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Water Management Looks at the Water We Can’t See

/in /by /Central Valley Business Journal

California’s historic drought has forced the state to rely on underground water reserves to an extent unseen in decades. One of the biggest water issues facing the state is how to maintain and rebuild its groundwater supply.

 

“After four years of drought, farmers are looking to gather up more water than ever,” said Jay R. Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “People are going to be trying to refill aquifers with increased motivation due to the fourth year of drought.”

 

 

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Drought-Ravaged Folsom Lake Rises 28.5 Feet in Just One Month

/in /by /SFGateby By Amy Graff

Water-starved Folsom Lake is beginning to slowly fill up and recover from its lowest water levels ever.

 

The state’s ninth-largest reservoir, the main water source for the sprawling Sacramento suburbs, shrank to a mere 135,561 acre feet on Dec. 4, 2015. The previous lowest level at Folsom was 140,600 acre feet, recorded during the 1976–77 drought. An acre foot is enough water to flood an acre of land under a foot of water, and roughly the amount required by a family of four over a year.

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‘A Brash El Niño’: Storm Season Begins With Record Rainfall and Mudslide Fears

/in /by /The Los Angeles Timesby Rosanna Xia, Rong-Gong Lin II

The first major El Niño storm of the season arrived at this small Ventura County beach town Tuesday morning, and it didn’t take long for that potent combination of fire and rain to cause problems.

 

An intense downpour hammered a stretch of Highway 101 where a brush fire had swept through on Christmas weekend. Debris from the fire quickly clogged two drains in the freeway median. Soon, 6 inches of rain had accumulated on the roadway, bringing traffic to a halt.

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The Godzilla El Niño Now Drenching California Is Getting a Boost from Another Potent Climatic Phenomenon: ‘MJO’

/in /by /Discoverby By Tom Yulsman

Godzilla El Niño stormed ashore in Southern California today, offering up a good drenching that has caused flooding, closed roads, and transformed the usually trickling Los Angeles River into a raging torrent.

 

Today’s fast-moving tempest will be just the first in a parade of storms this week. An El-Niño-energized subtropical jet stream promises to help deliver at least two more rounds of copious rainfall to the drought-plagued region between now and Sunday.

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Governor’s Tunnels Opponents File Legal Actions

/in /by /Central Valley Business Times (Stockton)

Restore the Delta and its coalition partners on Tuesday filed either formal protests or notices of intent to make formal statements with the State Water Resources Control Board to oppose permitting to change the point of water diversion in the Sacramento River to allow for Gov. Edmund Brown Jr.’s water tunnels to be built.

 

The twin tunnels touted by Mr. Brown would each be 40 feet in diameter and extend 30-35 miles.

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El Niño Delivers Rainiest Sacramento Day in 13 Months

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby By Dale Kasler, Phillip Reese and Bill Lindelof

El Niño gave Sacramento its biggest rainstorm in more than a year Tuesday, overwhelming gutters and snarling traffic but putting another small dent in the drought.

 

The second straight day of El Niño storms meant snow chain controls for much of the Sierra Nevada and occasional traffic accidents throughout the Sacramento region. A pre-dawn big-rig crash on southbound Highway 99 near Dillard Road forced lane closures, while a car crash later in the morning on northbound Interstate 5 near Pocket Road caused headaches for commuters. Vehicles encountered significant flooding early in the day on the Capital City Freeway, near the E Street exit. Caltrans said a jackknifed big rig near the Nevada border brought eastbound traffic on Interstate 80 to a halt for about an hour.

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IID Presses California to Pay for Salton Sea Fixes

/in /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by By Sammy Roth

There’s been a lot of progress at the Salton Sea in the last year, but local officials and activists aren’t taking anything for granted.

 

In what’s becoming a regular ritual, representatives from the Imperial Irrigation District and other groups trekked to Sacramento on Tuesday to make the case for action on the Salton Sea. They urged state officials to fulfill their promise to pay for fixes at California’s largest lake, and to support geothermal energy development, which many see as critical to generating restoration funds.

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Army Corps of Engineers Activates Reservoir Operation Center to Manage Flooding Risk

/in /by /Patch (Long Beach)by By Alexander Nguyen

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Los Angeles office activated its Reservoir Operations Center on Tuesday to help reduce flooding risk during the winter storms.

 

Van Crisostomo, chief of the operations center, said late Tuesday morning that rainfall had “not really affected our areas of operation, but we will continue to monitor in the event that changes.”

 

The center’s staff tracks real-time information about water levels at dams operated by the Army Corps so that they can modulate the release of water through dams based on weather conditions, Corps officials said.

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State Gets $1.2 Billion Boost for More Water Recycling Projects

/in /by /San Gabriel Valley Tribuneby By Steve Scauzillo

The state got a big financial boost in its quest to find more water sources — by recycling it.

 

The State Water Resources Control Board authorized the sale of $1.2 billion in revenue bonds Tuesday to fund additional recycled water projects. Supporters believe the money, an extension of the existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund, will help water agencies and cities build more water recycling plants, pipes and delivery facilities that will increase California’s water supply.

 

Already, the state board expects demand will increase this year, piggybacking on a 40 percent increase for project commitments in fiscal year 2014-2015.

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California Cut Water Use 20.3% in November; With the Rain, What Will Happen?

/in /by /The Los Angeles Timesby By Matt Stevens

As long-awaited rain comes to the state, regulators said Tuesday that California cut its water usage by 20.3% in November, staying on track to meet the target set by Gov. Jerry Brown.

 

The savings percentage, compared with November 2013, was the lowest in six months of reporting and moved California’s cumulative savings to 26.3% from 27.1% in October. The November savings is still slightly above the 25% cutback that Brown called for.

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