the state’s drought position. … Having endured
two consecutively dry winters, California’s snowpack in most
areas is less than 75% of normal for this time of year,
according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Many
water agencies in California have discussed water conservation
measures, the center wrote in its latest drought report. The
North Marin Water District in the San Francisco Bay Area has
already considered voluntary and mandatory water conservation
orders.
A Pacific storm brought more much-needed rain and snow to
California on Wednesday at the tail-end of a largely dry
winter. Winter storm warnings were in effect in the southern
Cascades, down the length of the Sierra Nevada and the
mountains of Southern California, the National Weather Service
said….The Sierra snowpack is an important contributor to
California‘s water supply, but at the start of March its water
content was about half the average normally recorded on April
1, when it is typically at its most robust.
California’s large reservoirs are currently operated using
historical hydrology and outdated assumptions about the state’s
climate. Many experts are calling for changing how reservoirs
are managed to reflect advances in weather forecasting, which
can help the state adapt to a warmer, more volatile climate. We
talked to Martin Ralph—director of the Center for Western
Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography—about advances in this field.
California, and Southern California in particular, is bone dry.
The calendar says spring officially begins with the equinox
March 20, but the meteorological winter — consisting of
December, January and February — is already in the record
books. In other words, the wettest months are over. Let’s take
a look at where the Golden State stands.
Much of the western U.S. continues to endure a long-term
drought, one that threatens the region’s water supplies
and agriculture and could worsen wildfires this year. In fact,
some scientists are calling the dryness in the West a
“megadrought,” defined as an intense drought that lasts
for decades or longer. Overall, about 90% of the West is
now either abnormally dry or in a drought, which is among the
highest percentages in the past 20 years, according to this
week’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
California will face another critically dry year, and residents
will need to adapt quickly to cope with water shortages and a
warmer, drier climate that has helped fuel destructive
wildfires. Officials with the state’s department of water
resources announced on Tuesday they had found that the water
content of the overall snowpack for 2 March amounted to 61% of
the average. The state’s largest reservoirs were storing
between 38% and 68% of their capacity, officials said, meaning
that the state would have a lot less water to carry it through
the rest of the year.
Human fingerprints are all over the world’s freshwater. A new
study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that
while human-controlled freshwater sources make up a minimal
portion of the world’s ponds, lakes, and rivers, they are
responsible for more than half of all changes to the Earth’s
water system. … Climate change already looms large over the
world’s freshwater supply. Major sources of drinking water,
like the Colorado River, have less water and are flowing
more slowly due to climate change—even as they face increasing
demand from our water-hungry farms and cities. Rainfall itself
is becoming more erratic in some locations, such as
California…
As climate change brings an increase in the frequency and
severity of droughts, forest dieback is a key cause for
concern: forests act as reservoirs of biodiversity and also
allow vast amounts of carbon to be stored, reducing the
so-called greenhouse effect. Oak trees, iconic veterans of
European and American forests, have previously been thought to
be highly vulnerable to drought. Now, thanks to a novel
non-invasive optical technique, scientists from INRAE and the
University of Bordeaux in France, with their colleagues from
University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University have
studied a range of oak species in North America to find out
more about their resistance to drought.
The winter storms that dumped heavy snow and rain
across California early in 2021 are likely not enough to negate
what will be a critically dry year, state water officials
believe. California’s Department of Water Resources on
Tuesday recorded a snow depth of 56 inches and water content of
21 inches at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. The water
content of the overall snowpack was 61% of the average for
March 2 and 54% of the average for April 1, when it is
historically at its maximum.
Water may be life, but most residents of Southern California do
not often reflect on the complex series of canals, pumps, and
pipelines that connect where they live to water sources like
the Colorado River, the Sierras, or the numerous water basins
under LA County. Even less appreciated is the role water
districts play in combining water sources, treating our water,
and distributing it. Major water districts influence water
quality and rates. They decide how to meet future water needs
in an era of drought and climate change. These agencies
determine if your water comes from sustainable local sources
like conservation and recycling or from desert-damaging water
mining projects like Cadiz.
A disappointingly dry February is fanning fears of another
severe drought in California, and cities and farms are bracing
for problems. In many places, including parts of the Bay Area,
water users are already being asked to cut back. The
state’s monthly snow survey on Tuesday will show only about 60%
of average snowpack for this point in the year, the latest
indication that water supplies are tightening. With the end of
the stormy season approaching, forecasters don’t expect much
more buildup of snow, a key component of the statewide supply
that provides up to a third of California’s water.
