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Project To Fill Lake Mission Viejo With Treated Waste Water Nearing Completion

/in /by /The Orange County Registerby Nathan Percy

The transformation of Lake Mission Viejo into the first recreational lake in California to be fed with highly treated waste water instead of drinking water is expected to start in mid-November. On Monday, city, state and water district officials converged at the 124-acre man-made lake to celebrate the dedication of the project that will fill the lake with advanced purified water that experts say will be safe for swimmers and the lake’s fish. The project, which is going through final checks and maintenance, will save 114 million gallons of drinking water a year for residents in south Orange County, officials said.

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Rain In The Forecast This Week, Davis

/in /by /Davis Patch

Officials with the National Weather Service are predicting rain toward the end of the week in the Bay Area. Rain could move into the area Thursday night and spread south from the North Bay on Friday. This is the rainy season’s first atmospheric river, which is region in the atmosphere responsible for bringing water vapor from the tropics. Weather officials said that it’s important to prepare for the rain by changing windshield wipers, checking tires, fixing leaks at home and finishing outdoor projects.

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2014 Farm Bill Still Offers Safety Net Opportunities

/in /by /Western Farm Press (St. Charles, Ill.)by Todd Fitchette

The ravages of drought and wildfire over the past couple years in California should be mitigated somewhat by help available through the 2014 Farm Bill. Val Dolcini, administrator of the Farm Service Agency (FSA) toured fire- and drought-damaged locations in California as part of a federal effort to ensure farmers have adequate risk management tools at their disposal. Dolcini, who several years ago was promoted into the lead FSA position after serving as California’s FSA director, spoke recently with Western Farm Press to share some of the programs available for California and Arizona growers.

 

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Study Says Megadrought Nearly Certain This Century

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Deborah Sullivan Brennan

The West is almost certain to experience a decades-long drought by the end of the century, if greenhouse emissions continue as usual, a new climate study concluded. The chance that the Southwest will experience a megadrought – a dry period lasting 35 years or more – is between 70 and 99 percent by the end of the century, according to the study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, an online, open access academic journal.

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Prop 53 Would Give California Voters Bigger Say on Mega-Projects

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily Newsby Ellen Knickmeyer

A proposition that a prosperous farmer brought to the California ballot would threaten two ambitious water and rail projects that Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing, requiring voters’ OK before launching any state building project requiring $2 billion or more in revenue bonds. Proposition 53, if voters approve it on Nov. 8, could force Brown’s administration to hold statewide votes on funding for two controversial mega-projects that he is trying to get well underway before he leaves office in 2018.

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Sixth Drought Year Ahead: Don’t Waste Water

/in /by /MyNewsLA.com (Los Angeles)by Debbie L. Sklar

The Southland is well-positioned to weather a sixth year of drought, Metropolitan Water District officials said Monday, but they warned that consumers and business still need to do their share to conserve. “The reality is that California is still in a drought. We’re just not in a state of emergency,” MWD board Chairman Randy Record said. “Heading into 2017, we’re hoping to build on the supply momentum created by Southern California’s ongoing water-saving efforts and improved storage conditions this year.”

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Grass Warfare in L.A.

/in /by /Bloomberg Businessweek by Anna Scott

“We thought we were doing the right thing to save water,” Staci Terrace Goldfarb, a Southern California homeowner, said late last winter. “I hate looking at it.” It had been a little more than a year since Goldfarb had the small, semicircular lawn in front of her 1960 Cape Cod in the San Fernando Valley replaced with drought-tolerant landscaping. Yet her front yard was a flat patch of gravel, the kind you can buy in bulk at Home Depot. It was the work, she said, of a company called Turf Terminators.

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Southland’s Major Water Agency Is Rebuilding Depleted Regional Storage

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall

The Southland’s biggest water agency painted a surprisingly upbeat picture Monday of the region’s water supplies. Although the Southland remains stuck in a severe drought, officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California say they are rebuilding depleted storage reserves with imports from the north. They also dismissed concerns about slipping conservation efforts since state regulators eased urban water savings requirements in June. “I was very pleased that the numbers stayed as high as they did,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, the district’s general manager.

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California Enters Sixth Year Of Drought

/in /by /CBS News (Los Angeles)

It’s a new water year, but nothing has changed as far as the drought is concerned. Metropolitan Water District officials say the Golden State can weather its sixth year of drought, but consumers and businesses still have to do their part to conserve. “The reality is that California is still in a drought. We’re just not in a state of emergency,” MWD board Chairman Randy Record said. “Heading into 2017, we’re hoping to build on the supply momentum created by Southern California’s ongoing water-saving efforts and improved storage conditions this year.”

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BLOG: Comparing Delta Consumptive Use: Preliminary Results From A Blind Model Comparison

/in /by /California WaterBlog (Davis)

As California works to improve its official accounting of water for a range of purposes, one major area lacking widely accepted quantification is the consumptive use of water for agriculture, particularly evapotranspiration (ET) from crops.  In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, such estimates are important, along with other hydrologic flows, for a variety of water rights, operational, and regulatory purposes. Consumptive use is the proportion of water removed that cannot be reused elsewhere in a basin. For crops in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, this is mostly evapotranspiration.

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