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Drought Remains ‘Very Serious’ In California

/in /by /Capital Public Radioby Ed Joyce

The U.S. Drought Monitor says exceptional drought was reduced in one area of the northern Sierra this week, “despite heavy precipitation and rebounding stream flows in the short term the past few weeks.”

“It was decided to hold off on making substantial changes to the depiction in the far West until next week,” according to the weekly report. “This is because it takes time to assess the impacts all this moisture will have on long-term deficits and other hydrological considerations. The only change made this week was in the northern Sierra of California (El Dorado County), where the coverage of exceptional drought was reduced.”

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OPINION: To Make the Most of Rain, State Needs Delta Tunnels

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby John Laird

This week I testified at a legislative hearing on implementing the $7.5 billion water bond passed by voters in November 2014. One legislator asked me if the state was positioned to capture extra rainwater if El Niño brings a strong rainy season.

I pointed out that many California reservoirs are empty enough to capture much of the runoff from this year’s rainstorms, but that isn’t the full story.

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Getting the Most Benefit from Deep Root Irrigation

/in /by /St. Helena Star (Napa County, Calif.)by Tom Stockwell

Even in the midst of the recent El Niño storm systems, environmentalists and vineyardists are still concerned with the impacts of four years of continued drought on crops.

Yet a recent analysis of the effectiveness of water penetration — using soil moisture-monitoring instrumentation — has shown that using a deep root irrigation system can save as much as 50 percent of water usage, according to a recent report by Angwin company Deep Root Irrigation.

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State Has ‘Big Awakening’ On Salton Sea Concerns

/in /by /The Los Angeles Daily Newsby Jim Steinberg

Planners working on the preservation of the Salton Sea envision a smaller version surviving indefinitely, with some of the costs for its maintenance recovered by economic development which may include geothermal, the harvest of algae, or something else, officials said during a conference at the UC Riverside.

“It’s not popular with residents in the area (of the Salton Sea), but it won’t be brought back to the way it was in the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s,” said Bruce Wilcox, who Gov. Jerry Brown appointed in May as secretary for Salton Sea Policy at the California Department of Natural Resources.

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New Water Deal Cuts Imports for Laguna Beach County Water District

/in /by /Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot (As published by The Los Angeles Times)by Bryce Alderton

For the first time in 68 years, the Laguna Beach County Water District will no longer be 100% reliant on imported water from the Colorado River and Northern California.

An agreement with the Orange County Water District ensures that more than half of Laguna’s water supply will come from groundwater in the Santa Ana River Basin, according to a news release issued Wednesday.

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OPINION: Now is Not the Time to Stop Conserving Water

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority has such an oversupply of drinking water that it just dumped half a billion gallons into a lake. The Sierra snowpack is 130 percent of normal, its greatest total in five years. And rainstorms will continue to drench parts of California off and on for months.

But now is not the time to ease up on water conservation efforts, in San Diego or elsewhere.

 

So we applaud this week’s sensible action by the State Water Resources Control Board. The agency extended the state’s emergency conservation mandate through October while easing restrictions on water suppliers to account for regional differences in climate, population growth and new supplies in places such as San Diego County, where a desalination plant just opened in Carlsbad.

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If You’re Not Drinking Treated Sewer Water, You Soon Will Be

/in /by /The Sun (San Bernardino)by By Jim Steinberg

In the wake of drought and environmental concerns, more water agencies in California and across the West are finding a new water source for human consumption in an unexpected place: the sewer.

 

The treated sewer water isn’t going directly to your tap after treatment. In most cases, it’s put into an aquifer and withdrawn later — years later.

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Thanks to El Niño, Six Out of Eight Marin Reservoirs Full and Overflowing

/in /by /SF Gateby By Amy Graff

The recent El Niño storms soaking Northern California are recharging Marin County reservoirs, and on Tuesday, six were spilling over and funneling water into creeks and streams.

This is all good news for Marin residents and local salmon as this year’s coho run is the largest in almost a decade.

 

The Marin Municipal Water District has recorded 28.7 inches of rain at its Lake Lagunitas gauge since July 1, and this season’s rainfall is 103 percent of average.

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California Extends Mandatory Water Cuts Despite Growing Snowpack

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby By Ryan Sabalow, Phillip Reese and Dale Kasler

 

The snow keeps piling up, but the rules requiring water conservation aren’t going away.

California’s drought regulators agreed Tuesday to extend water conservation mandates through the end of October. The decision came in spite of increasing evidence that El Niño is delivering better-than-average precipitation, including an encouraging measurement of the Sierra Nevada snowpack recorded just hours earlier.

 

The new regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board mean urban Californians will have to reduce their water usage between March and October by about 23.4 percent compared with the baseline year of 2013.

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California Water Officials Vote to Extend Emergency Water Conservation Measures

/in /by /CBS (Los Angeles)by http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/02/02/water-officials-vote-to-extend-california-drought-emergency/

State water regulators voted Tuesday to extend emergency conservation measures because of a drought, even though an increase in rain and snow this winter has improved California’s snowpack.

 

But with the drought still severe, conservations efforts fell off in December. Officials said residents used 18 percent less water than in December 2013, but that was the worst showing in seven months of tracking and fell well short of Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of 25 percent.