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Will Winter Ever End? More Snow In The Sierra This Week

/in /by /SF Gate (San Francisco)by Amy Graff

Don’t put away your skis yet. A light, late-spring storm is moving into the Sierra, freshening the slopes and keeping the Tahoe snowpack chilled. Snow flurries are in the forecast today with the storm fully developing Tuesday and dropping one to four inches as low as 6,500 feet. “The cold front associated with the low pressure system will drop south toward Nevada on Tuesday,” said Evan LaGuardia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Reno. “It’s not as strong as what we saw a couple weeks ago but it will prevent the snow from melting.”

 

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Investigation: Just Because The Drought Is Done Doesn’t Mean The Water Crisis Is Over

/in /by /Bakersfield Nowby Kristen Powers

The drought is officially over in California, but our water crisis is not. Eyewitness News investigates the proposed solutions to help our water supply for the long haul. “What’s interesting from last year is we were simultaneously in a drought emergency and we were in a flood emergency, and so it was kind of an interesting thing for Californians to try to wrap their head around,” Harry Starkey, district manager for the West Kern Water District said. Starkey said California will always have its dry years, and then we are going to have some wet years.

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Data Point: Water Woes

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Daniel Wheaton

America is due for new pipes, aqueducts and water mains, and the public is probably going to pay for it. Aging water systems will need a repair — either by prudent maintenance or in response to water main breaks — and utilities will have to pass the costs on to consumers. Exactly how much and where is the question answered by a paper published in PLOS One. The Environmental Protection Agency says that an “unaffordable” water bill is one that exceeds 4.5 percent of a household’s income. Now, about 12 percent of Americans have water bills at that level.

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Floating Solar Panels Possible Wave Of Future

/in /by /Fox 5 San Diegoby Jaime Chambers Quoted: Kelly Rodgers

A plan to use floating solar panels at the Olivenhain Reservoir has been moving forward. The first solar array of its kind has been billed as a triple technology threat by producing energy saving water and cutting costs all at the same time. “I think the technology has matured. There are more companies in the US. doing this,” said Kelly Rodgers, San Diego County Water Authority energy program manager. “It was a great opportunity for the Water Authority to reduce our costs.”

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Calls to Rethink the Colorado River’s Iconic Dams Grow Louder

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Tara Lohan

With two major reservoirs on the Colorado River, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, sitting half empty, will a new hydrologic reality be enough to push for big management changes? One conservation group hopes so.

How to solve the problem is a source of political and legal wrangling that’s been going on for years among the seven U.S. states that share the river and Mexico. And it’s exacerbated by climate change: rising temperatures are expected to further shrink runoff in the basin, tightening the belt even more.

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Water Deeply Is Expanding to Cover Water Issues Across the West

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Ian Evans

For the past two years we’ve covered water issues throughout California. With this focus we strove to bring a new kind of journalistic rigor and depth to the coverage of the state’s drought, floods, environmental issues, innovation and more. We can’t thank this community enough and we are excited to let you know that we are expanding our coverage. Beginning now, Water Deeply is bringing that same rigor and depth of coverage to water issues across the American West. Water doesn’t obey state lines, and neither should its coverage.

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San Diego Unified Found Lead at a School – and Told One Parent

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

Last fall, months before San Diego Unified School District began testing all schools’ drinking water for lead, it did a special round of tests a Sunset View Elementary in Point Loma. The district found lead but didn’t tell parents. Rather, it told one parent – the one who’d requested a lead test. The lead was coming from a key device known as a backflow preventer. All the water the school uses passes through the device before it reaches sinks, faucets and fountains at the 480-student school.

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