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Giant ‘rivers in the sky’ – that can carry up to 15 times the amount of water in the Mississippi River – can virtually wipe out species when they dump vast amounts of rain over a short period, causing some of the world’s worst floods, according to new research.And the problem is set to get worse because of climate change, scientists warned. They found that 97 to 100 per cent of wild Olympia oysters in north San Francisco Bay died in 2011 after the region was hit by dramatic rainfall caused by atmospheric rivers.

Welcomed by farm and water leaders as a balanced solution, significant federal legislation authorizing $558 million worth of drought-relief actions for California heads to the president after passage in Congress. The bipartisan drought legislation, part of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, or WIIN, invests in California water storage and desalination projects, and includes a number of short-term provisions intended to increase flexibility of the state’s water system in response to drought.

The most severe drought in living memory did a number on California’s blue oaks. A new study by UC Berkeley researchers shows how even centuries-old trees struggled when landscape water disappeared between 2012 and 2015. Some showed stress by producing miniature leaves, some by shedding leaves, and some simply died.

Weeks away from getting a new chief who is fracking-friendly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally released its final report on the threat posed to our drinking water by fracking. A 2015 draft report released by the EPA was supposed to answer the question of whether deep drilling and fracking for natural gas and oil posed a threat to our drinking water.

 

California took a big (and much-needed) leap forward in 2014 when it passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Even though sustainability won’t be mandated until 2040 or 2042, depending on the groundwater basin, the process of implementing the legislation is well underway.

From the end of June 2017, each groundwater basin is required to form at least one groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) – the governing entity that will then be tasked with putting together the plan for achieving sustainability.