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Timeline For Success Dam Widening Project Released

The Success Dam Enlargement Project, headed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, has been working its way towards construction since October 2018. After a public meeting took place at the Veterans Memorial building back in February, the project’s leads have been hard at work to produce a timeline for the widening project. On Tuesday morning the timeline was published, and it reveals that construction on the Success Dam Enlargement Project will begin in mid 2020. Until then, plenty of work is scheduled to happen before construction starts.

How Some Residents Of The San Gabriel Valley Can Get Free, Native Plants For Their Yards

Some San Gabriel Valley residents may be eligible to receive $250 worth of drought-resistant plants — for free. The Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District launched the region’s first residential plant voucher program last week; applications are now open, according to a press release. The program is intended to encourage people to integrate drought-tolerant plants into their landscape instead of grass lawns and other water-thirsty plant materials, according to the upper district website. The nearly 1 million people in the upper district service area use more than 78 billion gallons of water annually, according to the release.

Photos: See LA’s Night Sky Electrified By Phenomenal Lightning Show

Lightning dazzled Los Angeles last night, with nearly 6,000 lightning strikes recorded over Southern California. Earth Networks, a company that uses sensors to detect lightning, observed 5,923 lighting strikes and 14,326 lightning pulses (that’s when the lightning is in a cloud and doesn’t hit the ground) from 6 p.m. to midnight. Steve Prinzivalli, a meteorologist at Earth Networks, tells Curbed that those numbers are “pretty incredible,” and climate scientist Daniel Swain on Twitter described it as the “most spectacular winter lightning display in recent memory.”

OPINION: One Rainy Season Doesn’t Mean California’s Drought Problems Are Over

Drought? What drought? The big fear in the world of water management is that this big gulp of wet weather will lead some Californians to think that the drought is dead. Politicians from President Donald Trump to Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who displayed a snowball on the Senate floor to “disprove” global warming, willfully try to conflate climate change with weather. But one rainy season is not California’s last-reel rescue from drought.

Change At The Salton Sea Is Affecting Bird Populations

California’s largest lake has long attracted visitors. Many go there year-round to see thousands of birds congregating around the lake and its nearby habitats, but the lake is changing and that’s changing bird populations. More than 400 different species have been recorded here and estimates put the daily bird population around the sea at more than 100,000. That’s great for bird watchers like Ryan Llamas. The Audubon Society member’s binoculars are pressed tightly against his eyes as he scans the open water.