You are now in California and the U.S. category.

California’s Drought May Be Over, But Its Water Troubles Aren’t

In the years before California’s civil engineers got around to confining the Sacramento River, it often spilled over its banks, inundating huge swaths of the Central Valley. Sometimes the floodwater would stand for a hundred days at a time. The botanist William Henry Brewer, writing in 1862, after a season of torrential rains, described the valley as “a lake extending from the mountains on one side to the coast range hills on the other.”

California May Exit Federal Flood Program, According to Reports

After learning a lesson from what could have been the largest dam disaster U.S. history, California officials are reported to be considering withdrawing from the National Flood Insurance Program. Capital Public Radio is reporting that a proposal to exit the NFIP is based on the research of Nicholas Pinter with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “Examining data since 1994, Pinter said that California paid more than $3 billion more into the federal program than it has received in payments during the last 21 years,” a Capital Public Radio article states.

Oroville Dam Floodgates Opened for 1st Time Since February

The floodgates at Oroville Dam in California were re-opened on Friday, March 17, for the first time since the end of February. The dam has been releasing water up to 50,000 cubic feet per second since, according to a press release. The flow in the Feather River also increased because of the release, and Lake Oroville’s level has dropped approximately four feet per day. The California Department of Water Resources expected to maintain the water flow for five to six days in order to bring down the lake level in order to provide sufficient storage for rain and snowmelt.

Saving Fish May Have Caused Oroville Disaster

Reportedly, an effort to save millions of salmonoid fish below the Oroville dam may have caused a delay in releasing water from Oroville Dam on February 12. It set up the evacuation of at least 188,000 people in the area after authorities warned of an emergency spillway in the structure was in danger of failing and unleashing uncontrolled floods of water on towns below. It was a near disaster and would have taken agricultural irrigation water with it, which has a lot of people asking questions. One person is Edward Needham. He provides agricultural services for growers throughout the state.

Feds Approve Aid To California Counties, More Still Needed

While federal funding is on its way to help Tuolumne County and others in California pay for damage related to storms in late January, more will be needed to cover the same for February. The assistance is the third request by Gov. Jerry Brown that the Trump administration has approved for more than $500 million in estimated damages throughout the state. That includes more than $6.8 million in Tuolumne County alone. “This will definitely help for sure,” said Deputy County Administrator Tracie Riggs, who serves as emergency services coordinator.

What This Week’s Storms Mean For California’s Flood Control System

While a nearly record-breaking rainy season has battered California’s dams and stretched the limits of local levees, the storms that began to hit Sacramento on Tuesday aren’t expected to put much additional strain on the state’s flood-control system. Spanning into next week, the storms are expected to drop as much as two inches of rain in Sacramento and two feet of snow in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada. But federal weather forecasters said Tuesday they aren’t too worried about widespread problems.

Water Transferred Out Of Lake Hodges For First Time Ahead Of Rain

The San Diego County Water Authority announced today that it transferred water out of Lake Hodges for the first time to create room to capture rain and runoff from storms expected to move into the region this week. Lake Hodges, in the North County roughly between Escondido and Rancho Bernardo, rose to nearly four feet of capacity from rains during a wet winter for the San Diego region.

Gov. Brown Heading to Washington

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), one of the sharpest gubernatorial critics of President Trump, will travel to Washington this week for meetings on foreign policy and other matters. Brown will be in Washington starting tomorrow to attend the board meeting of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a group founded by Ted Turner and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) that is focused on nuclear, biological, cyber and other risks. Brown joined the group in January. He’ll also meet with “government leaders and others,” his office said in a statement, but those meetings haven’t been scheduled yet.

Water Battle Is Now Going Underground

There are over 500 wells pumping water from the same source — the Eastern San Joaquin Groundwater Sub-Basin. That includes municipal wells in Manteca, Ripon, Lathrop, Stockton, and Lodi as well as agricultural wells and domestic wells serving rural homes. You may consider that irrelevant information given water comes out of your tap when you turn the faucet on. But what local agencies are doing in the next few years to create a framework to manage the water basin to meet a pending state mandate requiring groundwater basin sustainability will impact how freely water flows and determine who gets how much water.

Winter-Like Rain Forecast For 1st Week Of Spring

Winter weather is coming back to the Bay Area — just in time for spring. Starting Monday, the day of the vernal equinox, a week-long system of cool storms will swing through Northern California, bringing several inches of rain to the Bay Area and more snowfall in the snow-stuffed Sierra, according to the National Weather Service. The pattern follows two weeks of mostly sunshine around the region in what now appears to be a limited break from one of the wettest rain seasons in years.