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$50 Billion Worth Of Bay Area Homes At Risk Of Rising Seas By 2050, Says Report

/in , /by /The Mercury Newsby Karen D'souza

ens of thousands of Bay Area homes worth about $50 billion are at grave risk of chronic coastal flooding by 2050, according to a new analysis by Zillow and Climate Central.

By 2100, the crisis deepens. As the ice caps continue to melt in the wake of global warming, experts project that 81,152 Bay Area homes with a current value of more than $96 billion, may be swamped. If greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked and seas continue to rise as expected, a wide swath of Bay Area real estate will be endangered. Coveted beach houses may well turn into disasters.

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Alaska’s Sweltering Summer Is ‘Basically Off The Charts’

/in , , /by /The Washington Post by Matthew Cappucci , Juliet Eilperin , Andrew Freedman and Brady Dennis

Steve Perrins didn’t see the lightning, but he couldn’t miss the smoke that followed.

It was around dinnertime on July 23 at Alaska’s oldest hunting lodge, nestled in the wilderness more than 100 miles northwest of Anchorage. What began as a quiet evening at the Rainy Pass Lodge soon turned frantic as Alaska’s latest wildfire spread fast.

The Alaska National Guard soon evacuated 26 people and two dogs by helicopter from the lodge, which serves as a checkpoint for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

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California Farmers Are Planting Solar Panels As Water Supplies Dry Up

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

Jon Reiter banked the four-seat Cessna aircraft hard to the right, angling to get a better look at the solar panels glinting in the afternoon sun far below. The silvery panels looked like an interloper amid a patchwork landscape of lush almond groves, barren brown dirt and saltbush scrub, framed by the blue-green strip of the California Aqueduct bringing water from the north. Reiter, a renewable energy developer and farmer, built these solar panels and is working to add a lot more to the San Joaquin Valley landscape.

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Is That Smell The Salton Sea? Humid Weather Fostering Stinky Air Around Palm Springs

/in , , /by /Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Colin Atagi

There’s an unmistakable smell in the air. One that creeps into the Coachella Valley during the hot, sticky days of summer.

The sulfuric odor typically shows up when the mercury and humidity are high, and levels of hydrogen sulfide spike in the Salton Sea.

A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokeswoman on Wednesday said the agency hadn’t received any reports of smelly air, and in fact, air quality across Southern California — including Riverside County — was “moderate.” The district, located in Diamond Bar, issues alerts when air pollutants are at levels that could be harmful to humans.

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California 1st State To Require Notification Of Toxic ‘Forever’ Chemicals in Water

/in , , /by /Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Janet Wilson

California on Wednesday became the first state in the nation to require water suppliers who monitor a broad class of toxic “forever chemicals” to notify customers if they’re present in drinking water. That could include sites from Los Angeles International Airport to military bases across the desert to refineries and other industry in low income neighborhoods.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 756, authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, late Wednesday with no fanfare.

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Scientists Cook Up New Recipes For Taking Salt Out Of Seawater

/in , , /by /PHYS.org (Los Angeles)

As populations boom and chronic droughts persist, coastal cities like Carlsbad in Southern California have increasingly turned to ocean desalination to supplement a dwindling fresh water supply. Now scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) investigating how to make desalination less expensive have hit on promising design rules for making so-called “thermally responsive” ionic liquids to separate water from salt. Ionic liquids are a liquid salt that binds to water, making them useful in forward osmosis to separate contaminants from water.

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Trump Revived The Cadiz Water Project. Now California Has Added A New Hurdle

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Phil Willion

A controversial Mojave Desert water project, which has emerged as a major environmental flashpoint between California and the Trump administration, cannot go forward without approval by the State Lands Commission under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday.

The restriction places a major obstacle to Cadiz Inc.’s long-standing plans to pump desert groundwater and sell it to urban Southern California.

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Cal Am Seeks Three-Year Rate Increase Starting In 2021

/in , /by /Monterey Heraldby Jim Johnson

California American Water is seeking to raise its Monterey area average customers’ bills by nearly 18 percent over a three-year period from 2021-2023. In its latest general rate case filing with the California Public Utilities Commission on July 1, Cal Am is seeking to raise water rates in its Monterey main district to increase revenue by about $8.4 million to cover new capital investment, increased labor expense, higher operations and administrative costs, and increased depreciation. Under the proposal, the “average” Cal Am customer would see their monthly rates increase from about $89.40 to $105.42 over the three-year period.

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San Diego County Students Inspire Water Conservation Through Art

/in , , /by /Water News Network

Three talented fourth grade students in north San Diego County will have their winning drawings featured in the 2020 “Be Water Smart” calendar produced by the Vallecitos Water District. The students were honored by the District’s Board of Directors at its July meeting.

To develop and promote water conservation awareness from an early age, the District holds a calendar contest available to all fourth graders in its service area. The top three drawings go on to represent the District in the regional North County Water Agency calendar for the following year.

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Bringing Climate Projections Down To Size For Water Managers

/in , /by /Earth and Space Science News (Washington D.C.)by Kimberley M. S. Cartier

Models of what global climate will look like in 10, 50, and 100 years get more sophisticated every year. But what will climate change mean for water resources in regional communities? A group of researchers is building tools to help scientists and regional water managers answer that question. “We’ve been developing new models and new techniques…to refine our understanding of the uncertainty in projections going forward—for hydrology, for snowpack, for important water resources, for flood extremes,” said Andy Wood, a hydrometeorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. Wood is the principal investigator of the project. “We’re creating a large set of projections that go forward and tell us about future water security,” he said.

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