After a week of being walloped by major storms that have dumped copious rain and snow on the state, California is finally emerging from a deep, years-long drought. Ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada mountains are flush with snow, while key reservoirs have filled back up. On Jan. 12, the U.S. Drought Monitor erased all drought in Northern California from the map and dialed back the severity over the southern half of the state.
Tory Walker and his wife have moved to Murrieta, which makes Walker ineligible to serve on the Rainbow Municipal Water District board. In October, Walker informed Rainbow board president Dennis Sanford of his resignation from the board effective Dec. 31, and the October notification allowed the Rainbow board to use part of its Dec. 6 meeting to begin the process of appointing a replacement for the Division 3 director. “We look forward to getting that seat filled,” said Rainbow general manager Tom Kennedy.
Droughts are common in California, a large, generally dry, and hydrologically complex place. So it is hard to rely on a single index of the end or beginning of a drought. A single storm is rarely enough to end a drought in California, especially a long drought like the one that seems to be mostly ending now. Regular hydrologic statistics can be used as indicators of drought, but these do not do justice to how droughts actually end (or begin).
Early last Monday morning, a friend of mine sent news that a tree we knew, a sequoia, had collapsed in a winter mountain storm. I was in New York, where two inches of hard snow sat on cars and tree branches that themselves looked like death. He was in Northern California, near the place where we grew up. No one is certain of the fallen tree’s age, but it is thought to have lived at least a thousand years. Any tribute I could give it would be fatuous; the tree was older than the language in which I can write.
In Southern California in the fall of 2015, a giant natural gas leak not only caused one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history, it also knocked out a critical fuel source for regional power plants. Energy regulators needed a quick fix. But rather than sticking with gas, they turned to a technology more closely associated with flashlights: batteries. They freed up the utilities to start installing batteries — and lots of them.
Torrents of meltwater coursed down the granite crevices below the moonscape of the Desolation Wilderness. Just miles from its source in the High Sierra, the South Fork of the American River was already roaring down toward the oaken foothills, bursting over the spillways of dams that humans had erected to control it. As it moved, it gathered streams and rivulets — pink and brown and orange from the minerals they leached. The heavy rain turned dusty creek beds into full-fledged tributaries. Running through narrowing clefts they burst forth as from hydraulic jets.
The San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) has requested an extension in the annexation process for the Campus Park West development. The SDCWA approved a request to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) for the extension at the Dec. 8 CWA board meeting. MWD’s conditional approval provided in December 2014 stipulated that all necessary documents for the annexation must be filed by Dec. 31, 2016, but the lack of state and federal permits led to the request to extend the completion prerequisites to Dec. 31, 2017. The Rainbow Municipal Water District had requested that the CWA seek the extension from MWD.
The California State Water Resources Board (SWRCB) was taken to the woodshed this week by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), when Mark Holderman, the principal engineer at DWR’s South Delta Branch offered expert testimony that the Bay-Delta water plan was written “without evidence, incomplete scientific information, ill-suited for real-time operations, and unverified assumptions.” On January 3, 2017, the SWRCB held its fourth and final public hearing on the Bay-Delta Plan’s Draft Substitute Environmental Document (SED), in Sacramento.
California’s current La Niña period, characterized by highly unpredictable rainfall patterns, might mean the end of the statewide drought, according to UC Berkeley environmental experts. If the rainfall continues further into the new year, most, if not all, of the state will likely see the end of the drought, according to assistant professor of water and climate Ted Grantham. Grantham said there are two definitions of a drought — the traditional meteorological drought is characterized by significantly below average rainfall. Another definition, however, also considers water supply in reservoirs.
With all the rain recently, San Diegans are wondering whether the severe drought in California is over and if they should continue to conserve. Another big question—will water bills decrease? San Diego County is primarily a water importer, so this year’s wet winter weather is helping our water supply. The snowpack from where the county gets its water from is 140 percent of the average amount, which will replenish the Colorado River Basin.
