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Irrigation Water Necessary To Sustain California Agriculture

/in /by /Western Farm Pressby Todd Fitchette

With no fanfare President Obama signed a massive water infrastructure bill that would take the average person longer to read than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” given that the average person is more apt to read the famous novel than suffer through the paper dump of such a bill. That said, the water officials I spoke with recently agreed that it’s a necessary first-step for California. If you’re interested, you can read it for yourself, starting at Subtitle J, Section 4001.

 

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BLOG: Think Tank Urges Fresh Look at the Delta Water Tunnel Plan

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

If two water diversion tunnels could help solve California’s water delivery woes, can one tunnel be even better? Over the past decade, state officials have designed a massive plumbing solution for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Known as California WaterFix, it involves building two giant tunnels to divert a portion of the Sacramento River’s flow underneath the estuary and directly to existing diversion pumps and canals near Tracy. The cost is estimated at more than $15 billion.

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Water Conservation Push Could Put California Utilities In A Tough Spot: Fitch

/in /by /Reutersby Rory Carroll

New rules floated by California water regulators would force utilities to sell less water at a time when it is becoming more difficult for them to raise customer rates, credit ratings agency Fitch said on Monday. “Water rates have risen faster than incomes. If this trend continues, Fitch would expect that overall rate flexibility – the ability for utilities to raise rates – could be tested,” it said in a note. California has been in the grip of a drought since 2013 that has cost the state’s agricultural economy billions.

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OPINION: Water Efficiency Must Become A Permanent California Habit

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dave Cogdill and Joe Grindstaff

A few weeks ago, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration released draft recommendations to develop water use targets for water suppliers and to improve drought planning as part of a new statewide framework to permanently use our state’s precious water supplies more wisely. The draft report identified statewide measures to eliminate water waste, strengthen local drought planning and resilience, and improve agricultural water use efficiency. The plan represents a shift from statewide mandates to the new water use targets and takes into account local conditions.

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With Doomsday in Mind, California Officials Are Ceding Water to Arizona, Nevada

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

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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Fed-up Farmers Drive Tractors To Protest At State Water Board Hearing

/in /by /The Fresno Beeby Brianna Calix

Merced elected officials and community members alike gave the State Water Resources Control Board a tongue lashing Monday during a public hearing on the board’s Bay-Delta Plan. Officials called the state board members “the grim reaper,” “the assassin squad” and “domestic terrorists” for their proposal to send 40 percent of Merced River’s water into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to boost salmon populations, which critics have characterized as a “water grab.” “Water is life in this region, and you appear to have no other purpose than to take that life away,” Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, said.

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Cold Weather Causes Needle Ice To Grow Out Of Ground In Sierra Foothills

/in /by /SFGate (San Francisco)by Amy Graff

A professor of chemistry at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif., shared images on Facebook of the extraordinary “needle ice” that formed outside his home when temperatures dropped to a chilly 20 degrees in the Sierra foothills Sunday night. “It’s everywhere at my place,” wrote Michael C. Brelle, who lives in Alta. “This is the result of some really cool geochemistry.

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California Shivers Amid Record Freezing Temperatures

/in /by /The Associated Press as Published by The Orange County Register

Freeze watches and warnings are in place throughout much of California as cold, dry air moves through, toppling temperature records. In Orange County, it was cold but no records were broken over the weekend, though temperatures dipped into the mid-30s around the county. The National Weather Service reported a low of 33 degrees in Laguna Beach. In 1935, Santa Ana hit a low of 29 degrees for the same date, said NWS forecaster Brett Albright. Meteorologists say a warming trend should be apparent by Tuesday, with lows in the 40s and highs in the low 70s.

 

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Atmospheric Rivers Fueled By Climate Change Could Decimate Wild Oysters In San Francisco Bay

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sean Greene

Climate change could supercharge the powerful storms often hailed for bringing drought-busting rains to California.The storms, called atmospheric rivers, are long stretches of water vapor that travel from the tropics up to the West Coast of the U.S.. In California, they can deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation in just a couple of weeks. But too much water at once can be a bad thing. The phenomena are capable of causing destructive floods and landslides — and now, according to a new study, ecological damage.

 

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BLOG: A Quick Recap On Last Week’s Rain And Snow Across California

/in /by /AccuWeather (State College, Pa.)by Ken Clark

The weather has quieted down across California after last week’s soaking storm across the state. The setup involved several different factors that led to the significant rainfall event across the state, especially along the coast of northern and central California. For starters, a plume of moisture was observed extending from the tropics near Hawaii to northern California. This transport of high moisture content is referred to as a atmospheric river as I noted in the last blog and can be seen below. The persistent plume of moisture provided the fuel for the heavy rain.

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