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.
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.
As the planet warms, scientists expect that mountain snowpack
should melt progressively earlier in the year. However,
observations in the U.S. show that as temperatures have risen,
snowpack melt is relatively unaffected in some regions while
others can experience snowpack melt a month earlier in the
year.
That it hasn’t rained much this year isn’t all bad news,
especially in the aftermath of the Creek Fire that burned
nearly 40% of the San Joaquin River watershed. Most
importantly, mountain communities devastated by the Creek Fire
have not faced the secondary disaster that can be brought by
weather, like in Santa Barbara County when heavy rain in the
burn scar of the Thomas Fire led to deadly and destructive
mudslides. Some areas near Big Creek and North Fork are at risk
of hazardous, post-fire debris flows.
Ninety-nine percent of the state is dry, according to ABC Seven
News Meteorologist Mike Nicco. More than half of the state is
in severe drought mode and 31% is in the extreme drought
conditions which includes part of the North Bay. The Bay
Area is abnormally dry right now, but that should have changed
in January and February as they are typically our wettest
months.
Sterling Construction Company, Inc. today announced that its
subsidiary, Road and Highway Builders, LLC, has been awarded a
$135 million heavy civil contract by the City of Los Angeles
for the construction of the North Haiwee Dam No. 2 in Inyo
County, CA. …The project will also involve the rerouting of
the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which supplies clean drinking water
to the city of Los Angeles, to allow for the appropriate
tie-ins for the dam construction.
San Francisco has long been an international leader on
environmental issues. However, water policy has been a stain on
that record. … Many California rivers are overtapped by
excessive pumping, but few are in worse condition than the
Tuolumne River. In drier years, more than 90% of the Tuolumne’s
water is diverted. On average, 80 percent of the river’s flow
never makes it to the Bay. It’s not a surprise that the river’s
health has collapsed. …
-Written by Bill Martin, a member of the Sierra Club
Bay Chapter Water Committee, and Hunter Cutting, a member
of the Sierra Club Bay Chapter’s San Francisco Group Executive
Committee.
Today, Ceres’ Director of Water, Kirsten James is speaking to
Betty Yee, who was first elected as California State Controller
in November 2014 – a position that serves as the state’s chief
fiscal officer. She also chairs the California Franchise Tax
Board and serves as a member of the California Public
Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State
Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) Boards, representing a
combined portfolio of nearly $500bn. She speaks about how her
experience managing the world’s fifth-largest economy has
shaped her thoughts on climate and water risk.
California’s hydrologic conditions remain dry as February draws
to a close. Although late January storms improved a then-dismal
snowpack, statewide snowpack remains at about two-thirds of
average for this time of year (or 54 percent of the April 1st
average) and natural flow in key Sierra Nevada watersheds is
still tracking at amounts seen in the severe drought years of
2014 and 2015.
Private landowners interested in enhancing, restoring and
protecting wetlands are encouraged to apply for the Wetland
Reserve Easements in California program facilitated by the
Natural Resource Conservation Service.
On January 28, 2021, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal (Ninth
Circuit) issued a decision addressing issues related to the
extent to which the public trust doctrine may be used to
safeguard water resources covered under the 1936 Walker River
Decree (Decree). The litigation arose from contested water
rights in the Walker River Basin, which originates in the
Sierra Nevada mountains in California and ends at Walker Lake
in Mineral County, Nevada. I
Picture the desert landscape of a Mad Max movie populated with
vigilantes devoted to acquiring not gasoline — but water.
This scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. “Water
wars” describes conflicts between countries, states, or groups
over the right to access water resources, usually
freshwater. … As Los Angeles expanded during the
late 19th century, it outgrew its water supply, and L.A.’s
mayor, Fred Eaton, came up with the plan to divert water from
the Owens Valley to L.A. via an aqueduct.
For centuries, farmers have found ingenious ways of making the
best of the water available, but access to fresh water is
becoming more and more unpredictable. Extreme weather events
and drought is as much of a threat, as flash flooding in farms
and food producers. … In California’s Central
Valley, a region that produces a quarter of the USA’s food and
relies mostly on water pumped from underground, to irrigate the
crops, is fast running out of its water supply.
Vanderbilt paleoclimatologists using pioneering research
have uncovered evidence of ancient climate “whiplash” in
California that exceeded even the extremes the state has
weathered in the past decade. Their findings present a
long-term picture of what regional climate change may look like
in the state that supplies the U.S. with more than a third
of its vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
California’s wet season has not brought much relief so far and
the outlook is not promising. …Unfortunately, the outlook is
not promising. Little to no precipitation is expected through
the end of February. California, with the exception of far
northern areas, will likely experience drier than average
conditions during the March through May period, according to
NOAA. Above-average temperatures are also anticipated for the
southern half of the state this spring.
Tuolumne Utilities District provided an update on Thursday
regarding negotiations to acquire Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
assets in the South Fork Stanislaus River watershed and rights
to water in New Melones Reservoir, though the possible costs
remain unclear due to a confidentiality agreement. The TUD
Board of Directors hosted a rare joint meeting via video with
the county Board of Supervisors, Sonora City Council, local
Me-Wuk Indian tribes, and other stakeholders, during which
members spoke about the need for community-wide cooperation and
collaboration due to the scope of the undertaking.
Texas has always seen its share of extreme weather events,
but over the past two decades they have intensified. A few
years ago, after the fifth “ 500-year flood” in five years, I
remarked to a friend, “We’re going to have to stop calling them
that.” … Of course, this uptick in extreme weather is
not limited to Texas. Numerous places across the country—and
indeed the globe—have experienced multiple “historic” weather
events in recent years. Last year, droughts in California led
to six of the largest wildfires in the state’s
history. In 2017 and 2018, British Columbia had two consecutive
record-setting forest fire seasons.
-Written by Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer
with over 25 years of experience in the energy
industry.
The main weather excitement of the season thus far was
certainly the major late January atmospheric event that was the
focus of my last blog post. Despite missing some the details
during the early portion of the event (winds were stronger and
precipitation less intense than originally predicted), the
storm largely evolved as expected–stalling along the Central
Coast and bringing very heavy double-digit rainfall totals
there, as well as extremely heavy snowfall throughout the
Sierra Nevada (on the order of 3-8 *feet* in many places).
COVID-19 wasn’t the only thing that made 2020 such a horrific
year. It was also a historically bad year for wildfires across
the United States, to put it mildly. States such as California
and Colorado saw extreme wildfires that lasted for weeks,
turning the sky orange in some of the nation’s largest cities.
In New Mexico, lightning strikes caused a large, out-of-season
fire in the Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF), later named the
Medio Fire, which burned more than 4,000 acres.
California’s Sierra snow pack is 68% of average after a series
of storms in recent weeks. The Department of Water Resources
says the statewide average is down slightly from the 70% number
about two weeks ago during the last monthly snow survey. The
snow pack was sagging at about 40% of normal back in
mid-January.
Wildfires are spreading to fuel-abundant regions of the world
that used to be less prone to burning, according to a new
analysis of 20 years of data by the Guardian. While the overall
area of annual burn in the world has remained relatively static
in this period, the research indicates a shifting regional fire
pattern that is affecting more forests and fewer grasslands. In
recent years, fires have devastated areas of California,
Australia, Siberia and the Pantanal that used to be relatively
unaffected.
The Tuolumne Utilities District hosted a joint meeting to
provide local stakeholders an update on efforts to acquire
PG&E assets like Pinecrest Reservoir and Lyons Dam, and
water rights from New Melones. The informational meeting
included the Tuolumne County Supervisors, Sonora City Council
and local tribal representatives.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors took bold action to
reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and advance
landscape-scale forest restoration in the Yuba River watershed.
In two separate actions, the board approved $6.5 million in
funding for forest restoration projects as part of the North
Yuba Forest Partnership. The partnership is a diverse group of
nine organizations working collaboratively to plan, finance and
implement forest restoration across 275,000 acres of private
and public land spanning Sierra and Yuba counties and two
national forests.
Many of today’s under-resourced communities have no more access
to blue gold (scarce water) than the under-resourced white
residents of the Owens Valley have had since the 1920s. In 1924
greedy public and private water interests transformed the lush
Owen’s Lake into a noxious dust bowl. One of the guilty
parties LADWP (Department of Water and Power), recently
celebrated partial restoration of Owens Lake by constructing a
ghostly monument of granite and sculpted earth in the long
desiccated lake bed. … For many indigenous peoples denied
their rights to water for a century, partial restoration of the
lake without full restoration of their water rights is too
little, too late.
The worst wildfire year in California history has prompted new
interest in and increased efforts to better manage Sierra
forests to improve their resilience to fire, drought, and
pests. … [PPIC researcher Henry] McCann summarized
PPIC’s new analysis of recent forest stewardship practices on
public and private lands in the headwaters region, which shows
that the amount of land treated is below what experts say is
needed to keep forests healthy.
A series of precipitation-producing storms continue to
contribute to the abundance of new snow to the Sierra and
officials hope to see Northern California to catch up soon from
the slow start to winter and remnants from a dry 2020. Last
week, state water officials made their second trek to the
Sierra to measure the latest snowpack, which showed great
improvement and hopes that more is on the way. Statewide, the
water content of the snowpack was 70 percent of average to date
…
Sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts could someday give western
water managers as much as a two-year head start in planning for
either a wet or dry winter. The scientific methodology already
exists for what is known as S2S precipitation forecasting, but
putting it to work requires improving weather and climate
models and buying enough super-computer time to run the models
to test them. Now, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) report could spur Congress to approve the
$15 million annual investment necessary to translate S2S
forecasting from concept to implementation through pilot
projects in the West.
There’s a race on in California, and each day matters: the
precipitation during winter that fuels the snowpack in the
Sierra Nevadas and fills groundwater supplies has been slow to
start, and faltering at best. Northern California remains stuck
in one of the worst two-year rainfall deficits seen since the
1849 Gold Rush, increasing the risk of water restrictions and
potentially setting up dangerous wildfire conditions next
summer. The current precipitation is only 30% to 70% of what
the state would expect to have seen during a normal year – with
no more big rainfall events on the horizon for February.
A storm is forecast to bring rain to the Bay Area on Thursday
Feb. 11, 2021. After a stretch of sunny, dry weather, the first
significant rainfall is heading to the Bay Area since an
atmospheric river storm pummeled Northern California two weeks
ago. A new storm is forecast to roll in Thursday night,
forecasters said Tuesday. It won’t be anywhere near as big as
the late January storm that triggered landslide warnings and
evacuations in Santa Cruz County communities, and washed out a
big chunk of Highway 1 in Big Sur.
California’s rainy season is starting later in the year than it
used to, extending the threat of fast-spreading wildfires into
the cooler months when, in earlier decades, the fire season
would have been over, according to a new study. The findings
are contained in a recently released study in the journal
Geophysical Research Letters. It finds that the state’s wet
season is beginning nearly a month later than it did in the
1960s and that the autumn season has become progressively
drier.
Although the 1971 San Fernando earthquake and the near failure
of the Lower Van Norman Dam have given rise to construction
improvements … the overwhelming majority of California dams
are decades past their design life span. And while earthquakes
still loom as the greatest threat to California’s massive
collection of dams, experts warn that these aging structures
will be challenged further by a new and emerging hazard:
“whiplashing shifts” in extreme weather due to climate change.
The Klamath Basin’s snowpack forecast isn’t looking so hot this
month, but it’s still too early to tell whether water year
2021’s luck will change. The Natural Resources Conservation
Service released its February outlook report last week,
reporting below average precipitation and snowpack in river
basins across Oregon. Though January did bring several winter
storms to the region, warmer-than-normal temperatures caused
them to dump more rain than snow on mountains, melting some of
the powder that had already accumulated in some areas of the
state.
[Professor John] Melack and Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Jeff Dozier of UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science
& Management have released “Lakes and Watersheds in the Sierra
Nevada of California,” which synthesizes over 40 years of
research on the mountains. Along with coauthors James Sickman
and Steven Sadro, at UC Riverside and UC Davis, respectively,
Melack and Dozier set out a comprehensive account of the
hydrology, ecology and biogeochemistry of California’s
snow-capped range.
Forests in the Sierra‒Cascade headwater region have
dramatically changed over the past 150 years. The prohibition
of Indigenous burning, aggressive wildfire suppression, and
early timber harvest practices made these forests denser over
time, increasing their vulnerability to catastrophic wildfires
and widespread tree-die off. These forests are a dominant
feature on the landscape, occupying nearly 40% of the 15
million acre headwater region overall and well over half of
some northern watersheds. Changing the way we manage these
forests can improve their health and make them more resilient
to wildfire, drought, and disease.
California’s annual rainy season now is starting nearly a month
later than it did 60 years ago, a new study published Thursday
revealed, an ominous trend that is making the wildfire season
longer.
Manteca, Ripon, and Lathrop may not see any more rain until
March. The long-range forecast by Accuweather based off of
National Weather Service modeling underscores the fact
California isn’t out of the woods when it comes to the
potential for 2021 being a drought year even with the recent
heavy storms that dumped significant snow in the Sierra. The
rest of the month is expected to see weather that has daily
highs in the mid-60s to the low 40s with no rain anticipated
until March 1.
During the summer of 2020, American Rivers and partners
completed the restoration of three small meadows in the Upper
West Walker River Watershed. The meadows – Upper Sardine, Lower
Sardine, and Cloudburst – are located at around 8,500 feet in
elevation on the east side of Sonora Pass in the Eastern
Sierra. Historic land use, especially unregulated
grazing, resulted in degradation in these three
meadows. Heavy grazing can result in soil compaction and
erosion that can be self-perpetuating. When meadows
are degraded, they are less resilient and
therefore more prone to further damage.
Curious about water rights in California? Want to know more
about how water is managed in the state, or learn about the
State Water Project, Central Valley Project or other water
infrastructure? Mark your calendars now for our virtual
Water 101 Workshop for the afternoons of April 22-23 to hear
from experts on these topics and more.
State water surveyors who trekked into the Sierra Nevada on
Wednesday found exactly what they expected: little snow and
long odds of anything but a dismally dry year ahead. Despite
last week’s pounding snowstorm, which hammered roads with days
of whiteouts and delivered to ski slopes as much as 10 feet of
fresh powder, this month’s statewide snowpack measured just 70%
of average.
While wetter streets and a greener White House may offer San
Franciscans some hope for the future, the situation remains
dire for salmon in the Tuolumne River. … [I]t’s hard not to
feel that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s water
policies are partially to blame. Californians are significantly
reducing or eliminating dependence on river water. But the
SFPUC continues to side with agricultural users to fight
limitations on the water it takes from the Tuolumne. -Written by Robyn Purchia, an environmental attorney,
blogger and activist
The volatility of stock market trading has made global
headlines over the past couple of weeks thanks to the frenzy
surrounding a US video games retailer. It’s a dizzying yarn of
Reddit vigilantes taking coordinated action to bankrupt hedge
funds that were short selling GameStop stocks, resulting in
rollercoaster share prices, trading restrictions and US
congressional hearings. It provides a stark illustration of the
absurdity of the stock market, and yet, late last year, the US
state of California decided to allow water to become a tradable
commodity.
California’s water picture is heading in two different
directions. A major storm last week and a more modest system
Tuesday continued to boost the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the
source of one-third of the state’s water supply, in promising
ways. But the Bay Area and most cities across Northern
California remain stuck in one of the worst two-year rainfall
deficits seen since the 1849 Gold Rush, increasing the risk of
water restrictions and dry wildfire conditions locally next
summer.
Sacramento, at least, is excited about Washington’s new climate
direction. Jared Blumenfeld and Wade Crowfoot head California’s
environmental protection and natural resources agencies,
respectively. Last week, they discussed with KQED’s Kevin Stark
what the change from the Trump to Biden administrations might
mean for California. … The president’s order to triple
protected land and waterways across the country should also
infuse the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management with badly needed funds.
On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we are
speaking with Sacramento Bee environment reporter Ryan Sabalow
about his five part investigation, Nothing Wild: California’s
relationship with the animal kingdom is broken. Can it be
fixed? Invasive grasses are causing fires to explode, thousands
of water birds are dying miserable deaths, and the sage grouse
is at risk of disappearing forever. Sabalow explores
California’s ecological crisis and our relationship with its
wild places.
Flooding rains and record snow in California last week marked
another extreme swing of the state’s climate pendulum. The
widespread downpours triggered mudslides that damaged
homes and roads near some of the huge fire scars from last
summer, and also brought some of the water the state
will need to end a months-long hot and dry streak and
douse a record-setting wildfire season that extended into
January. ….It could get worse. Stronger atmospheric rivers
are part of California’s “whiplash” climate future…
The Tuolumne Utilities District (TUD) Board of Directors is
hosting a virtual information meeting to update local board
members and agencies about the proposed purchase of water
infrastructure and water rights contracts. As reported here in
March last year, TUD and PG&E announced they were in
exclusive negotiations about the potential transfer of the
Phoenix Hydroelectric Project. The proposed agreement includes
the Phoenix Powerhouse, the Main Tuolumne Canal, the pre and
post 1914 water rights, the Lyons Dam and Reservoir, Strawberry
Dam and Pinecrest Reservoir.
After a particularly wet week, Californians shouldn’t hang up
their snow shovels and raincoats just yet. Those in Southern
California should expect 1 to 8 inches of snow to fall in the
mountainous areas of Ventura and Los Angeles counties between
late Tuesday and Wednesday night, said Kathy Hoxsie, a
meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
Elsewhere in Los Angeles County, one-quarter to one-half of an
inch of rain is forecast to fall, with 3/4 inches expected in
the foothills, Hoxsie said.
Eight months after a bacterial outbreak in CDFW fish hatcheries
led to the massive depletion of stocks, state fisheries
biologists are still working hard on recovery efforts and a
plan to stock California’s waters for anglers in 2021 and
beyond.
The California State Water Board released new information about
water contamination testing after the North Complex fire
devastated parts of Butte County and Plumas County during the
summer of 2020. Testing of surface waters throughout the burn
scar has revealed contaminant levels are elevated, but lower
than anticipated. The State Water Board said the good news is
they are not impacting drinking water treatment facilities or
the quality of drinking water they deliver to their customers.
The contaminants include E.Coli, aluminum, iron, manganese and
other metals, most of which are naturally occurring and often
found in runoff sediments.
Since the early 1920s, the Long Valley plains east of Yosemite
have inspired comparison to a rustic Western paradise
… Much of this great, green expansiveness, however, owes
to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which
aggressively purchased land and water rights here more than a
century ago. The department’s routine annual deliveries of free
surplus water to its tenants have helped sustain ranching
operations and habitat for many decades. But that relationship
is now at risk of ending, and could carry dire consequences for
one of California’s most striking and violently formed
landscapes.
When Palo Alto officials adopted a position in 2018 in support
of the Bay-Delta Plan, which aims to protect the Yosemite
ecosystem by restricting how much water cities can draw from
the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, they knew were
swimming against the prevalent political tide. Prompted by
water conservationists and environmentalists, the City Council
went against recommendations from the city’s Utilities
Department staff and its water supplier, the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission, which relies on the Tuolumne River
for much of its water.
Wildfires in the wilderness are part of the ecological
cycle. Wildfires in ‘not-so-wild’ places are not, however,
and are called Wildland/Urban Interface (WUI) fires. These have
been increasing in both frequency and intensity. For example,
2018 was the most destructive and costly fire season in
California history. As shown in Table 1, the state’s top three
wildfires that year exceeded $10 billion U.S. in financial
losses.
Wildfires and smoke have ravaged large parts of California, sea
level rise is threatening the golden coast’s viability and
drought is looming in the future. … But for the first
time in four years action on climate change is gaining momentum
on the federal level — President Joe Biden signed multiple
executive orders related to the crisis in his first week in
office. Meanwhile California has held ground on climate
policies as the Trump Administration rolled back environmental
rules and regulations.
Ten days ago the state set new heat records and brush fires
broke out. Burn areas in the Santa Cruz Mountains rekindled.
Then, over the last three days, a 2,000-mile-long filament of
water in the sky burst over the areas that last week sat brown
and smoking. Snow fell on peaks and even some lower hills in
the Bay Area. The California Department of Water Resources
Central Sierra snow measurement station jumped from 42 percent
of average to 62 percent of average.
We are now past the halfway mark in California’s normally
wettest winter months, and the wet season to date has been
anything but. Most of the state has received less than half of
its average annual precipitation to date. Coming after a very
dry Water Year 2020 these conditions are concerning. More
precipitation will certainly occur in February and March, but
will it be enough to erase the state’s large
deficit?
Earth’s crust may feel rigid beneath our feet, but it responds
elastically to temperature gradients, atmospheric pressure, and
hydrological loads. Everything from heavy rain and snow to
human activities like groundwater pumping can deform the crust
on seasonal scales. Researchers are particularly interested in
such deformations when they occur near plate boundary zones,
like in California, where they can influence seismicity
rates.
A storm that pounded Northern California with rain, snow, wind
and mud rolled southwards on Thursday, prompting flood warnings
and threats of mudslides in areas burned bare by wildfires. An
atmospheric river of moisture from the Pacific Ocean was
expected to dump 1 1/2 to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain in
Southern California from Thursday night into Saturday, with
winds up to 50 mph (almost 81 kph), according to the National
Weather Service. But threats also remained in portions of
central and Northern California.
One week, it’s fires; the next, it’s feet upon feet of snow. In
the middle of January, high winds and dry conditions sparked
wildfires throughout California. Now, an atmospheric river is
taking aim at the state with a huge amount of water. In the
Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe region, forecasters are calling
for between three and six feet of snow by the end of this week.
This kind of dramatic shift from fire to fire hose is something
California is already used to. But the tick-tock between
extremes — or what climate researcher Daniel Swain calls
“precipitation whiplash” — will only become more exaggerated as
the climate crisis plays out, now and in the near future.
Atmospheric rivers are relatively narrow bands of moisture that
ferry precipitation across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast
and are key to California’s water supply…. While
atmospheric rivers are necessary to keep California’s water
reservoirs full, some of them are dangerous because the extreme
rainfall and wind can cause catastrophic flooding and
damage. Their presence has been likened to the West Coast
version of the hurricane hazard posed to the southeastern
United States.
Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western
forests into barren burn scars. Those forests store winter
snowpack that millions of people rely on for drinking and
irrigation water. But with such large and wide-reaching fires,
the science on the short-term and long-term effects to the
region’s water supplies isn’t well understood.
San Francisco rightly prides itself on being an environmental
leader. Given this deep commitment to protecting the
environment, the city’s water agency — the San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission — should be a leader in smart, sustainable
water policy. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. But
Mayor London Breed now has a once-in-a-decade chance to turn
the SFPUC in a new direction by appointing a progressive,
visionary new general manager who reflects the city’s values.
San Francisco’s Bay-Delta ecosystem and the Central Valley
rivers that feed it are in steep decline… -Written by John McManus, president of the Golden State
Salmon Association, and Kate Poole, the water lead for the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
The biggest storm of the season is barreling down on Northern
California. The Sacramento region could see up to 3 inches of
rain this week – perhaps doubling the amount of rain we’ve
received for the entire winter season – as an extreme storm
arrives Tuesday afternoon. The cold, wet system will bring
dangerous winds to the region, localized flooding and up to 80
inches of snow – yes, that’s nearly 7 feet – to the summits on
Interstate 80 and Highway 50.
Winter weather is finally arriving in Northern California. And
after weeks of dry, warm conditions and growing drought
concerns, it’s coming in hard. Forecasters say a sizable storm
— the first significant atmospheric river event to hit the
greater Bay Area this winter season and likely the biggest
storm in at least 12 months — will soak much of California
starting Tuesday night, continuing Wednesday, and bringing wet
roads, downed trees, power outages and the possibility of
mudslides.
Warm temperatures. High winds. Wildfires. In January. Many Bay
Area residents were caught off-guard this week by the
unexpected chain of weather events that left them patching up
fences and clearing wind-whipped debris. The week started out
feeling more like late summer fire season than a midwinter day.
A combination of unseasonal heat, low humidity, lack of
rainfall and predicted offshore winds created the perfect
recipe for a wildfire, triggering a rare red flag warning late
Monday morning.
High winds, dry vegetation and unseasonably warm weather fueled
several wildfires in Northern California on Tuesday as hundreds
of residents were forced to evacuate, state fire officials
said. Fire crews were working on multiple fronts to contain at
least five active fires that ignited within the CZU Complex
Fire burn area in Santa Cruz County. Several nearby
neighborhoods were evacuated and firefighters struggled to gain
access because of hazardous tree conditions from the previous
blaze, according to state fire officials.
California is enveloped in balmy weather that’s more like
spring than mid-winter — and that’s not a good thing. We have
seen only scant rain and snow this winter, indicating that the
state may be experiencing one of its periodic droughts and
adding another layer of crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and
economic recession. The all-important Sierra snowpack,
California’s primary source of water, is scarcely half of what
is deemed a normal depth. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
While they remain hopeful the rest of winter will provide much
more rain and snow, water resources managers in the Sacramento
Valley are preparing for the potential for a dry year. While
the prospect of a dry year is always jarring and challenging,
we have confidence in the experience and knowledge that our
water resources managers gained in 2014-15, and the strategies
this region has implemented since that time to prepare for a
dry year.
At the height of what should be California’s rainy season,
PG&E Corp. is warning it might need to shut off power to
thousands of customers to reduce the risk of a wildfire.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it could impose a “public
safety power shutoff” … in portions of nine counties —
Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Madera, Mariposa, San Luis Obispo,
Santa Barbara, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. By Sunday,
PG&E scaled back the planned blackout down by 15,000
customers to approximately 6,100 in Fresno, Kern, Madera,
Mariposa and Tulare counties.
Chinook salmon have spawned for millennia in Auburn
Ravine Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River in
Northern California northeast of Sacramento, but
biologists have been uncertain if salmon could get past the
Chaparral Cascades. … Now there is proof that salmon can
get through the cascades to spawn upstream. A local resident
noticed salmon spawning about 375 yards upstream from the
Chaparral Cascades on November 5, 2016 and preserved video
proof of that…
The halfway point of meteorological winter is Friday, Jan. 15,
and while that might seem like the light at the end of the
tunnel for those tired of snow and cold, many cities still
average more than half their season’s snowfall after this date.
Winter in meteorological record-keeping is from Dec. 1 to Feb.
28. But for some parts of the nation, snowy conditions are
still possible deep into March and even April.
The South Tahoe Public Utility District is seeking input as
they update the groundwater management plan for the greater
South Lake Tahoe area. Groundwater is the primary source of
drinking water for more than 90% of the public and private
water systems located throughout this area. Seeking input from
beneficial uses and users of groundwater ensures the region’s
Groundwater Management Plan assess current groundwater
conditions, reflects local groundwater concerns and offers an
appropriate long-term management plan to ensure our community
has a sustainable source of clean water supply.
The $227 billion budget proposed on Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom
includes $4.1 billion in spending on a suite of environmental
initiatives meant to fight climate change, gird California
against devastating wildfires, reduce smog, and bolster the
adoption of clean vehicles on the state’s roads.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection announced that
$1 million in Clean Water Act grant funds provided by the U.S
Environmental Protection Agency will be used to complete 11
projects, including two in Lake Tahoe, to reduce “nonpoint
source pollution” and improve water quality across the state.
In the Tahoe Keys—a neighborhood of houses and artificial
lagoons with easy boat access to Lake Tahoe, one of America’s
least polluted lakes—the water is not blue but a murky mass of
green, filled with invasive weeds. Dogs have died from swimming
in the canals, which is prone to toxic algae blooms. Activists
want to wall the Keys off from the lake. The neighborhood
association is proposing to tackle the problem with herbicides,
which have never been used before in Lake Tahoe.
Tuolumne Utilities District efforts to acquire water rights and
infrastructure from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. were slowed by
the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but TUD’s general manager
said that negotiations with the utility giant are “still on
track,” and he is optimistic an agreement could be reached this
year.
Even as research touted the benefits of prescribed fire more
than a half-century ago, the practice was long held back by
misguided forest management policies, a legacy of injustice
toward Native Americans and a more nebulous, deep-seated
cultural resistance to flames and smoke. Finally, the tide is
turning — slowly. California took a huge step forward this year
when it reached a landmark deal with the federal government to
reduce fire risk on 1 million acres of forest and wildlands
annually, including through prescribed fire.
The first snow survey in California was ambiguous. While
it showed the mountains just southeast of Lake Tahoe contains a
snowpack that is approximately average for this point of the
winter, the automatic snow sensor network shows an impoverished
snowpack throughout the Sierra, particularly in the southern
reach of the range.
Placer Land Trust has permanently protected a 185-acre addition
to the Laursen Bear River Preserve north of Auburn, making the
total preserve 546 acres. The expanded Laursen Bear River
Preserve, along with other adjacent preserves, creates a block
of more than 8,000 contiguous acres of protected lands in the
Bear River and Raccoon Creek watersheds.
After six months of strategic forest treatments, partners of
the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project (Project) are
wrapping up their second season of implementation work. Located
in the headwaters of the Middle Fork American River, in the
Tahoe National Forest, the Project aims to restore forest
health by reducing high-severity fires across 28,000 acres of
critical watershed, and to study the effects of forest
treatments on ecosystem health.
Crews began work this month in the marsh system of Taylor and
Tallac creeks in the Southwest portion of the Tahoe Basin to
remove aquatic invasive plants from an abundant and impacted
marsh ecosystem, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency announced.
Joining a growing list, Turlock and Modesto Irrigation
Districts filed a Petition with the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission asking that the commission find that the State of
California has waived certification under the Clean Water Act.
… The Districts are seeking a new FERC license for two
hydropower projects on the Tuolumne River, the Don Pedro
Project and the La Grange Project.
A Kernville hatchery that has served local anglers for almost a
century will soon close down again 20 months after it reopened
following three years of renovations. The Kern River Hatchery
… must close for repairs Dec. 1 mainly because a 50-year-old
pipeline that delivers water to the facility needs to be
replaced…
The North Yuba Forest Partnership has entered into an agreement
to receive $1.13 million to plan future forest health and
wildfire resilience treatments within the North Yuba River
watershed. This funding originated from the US Forest Service’s
Fireshed Program.
The Paradise Irrigation District was told on Thursday morning
that the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services
agreed that the district’s request that its Reservoir B
Replacement project qualifies for Federal Emergency Management
Agency funding as it relates to the Camp Fire. The reservoir
was damaged in the fire.
Placer County, Calif., is a postcard place of picturesque parks
and trails, quaint towns and wineries, high-elevation lakes,
and ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada.
The rule change, which goes into effect Thursday, gives Forest
Service officials authority to use loopholes called categorical
exclusions to bypass NEPA requirements. Categorical exclusions
are projects deemed to have no environmental impact, and as the
rule is written, they can be applied across the nearly 200
million acres of forest that the Forest Service
manages…Forests are a source of drinking water for more than
150 million people.
Meadows in the Sierra Nevada are critical components of
watersheds. In addition to supplying water to over 25 million
people in California and Nevada, meadows contain large
quantities of carbon belowground. … A new study led by
researchers at the University of Nevada Reno demonstrates for
the first time that meadows throughout the region are both
gaining and losing carbon at high rates.
PG&E Corp. named a new CEO on Wednesday, hiring a Michigan
utility executive to run California’s largest utility as it
confronts the state’s mounting wildfire risks following a stint
in bankruptcy. Patricia K. “Patti” Poppe, who has been CEO of
Michigan-based CME Energy Corp., will take over Jan. 4.
The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic turbulence forced
the state legislature and Governor Newsom to make tough
decisions this year about which issues to prioritize and which
to sideline. … Despite the challenging circumstances, several
high-priority bills covering safe drinking water and wildfire
risk reduction were enacted.
The Yuba Water Agency is in the process of applying for a new
license to continue its hydroelectric operations along the Yuba
River, but agency leaders say some requirements issued by the
State Water Resources Control Board threaten the effort by
making it too costly. The agency filed lawsuits in state and
federal court Friday to essentially vacate the state board’s
requirements to obtain what is called a water quality
certification.
The creation of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency 50 years ago
challenged us to bring people together to pull this majestic
lake back from the brink. Today, TRPA is the backbone for 80
organizations and thousands of property owners working toward
the common goals of clean water, a healthy watershed and
resilient communities.
Cold weather is headed toward Northern California, with
forecasters warning of severe weather in the Sierra Nevada as
the first snow of the season touches down on the peaks, and
frosty temperatures in the Sacramento Valley. NWS
meteorologists predict that 2 to 7 inches of snow could
accumulate at higher elevations.
In California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, former timber war foes
teamed up to show how environmental and industry interests
could work together to ward off wildfire disasters.
As California contends with its worst wildfire season in
history, it’s more evident than ever that land management
practices in the state’s forested mountains need major changes.
… Today the U.S. Forest Service estimates that of the 20
million acres it manages in California, 6 million to 9 million
acres need to be restored.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a “major change” in
the weather across the Bay Area on Friday and through the
weekend, with temperatures dropping, winds kicking up and the
potential for rain.
DWP officials said the undertaking of a new spillway gate
structure to control flow from the lake through Rush Creek and
into Mono Lake will be one of the largest environmental
restoration projects in the Mono Basin.
The California State Water Resources Control Board and a group
of environmental organizations each have filed a petition for
review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit of
FERC orders finding that the Water Board waived its authority
under section 401 of the Clean Water Act to issue a water
quality certification in the ongoing relicensing of Merced
Irrigation District’s Merced River and Merced Falls Projects.
Kendra Atleework’s new memoir Miracle Country, published in
July by Algonquin Books, maps the region of Eastern California
where William Mulholland stole the water and terraformed the
SoCal landscape into the place we now know.
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 for these
powerful storms.
Vastly increasing the number of these low-intensity, carefully
managed fires is key. Experts say it reduces dangerous levels
of highly combustible fuel and underbrush built up over more
than a century of trying to snuff out most every forest fire.
The conditions set by that longstanding federal and state
policy are now worsened by climate change, with fires growing
larger, more frequent and more destructive.
At the October meeting of the California Water Commission,
Aaron Fakuda representing Temperance Flat Authority and Bill
Swanson, Principal Engineer with Stantec discussed the
project’s status with the Commission.
Water Desk Director Mitch Tobin talks to Noah Molotch, Director
of the Center for Water Earth Science & Technology (CWEST) at
the University of Colorado Boulder, about the importance of
snow to our water supply and what the future may hold for the
American West’s snowpack.
Adrian Harpold and his team are conducting a field study on the
impact of wildfire on the Illilouette Creek watershed in the
Yosemite wilderness area in California. They’re looking at how
much water makes it to streams for people and downstream
agriculture after a fire, and how much water stays in the
post-fire landscape…
Five California Conservation Corps (CCC) crews are assisting
Butte County Public Works and Department of Water Resources in
making sure that the watershed is protected from potential rain
water run-off from homes burned in the North Complex Fire.
For months, leaks have been springing in the pipes under homes
in Folsom, causing costly repairs for hundreds of homeowners.
City officials think they may have finally found a culprit:
Folsom’s water is just so pure.
Grant funding was just made available to begin to address the
hurdles being faced by Paradise residents trying to rebuild —
due to the lack of a sewer in the town. Residents have
expressed frustrations with the process for approving permits
to move through the septic process in order to rebuild, and a
grant organized by North Valley Community Foundation represents
much-needed funding…
A first-of-its-kind study in California has laid bare the
staggering scale of pollution from plastic microfibers in
synthetic clothing – one of the most widespread, yet largely
invisible, forms of plastic waste. The report, whose findings
were revealed exclusively by the Guardian, found that in 2019
an estimated 4,000 metric tons – or 13.3 quadrillion fibers –
were released into California’s natural environment.
Even if mean annual snowfall decreases, an increase in the
intensity of snowfall events could prevent snow ablation, or
the loss of snow due to melting, sublimation or evaporation.
… In this study, Marshall et al. (2020) analyze spatial
patterns in snowfall using both observational data from snow
networks across the Mountain West [from the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade Mountains to the Rockies] and outputs from climate
change simulations.
Several years into the research at the California Critical Zone
Observatories, a multiyear drought lasting from fall 2011 to
fall 2015 hit the state, causing massive tree death in the
southern Sierra, while in Northern California there was
essentially none. The massive die-off in the Sierra was a
wake-up call for land managers and researchers alike…
The [Butte] county’s Forest Health Watershed Coordinator Wolfy
Rougle said there is indeed reason to worry about preventing
toxic runoff quickly, particularly with the magnitude of the
North Complex fires’ destruction, and the county’s resources
are stretched thin…So small nonprofit organizations typically
have boots on the ground to do the work with concerned
residents, like the Camp Fire Restoration Project.
Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to
subsequent droughts. “Compounding extreme events can be really
stressful on forests and trees,” says Anna Trugman, assistant
professor in the geography department at the UC Santa Barbara.
She compares the experience to a person battling an illness:
You’ll be harder hit if you get sick again while you’re still
recovering.
Prescribed burning … targets brush, grasses, and other
accumulated vegetation, along with dead and downed trees, to
improve ecosystem health and reduce the fuels that power
wildfires. … “We’re trying to encourage a cultural shift in
our relationship with wildfire,” says Sasha Berleman, a fire
ecologist who runs a prescribed burn training program based in
the San Francisco Bay Area. “Fire isn’t going away, so let’s
change how we’re living with it.”
The Forest Service’s use of herbicides and pesticides has
raised occasional alarm from environmental groups, which point
to the chemical’s potential to harm wildlife or water supplies,
or to have long-term effects on people who apply them. In some
regions, they say, scarcely a tree-planting project occurs
without the use of chemical herbicides.
Volunteer citizen scientists working with the League to Save
Lake Tahoe conducted surveys of Donner and Spooner lakes to
detect aquatic invasive species, and restored native wetland
habitat in Johnson Meadow in September. Both efforts are aimed
at preserving the Tahoe-Truckee region’s unique ecology.
Last spring, a tree-planting crew hiked into the hills near
Paradise, California, to take on a challenge: What’s the best
way to replant a forest when it’s very likely that it could
burn again?
Some Calaveras County Water District customers will have a
disruption in their water service throughout the month as the
main water transmission pipeline replacement project wraps up.
EPA and California may recover $32 million in cleanup costs
from a massive hazardous waste spill in the Sierra Nevada
foothills that released toxic amounts of arsenic into local
groundwater supplies, a federal appeals court ruled
Monday. In a divided ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals said the United States and California were not
liable for the costs of cleaning up the Lava Cap Mine Superfund
site in Nevada City, Calif.
In California’s Placer County, an unusual partnership between a
county water utility, the U.S. Forest Service and
environmentalists is taking on the work to prevent catastrophic
fires on more than 11,000 hectares in the northern Sierra
Nevada Mountains. The partnership arose from the ashes of
2014’s King fire.
U.S. and tribal officials are celebrating completion of a $34
million fish bypass system at a Nevada dam that will allow a
threatened trout species to return to some of its native
spawning grounds for the first time in more than a century.
Construction of the side channel with fish-friendly screens is
a major step toward someday enabling Lahontan cutthroat trout
to make the same 100-mile journey — from a desert lake
northeast of Reno to Lake Tahoe atop the Sierra — that they did
before the dam was built in 1905.
The Georgetown Divide Public Utility District reported Sept. 23
that its release of 2,000 acre-feet of water from Stumpy
Meadows Reservoir to be transferred to the Westlands Water
District has been successfully completed.
Southern California Edison crews will be able to restart some
releases from lakes in the San Joaquin River watershed after
the Creek Fire overran much of the area through September. …
Those releases, which flow into Millerton Lake, mean farmers
from Fresno to Arvin will be able to continue irrigation.
