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Climate Change Complicates The Whole Dam Debate

/in /by /Scientific American (Armonk, NY)by Richard Conniff

With California now on track to have the rainiest year in its history—on the heels of its worst drought in 500 years—the state has become a daily reminder that extreme weather events are on the rise. And the recent near-collapse of the spillway at California’s massive Oroville Dam put an exclamation point on the potentially catastrophic risks. More than 4,000 dams in the U.S. are now rated unsafe because of structural or other deficiencies. Bringing the entire system of 90,000 dams up to current standards would cost about $79 billion, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

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Massive Tijuana Sewage Spill That Polluted San Diego Beaches Part Of Larger Problem

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Sandra Dibble and Joshua Emerson Smith

Baja California’s governor is preparing to declare a state of emergency in the coming days, hoping to draw financial aid for Tijuana’s strained and underfunded sewage system following a massive spill that sent millions of gallons of untreated wastewater from Tijuana across the border and into San Diego last month.

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Scientists Map Seawater Threat To California Central Coast Aquifers

/in /by /Phys.org (Douglas, Isle Of Man, U.K.)

Researchers from Stanford and the University of Calgary have transformed pulses of electrical current sent 1,000 feet underground into a picture of where seawater has infiltrated freshwater aquifers along the Monterey Bay coastline. The findings, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Hydrology but are available online now, help explain factors controlling this phenomenon, called saltwater intrusion, and could help improve the groundwater models that local water managers use to make decisions about pumping groundwater to meet drinking or farming needs.

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OPINION: Taxpayers Deserve Transparency On Oroville Expenses

/in /by /East Bay Times

It is a simple question really: How much is the massive repair project below Lake Oroville costing each day. Simple or not, it has been appallingly difficult to get it answered. Representatives of our newspaper group have been asking how much the crisis at the dam is costing and, oh yes, who’s picking up the tab? The reporters have asked how many state employees are working, how many contractors are employed and what it costs for all the equipment.

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Is There Too Much Water Behind Oroville Dam? Critics Say Army Corps Standards Unsafe

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler, Ryan Sabalow, and Phillip Reese

Long before a fractured spillway plunged Oroville Dam into the gravest crisis in its 48-year history, officials at a handful of downstream government agencies devised a plan they believed would make the dam safer: Store less water there. Sutter County, Yuba City and a regional levee-maintenance agency brought their recommendation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2006, when FERC was considering the state’s application to relicense Oroville Dam.

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Will California Spend More on Water Projects? ‘It All Depends On How Thirsty The Governor Is,’ De León Says

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby George Skelton

If there ever was a politically ripe time to spend lavishly on water projects, this is it. But Sacramento Democrats are settling for a drop in the bucket. Spillways got washed out at giant Oroville Dam, forcing more than 100,000 people to flee their homes. Thousands of San Jose residents were flooded out because of raging creeks and inadequate facilities. Houses, barns and roads near the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta were swamped.

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Finally, Severe Drought Gets the Boot From All of LA, Ventura, Santa Barbara Counties

/in /by /NBC Bay Areaby Jonathan Lloyd

Conditions have improved in a small swath of Southern California that was one of the last areas of severe drought still standing during a wet winter for the record books. Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties are no longer under severe drought, according to this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report. Recent rainfall improved the outlook for groundwater in the region, accounting for the improvement, the Monitor report said.

 

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Two Countries, One Sewage Problem: Tijuana and San Diego Grapple With Renegade Flows

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Sandra Dibble and Joshua Emerson Smith

Baja California’s governor is preparing to declare a state of emergency in the coming days, hoping to draw financial aid for Tijuana’s strained and underfunded sewage system following a massive spill that sent millions of gallons of untreated wastewater from Tijuana across the border and into San Diego last month. The incident was triggered by the collapse of a major sewage trunk line in Tijuana, state officials say, and repairs led to the release of a large amount of untreated sewage into the Tijuana River channel, which empties into the ocean at Imperial Beach.

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The Desert Is In Super Bloom At Anza-Borrego State Park

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Marisa Gerber

Heather Slavey squinted as she stared into the badlands. She shook her head in awe of the natural montage — yellows, pinks, purples. “Wow,” she said. “It looks like something out of the Wizard of Oz.” Slavey, who does marketing for a law firm, and her husband, Robert, left their home in San Diego early Saturday morning, and drove toward Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Like thousands of others across the Southland, they made the pilgrimage into the desert this weekend to witness a once-in-a-decade wildflower “super bloom” — the aftereffect of heavy winter rains.

 

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San Luis Reservoir Full For First Time In Six Years

/in /by /Santa Cruz Sentinelby Paul Rogers

Last summer it was a jarring symbol of California’s historic five-year drought. San Luis Reservoir — the vast lake along Highway 152 between Gilroy and Los Banos, the state’s fifth-largest reservoir and a key link in the water supply for millions of people and thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland — was just 10 percent full. A parched expanse of cracked mud, littered with old beer bottles and millions of tiny clam shells, San Luis was at its lowest level in 27 years.

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