If item number one on your summer to-do list is to witness the booming waterfalls of Yosemite National Park, you’re in for a treat. Water levels appear to have rebounded from four years of drought and we’re now in a window of peak waterfall conditions.
United States Geological Survey numbers indicate water under the Pohono Bridge at the west end of the Yosemite Valley has been climbing, and reaching heights not seen since 2012.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s staff is scheduled Thursday to propose increasing rates paid by its 24 member agencies next year.
The proposed hikes are 6.4 percent for untreated water and 5.9 percent for treated water in calendar year 2017, similar to the hikes adopted by the Board of Directors for this year.
The agency receives water from a variety of sources, including the wholesaler Metropolitan Water District, and distributes it to local districts and cities that, in turn, supply customers.
I want to be absolutely clear that whatever it takes, we cannot allow the twin tunnels to ever be built. Sized for a capacity of 15,000 cubic feet per second, they are capable of taking all the water that flows down the Sacramento River for half of every year. The tunnels are the ultimate vampire capable of sucking the Delta dry.
We must stop the tunnels, but that is not enough. We must conserve water on farms and in cities. We must replenish our aquifers and build new off-stream reservoirs like Sites north of Sacramento and Los Vaqueros near Brentwood.
Those tasked with keeping gritty stormwater from reaching Lake Tahoe are looking into whether the roads are actually a problem.
“Pavement wear” is what Russ Wigart, with El Dorado County, called it. “We completely annihilate our roads on an annual basis,” Wigart said. “Fifteen to 25 percent of fine sediment is from pavement. Maybe we could resurface our roads and call them water quality projects.”
In another sign of the warming climate, key species of trees in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range — including lodge pole pine, red fir and western white pine — are shifting to higher elevations in search of cooler temperatures, a broad new study by state biologists has found.
Los Angeles-based members of Congress today applauded a House committee’s inclusion of a Los Angeles River restoration project in an annual water infrastructure funding bill.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee opted to include the Los Angeles River Ecosystem project — which would restore natural habitats to the portions of the 51-mile river — into the Water Resources and Development Act of 2016.
Think the current California drought has been tough? It will get worse in the future, because the state is always growing. But quantifying that effect has largely been guesswork. Until now.
A new study in Environmental Research Letters by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Nature Conservancy estimates how water demand will change in 2062 by projecting the present rate of land-use change. This includes urban growth and farmland conversion – both conversion of farms into urban areas and conversion of annual crops to permanent crops, like orchards and vineyards.
Water supplies are better than normal in Northern California, so why is it that Central Valley Project (CVP) water users can’t get a break? The water users in question are the farms and ranches in the San Joaquin Valley that rely on the federal Central Valley Project water conveyance system. They are set to receive a meager 5 percent of their water supply this year.
It’s the middle of May and rainfall in the northern Sierra is currently 111 percent of normal. Lake Shasta is 93 percent full and 108 percent of its year-to-date average.
The water in the largest U.S. reservoir has sunk to a record low, due to the severe drought in the American Southwest.
Lake Mead, in Nevada, had dropped 10 feet in three months. With an average depth of 1,084 feet in February, last week the reservoir measured only 1,074 feet deep, or only 37 percent of capacity, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The manmade lake — formed during the Great Depression by the blocking of the Colorado River with Hoover Dam — has endured despite the drought that has dried up the mountain snowpacks that feed the river.
I want to be absolutely clear that whatever it takes, we cannot allow the twin tunnels to ever be built. Sized for a capacity of 15,000 cubic feet per second, they are capable of taking all the water that flows down the Sacramento River for half of every year. The tunnels are the ultimate vampire capable of sucking the Delta dry.We must stop the tunnels, but that is not enough. We must conserve water on farms and in cities.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
