Authorities are urging residents to evacuate in parts of Santa Barbara County ahead of a winter storm expected to hit the area Thursday.The Sheriff’s Office recommended that residents in parts of Goleta, Santa Barbara, Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria evacuate starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday. The county has created an interactive map that shows which neighborhoods are most at risk.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District (SFID) is embarking on a new cost of service study, which will analyze the district’s costs and revenue needs for the next three years, paving the way for potential rate increases. The district, which supplies water to customers in Solana Beach, Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch, generally commissions such a study every three years, which then allows the agency to establish a three-year rate plan, said Michael Bardin, Santa Fe’s general manager.
A pair of storms will swing into California this week, potentially unleashing the most significant precipitation to impact the state in over a month. As the state contends with a worsening drought, depleted snowpack and renewed fears for the water supply in the coming months, the unsettled pattern may slightly ease, but not fully wipe out, these concerns. Abnormally dry winter months have caused moderate to severe drought conditions to blossom in much of central and Southern California, according to the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge led by states and environmental groups to an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that lets government agencies transfer water between different bodies, such as rivers and lakes, without needing to protect against pollution. The nine justices left in place a lower court ruling upholding the EPA’s “water transfers rule,” issued in 2008 by Republican former President George W. Bush’s administration, that exempted such transfers from a national water discharge program aimed at curbing pollution.
Crowds swarmed the Rancho Bernardo library Monday night to confront city officials about spiking water bills. NBC 7 Responds found that thousands of residents face sky-high water bills after rates began soaring in July 2017. Caryn Cooper was among the 100 people who packed the library to ask the Public Utilities Department about what they’re doing to remedy exorbitant bills. She helps a friend living on a fixed income whose bill increased by nearly $200.
A storm out of the Gulf of Alaska will blow ashore in San Diego County late Monday, dropping up to 18 inches of snow on mountain peaks and up to three-quarters of an inch of rain in some areas at and near the coast. The system also will extend San Diego’s week-long cold spell. On Tuesday, the temperature won’t get above 57 degrees — which is almost 10 points below average. “It doesn’t look like the temperatures will get above 60 anywhere in San Diego County on Tuesday,” said Brandt Maxwell, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “That’s including the desert.”
A little-studied, underground layer of rock may provide a vital reservoir for trees, especially in times of drought, report scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with The University of Texas (UT) at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley. The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the water stored inside the layer of weathered bedrock that lies under soils in mountain forest ecosystems.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge led by states and environmental groups to an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that lets government agencies transfer water between different bodies, such as rivers and lakes, without needing to protect against pollution. The nine justices left in place a lower court ruling upholding the EPA’s “water transfers rule,” issued in 2008 by Republican former President George W. Bush’s administration, that exempted such transfers from a national water discharge program aimed at curbing pollution.
Machines that prod clouds to make snow may sound like something out of an old science fiction movie. But worsening water scarcity, combined with new evidence that “cloud seeding” can work, is spurring states, counties, water districts and power companies across the thirsty West to use the strategy. Last month, a study funded by the National Science Foundation tracked for the first time how the technology works in nature. The evidence for cloud seeding has been scarce, but recent research has encouraged officials and companies desperate to increase the amount of water in rivers and reservoirs.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law Monday that will increase the frequency of inspections at the state’s most at-risk dams and require the Department of Water Resources to update dam safety protocols. Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, authored Assembly Bill 1270 following the Lake Oroville spillway crisis last February that saw more than 180,000 people evacuate.
