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Judge’s Ruling Could Delay California’s Water Tunnel Project

/in /by /Associated Press (As Published by KRON 4 - San Francisco)

A Northern California judge’s ruling could delay construction of two large tunnels to more easily move water from the state’s central valley to the parched south.

The Sacramento Bee reported that the judge invalidated a comprehensive environmental management plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The judge ruled that the plan must be “set aside” until deficiencies he found earlier are fixed. State officials say they will appeal Friday’s ruling.

 

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Drought Impact on Sierra Forests Starting to Show in Nevada

/in /by /Tahoe Daily Tribune

U.S. Forest Service officials say the number of trees in Sierra Nevada forests killed by drought and bark beetles now is in the millions. And Nevada forestry’s Natural Resources Manager says the damage is starting to show on this side of the Sierra as well. “All you’ve got to do is stand back and take a look up the hillside,” said John Christopherson. “You see dead trees and dying trees.” According to the forest service, an estimated 66 million trees have died over the past half-dozen years in California’s southern Sierra.

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“Water Windfall” Discovered Under California’s Drought-Stricken Central Valley

/in /by /Smithsonian.comby Jason Daley

California’s megadrought is stretching into its fifth year, and as the best hope for rain, El Niño, fizzles, the outlook is grim. While Northern California’s winter precipitation approached normal, 60 percent of the state remains in a severe drought.

So a new discovery under the Central Valley has residents excited; researchers from Stanford mapped out a deep groundwater reservoir under the Valley that holds three times more water than previously thought. They recently published their results in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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With Doomsday in Mind, California Officials Are Ceding Water to Arizona, Nevada

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Quoted: Mark Watton

Twenty-six million people in California, Nevada and Arizona rely on the Colorado River, but this magnificent source of water that carved a continent is drying up.

Representatives of the three states have been huddling behind closed doors and, for the first time ever, California water officials are offering to give up some of the state’s strongest claims to the river – at least temporarily. The thermometer of the river’s health is Lake Mead — the lake formed behind Hoover Dam. The lake is now lower than it’s been since it was first filled back in the mid-1930s.

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Water Restrictions Tapering Off

/in /by /The Coast News Group (Encinitas)by Bianca Kaplanek Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Thanks in part to winter rain and snow storms, state and local agencies are loosening water-use restrictions in Solana Beach and Del Mar.

But one council member in the latter city called the move premature, prompting his colleagues to hold off on downgrading to a Stage 1 drought level. “I think it’s a mistake to relax our drought restrictions — a big mistake — because the drought’s not over,” Del Mar Councilman Don Mosier said. “The fact is that … two-thirds of the state is still in a drought.

 

 

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Westlands Water District to Split Top Jobs Amid Missteps, Criticism

/in /by /Fresno Beeby Rory Appleton

Westlands Water District, which has come under fire from farmers and the federal government over its financial and other dealings, has decided it no longer wants its general manager to also function as the district’s top lawyer, agency officials said Monday.

Tom Birmingham will no longer serve as both general manager and general counsel of Fresno-based Westlands, the largest agricultural water district in the nation. He will remain as general manager, but the board is seeking new legal representation, said Westlands board President Don Peracchi.

 

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EARTHQUAKES: Nearly 200 SoCal Cities Unprepared, Experts Say

/in /by /The Press Enterprise (Riverside)by Susan Abram

Facing threats of earthquakes, wildfires and floods, almost 200 Southern California cities depend too much on big government to protect them, which will lead to slower recovery time when “the big one” hits, according to experts on disaster preparedness.

A report released recently as part of the newly launched SoCal Disaster Risk Reduction Initiative was presented at the University of Southern California. It urged community members to ask tougher questions of their own civic leaders.

 

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BLOG: How Bad is Water Management in California?

/in /by /PublicCEO (Sacramento)by Jay Lund

California’s combination of climate, native ecosystems, and human uses makes water management inherently hard, unsatisfactory, and evolving.  California is doomed to have difficult and controversial water problems. No matter how successful we are.

California is one of the few parts of the world with a Mediterranean climate (Figure 1).  These climates tend to be dry (not much water), attractive places to live and farm (bringing high water demands), with mismatch between wetter winters and dry summer growing seasons.  The scarce water supply in the wrong season for human activities makes human management of water problematic for native ecosystems.

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Tribal Water Rights a Component to Unraveling Drought on the Colorado

/in /by /inewsnetwork (Denver, Colo.)by Jim Trotter

Native American tribes in the Colorado River basin already have legally quantified rights to roughly one-fifth of the river’s flow, according to a new report from the non-partisan Colorado River Research Group. CCRG said that tribal water rights are a misunderstood and underpublicized facet in dealing with water shortages in the Southwestern United States. Of the seven Colorado River basin states, signatories to the Compact of 1922, the so-called Law of the River, only California and Colorado have larger paper rights to water than the tribes.

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Researcher: Environmental Analysis Crucial as Pot Laws Liberalize

/in /by /Capital Press (Salem, Ore.)

As marijuana laws liberalize across the country, much attention will need to be given to the impact that large-scale production could have on the environment, a pair of university scientists assert.

Existing cannabis grow sites pose a high risk of ecological consequences because they potentially use large amounts of water and are near the habitat for threatened species, researchers Van Butsic and Jacob Brenner observe.

 

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