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Watering Restrictions Eased in Poway

Lawn watering restrictions mandated after years of devastating drought will soon be eased in Poway. Instead of being allowed to water only twice a week, for 10 minute intervals per sprinkler station, customers will be allowed to water three times a week starting almost immediately, the Poway City Council decided last week.

Assistant City Manager Tina White said within days papers will be signed allowing city water customers to water on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.

 

Drought Threatens ‘Genius’ Regs That Stopped L.A. Water Grab

In 1941, Los Angeles came for the scenic lake here. After diverting the inflows to Owens Lake — setting it on course for ruin — the city extended its aqueduct 100 miles north in the eastern Sierra Nevada and captured virtually all of Mono Lake’s tributaries.

Like Owens Lake, Mono Lake’s water level began to drop precipitously as Los Angeles pumped millions of gallons of water that would have previously run into the lake.

OPINION: California’s Water Districts are Loath to Save Resources

California’s big urban water districts should be ashamed of themselves. After asking for a good-faith policy change in the state’s water restrictions, they’ve decided that they’re not going to save any water at all.

BLOG: Perfect Storm Brewing for California Fire Season

California’s climate has always been hospitable to fire – it comes with the territory. But add five years of drought, a bark beetle blight killing trees by the millions and rising temperatures, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

“We are seeing the compounded effects of climate change that includes five consecutive years of drought and rising mean temperatures across the West – last year was the hottest year on record,” said Janet Upton, deputy director of communication at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). “All that is trending to a more flammable California.”

California Drought Remains Serious; Tens of Millions of Trees Dead

California is in its fifth year of drought, yet residents are receiving mixed signals as to whether water conservation should still be a priority.

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters has estimated that it will take about 4.4 years for the Sierra Nevada snowpack to recover. Out of the 65 years studied, the current drought has resulted in the highest cumulative deficit of water from the snowpack. The snowpack provides a third of the state’s water supply. In April 2015, with the snowpack at only 5 percent of its average, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a 25 percent reduction in water usage.

Controlled Colorado River Flooding Released Stored Greenhouse Gases

The 2014 experimental controlled pulse of water to the Colorado River Delta has revealed an interesting twist on how large dry watercourses may respond to short-term flooding events: the release of stored greenhouse gases. This work is reported at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan.

As presenter Dr Thomas Bianchi said: “We saw a rapid release of greenhouse gases (CH4 and CO2) from the riverbed sediments to the floodwaters. These gases were largely derived from carbon which had been stored in the dry riverbed, perhaps for decades”.

California Today: Wildfires, Earlier Than Ever

California is no longer facing an acute drought. But we’re waking this morning to a vivid reminder of another environmental threat.

Major wildfires, from the Mexican border to Oregon, burned through the weekend. And it’s only the start of summer. The largest fire, in Kern County near Bakersfield, spread quickly, destroying at least 250 structures and killing at least two people.

Watering Restrictions Eased in Poway

Lawn watering restrictions mandated after years of devastating drought will soon be eased in Poway.

Instead of being allowed to water only twice a week, for 10 minute intervals per sprinkler station, customers will be allowed to water three times a week starting almost immediately, the Poway City Council decided last week. Assistant City Manager Tina White said within days papers will be signed allowing city water customers to water on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.

 

Drought-Hit California Has a Bonanza of Water—Underground

Part of the solution to California’s demand for water in the face of the state’s crippling drought may lie 10,000 feet beneath the surface of the state’s Central Valley. New research published in the journal PNAS suggests that the region’s aquifers, areas deep underground where water can collect, have three times the usable groundwater as previously estimated.

“It’s not often that you find a ‘water windfall,’ but we just did,” said study author Robert Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, in a press release. “There’s far more fresh water and usable water than we expected.”

California May Have a Huge Groundwater Reserve that Nobody Knew About

In a surprising new study, Stanford researchers have found that drought-ravaged California is sitting on top of a vast and previously unrecognized water resource, in the form of deep groundwater, residing at depths between 1,000 and nearly 10,000 feet below the surface of the state’s always thirsty Central Valley.

The resource amounts to 2,700 billion tons of freshwater, mostly less than about 3,250 feet deep, according to the paper published Monday in the influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.