The California Department of Water Resources will commission a new research vessel next week. The department will hold a ceremony and display the vessel Sentinel to news media on Monday in Sacramento. The department says the floating laboratory is critical to maintaining water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. The Sentinel is a 60-foot aluminum catamaran. Its predecessor, the San Carlos, dates to 1976.
Today, Poseidon Water commended Congress and President Barack Obama on the approval of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act). The WIIN Act includes 98-pages of California specific regulations that, for the first time in nearly twenty-five years, invests more than $500 million into California water projects. “Not only is this a critical water bill for the nation, but it also recognizes desalination as a way to address California’s current drought and long-term water shortages,” said Carlos Riva, Chief Executive Officer of Poseidon Water.
Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia on Friday published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared – Totten is melting from below. The measurements, sampling ocean temperatures in seas over a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep in some places right at the edge of Totten glacier’s floating ice shelf, affirmed that warm ocean water is flowing in towards the glacier at the rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second.
This fall has seen a ridiculously persistent ridge of high pressure — which has driven the majority of the Gulf of Alaska storms north of the Central Coast over the past six years — give way to a trough of low pressure along the West Coast. This condition has allowed a plume of subtropical moisture, or an atmospheric river, that stretched past the Hawaiian Islands to bring abundant rainfall to San Luis Obispo County during the first half of December. In fact, above-average rainfall has fallen throughout the Central Coast since October.
Is the state coming to tear down the arch, or just extinguish some of its lights? For more than 100 years, Modesto’s downtown arch has proclaimed “Water Wealth Contentment Health.” The reasons are obvious – much of what we value is derived from the water flowing through our communities. Without the water, our wealth, health and contentment could disappear. That’s no less true in Turlock, Oakdale and Ceres; or in Merced, Manteca, Ripon, Escalon and even, to some extent, San Francisco.
The first winter storm of 2017 to drop welcome rain over the rivers, pumps, pipes and canals that move California’s water north to south likely will open a new era of tension over how much water goes to fish or farms under a new U.S law. Legislation signed Friday by President Barack Obama dictates that the federal portion of California’s heavily engineered water systems gives agricultural districts and other human users the biggest possible share of the most fought-over resource in a state with a six-year drought.
In the early 1900s, an average forested acre in California supported fewer than 50 or so trees. After a century of efforts to fight wildfires, the average has risen to more than 300 (albeit mostly smaller) trees. Some might reckon such growth wonderful, but it is a problem far more serious than, say, the fact that horses can no longer trot through areas where they once could. The extra fuel turns today’s wildfires into infernos hot enough to devastate the landscape, torching even the big older trees that typically survived fires in the old days.
Several months ago, managers of water agencies in California, Arizona and Nevada were expressing optimism they could finalize a deal to use less water from the dwindling Colorado River before the end of the Obama administration. Now that Jan. 20 deadline no longer seems achievable and parties to the talks acknowledge they likely won’t be able to finish an agreement until at least several months into President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
San Joaquin County residents and public officials alike voiced opposition this week against a state plan to increase flows from the Stanislaus River as well as increase allowable salt in the southern San Joaquin Delta, stating the proposals could have significant negative impacts on the region’s agricultural viability. The State Water Resources Control Board held its second of five public hearings to collect input on the substitute environmental document of its Water Quality Control Plan on Friday at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium.
President Barack Obama on Friday signed a massive infrastructure bill designed to control floods, fund dams and deliver more water to farmers in California’s drought-ravaged Central Valley. Obama signed the $12 billion bill in a distinctly low-key act. Controversial provisions that critics fear could harm fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were wrapped inside a package stuffed with politically popular projects, ranging from Sacramento-area levees to clean-water aid for beleaguered Flint, Mich.
