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California Needs Billions For Flood Protection, Experts Say

As Governor Jerry Brown asks for additional federal assistance following February’s heavy storms, a larger question looms as to how California should pay to repair – and improve – its defense against floods. In the request dated March 19, Brown asked President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster for the state, estimating the total damage at more than $539 million. That sum, however, represents just a fraction of the billions of dollars experts say are needed to protect Californians from the threat of flood.

Requiring Lead Testing Of Children In California Makes Sense

Exposure to lead at an early age has been linked to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, which is why the stories about officials allegedly covering up excessive lead in the water supply of Flint, Michigan, became a national scandal. But an alarming 2016 Reuters investigation documenting children’s exposure to lead in 21 states, including California, never got the attention it deserved. In Flint, 5 percent of children met the Centers for Disease Control elevated lead exposure threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, double the national average.

How California Is Saving Rainwater For A Sunny Day

Outside the window of Helen Dahlke’s office, at the University of California at Davis, the clouds hang low, their edges seeming to brush against the building. It’s raining intensely, an unusual event in a perpetually parched state suffering from a five-year drought. “It looks like the end of the world,” says Dahlke happily.As a hydrologist and professor who studies how water flows over and through rock, soil, fields, and farms, she is something of an H2O whiz.

OPINION: DWR’s Handling Of Oroville Dam Crisis Keeps Getting Worse

The confounding statements from the state Department of Water Resources about the Lake Oroville spillway crisis just keep coming.The disaster has been a public-relations nightmare from the beginning, but DWR keeps making matters worse with its words and actions. As the repair bill for the crumbling spillway and the emergency response approached $200 million last week, DWR acting Director Bill Croyle — who has exhibited a troublesome tendency to downplay the incident since it started Feb. 7 — used an inappropriate analogy when asked at a press conference whether the crisis could have been prevented and who was responsible.

Nearly Six Weeks After Oroville Dam Crisis, Authorities Lift Evacuation Advisory

More than five weeks after erosion damage at Lake Oroville forced residents to flee to high ground, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday announced it had lifted an evacuation advisory. More than 100,000 Butte County residents were given an hour’s notice to evacuate on Feb. 12, when officials feared that a concrete weir on the reservoir could collapse and send a 30-foot wall of water into the valley below. The order took residents by surprise because Department of Water Resources officials had repeatedly assured them that erosion damage to the reservoir’s main and emergency spillways posed no threat.

Flood Control Trumps Tunnels

Californians are more likely to favor beefing up the state’s flood control infrastructure than building Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta tunnels, according to the latest poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. Sixty-one percent of all adults think it is “very important” that the state spend more money on flood control, in the wake of the near disaster at Oroville Dam. Fifty-one percent consider the tunnels “very important,” with the $15 billion proposal enjoying much higher levels of support in Southern California (64 percent) than in the Central Valley (40 percent) or the Bay Area (49 percent).

Shrinking Salton Sea Threatens wildlife

Over the years, many of the birds that visit Shasta County have found a migratory fuel stop in the richness of the Salton Sea, a short hour’s drive from Palm Springs. The flood that re-created it must have been of almost Biblical proportions.  In 1905-07, canal levees were breached, sending the entire flow of the Colorado River into a vast basin – the bed of the ancient, dry Lake Cahuilla. Thus the modern Salton Sea was formed.

Requiring Lead Testing Of Children In California Makes Sense

Exposure to lead at an early age has been linked to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, which is why the stories about officials allegedly covering up excessive lead in the water supply of Flint, Michigan, became a national scandal. But an alarming 2016 Reuters investigation documenting children’s exposure to lead in 21 states, including California, never got the attention it deserved. In Flint, 5 percent of children met the Centers for Disease Control elevated lead exposure threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, double the national average.

Southern California Is Drowning In Drought-Proofing Projects

As California pulls out of the drought, expect to see a weird thing: water agencies opposing plans to help the state get through future droughts. Water agencies are working on dozens of projects to boost Southern California’s water supply. Combined, these projects could provide enough drinking water for several million people. But many of the agencies are simultaneously boosting their own projects and arguing that others shouldn’t be built – partly out of a fear that ratepayers will only tolerate so many projects, and partly because of politics and territorialism.

Desal Loses Urgency Following Wet Winter

Here’s a cold, wet reality: the more water in California’s reservoirs, the less urgency there is to build new ocean-water desalination plants that became a major talking point during the state’s long, parched years of drought, an ultra-dry period some folks insist has still not ended despite months of heavy rains. Those record or near-record rains have replenished everything reservoirs lost over the last few years of drought, and sometimes more.