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.
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.
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.
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.
Residents of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles will get their lake back months early, thanks to the massive Eastern Sierra snowpack. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drained the 96-acre open-air reservoir in 2015 for construction to divert drinking water to a new, covered reservoir that complies with updated storage regulations. The department had planned to begin refilling Silver Lake Reservoir in May, using local water sources in a process that would have taken about 12 months.
The 2016-17 rainfall season is the ninth wettest on record for Sacramento – and more precipitation is on the way Friday. Nearly 30 inches of rainfall has fallen in Sacramento, 29.93 inches to be exact. Northern California rainfall has swollen rivers, filled reservoirs and ended drought conditions. “The main reason it’s been so wet is that we’ve had double the atmospheric river events that we typically see in a water year,” said Brooke Bingaman, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
The milestones marking California’s wettest year in decades continued to pile up Thursday, as state water officials said a reservoir high up in the Sierra Nevada has exceeded capacity for the first time in 21 years. Lake Davis began overflowing onto its earth-and-rock spillway Wednesday after a couple of light rainstorms this week, Department of Water Resources officials said. “While DWR does not anticipate problems downstream of the reservoir near Portola, flows below the lake could exceed what residents, businesses and anglers have experienced over the past three decades,” the agency said Thursday.
San Diego County is calling on the powerful Metropolitan Water District to return what local leaders say is $250 million in illegal charges over a number of years. The Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution Wednesday supporting efforts by the San Diego County Water Authority to recover money the authority says was taken by a combination of overcharging, overspending and excessive borrowing.
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.
California faces “a very significant risk” if state officials fail to repair a damaged spillway at Lake Oroville before the November onset of next winter’s rainy season, a team of engineering consultants has warned the reservoir’s operator.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
