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Water is Disappearing in the West – and Not Just During the Summer

/in , , /by /CNN by Hannah Gard

Skiers and snowboarders pray for snow so they can shred the slopes. Climatologists and hydrologists have an entirely different and more critical reason to cross their fingers for the “white gold.”

The West’s historic drought has many impacts, including water shortages, more severe wildfire seasons and unprecedented heat waves, to name a few. Intense droughts are a result of many factors, one of which scientists have recently began to analyze with more scrutiny: snow drought.
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Drier Springs Bring Hotter Summers in the Withering Southwest

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Judy Fahys

A question has bothered climatologist Park Williams during the decade he’s been probing drought in the Southwest. Like other climate scientists, he knew from research papers and worldwide storm patterns that a warming atmosphere is thirstier and sops up more moisture from oceans and the land.

“But, in the Southwest, we’ve seen the exact opposite happening,” said Williams, an associate professor in the University of California, Los Angeles’ geography department.

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Fresh Out of Stealth Mode, San Diego Startup FutureProof Pinpoints Financial Risk of Climate Change

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Mike Freeman

FutureProof, a San Diego fintech startup that taps artificial intelligence to project the dollars and cents financial risk of climate change, has come out of stealth mode with a $3 million round of seed funding.

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Bills Addressing California Water Crisis Advance in Sacramento

/in , , /by /Fox 26 Newsby Liz Gonzalez

A pair of bills addressing the state’s water crisis have now cleared another hurdle in Sacramento.

Senate bill 559 from Senator Melissa Hurtado (14th District- Sanger) would allocate $785 million dollars to repair three canals that move water across the state.

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Some 200 California Projects May Be Funded by Infrastructure Bill

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jennifer Haberkorn

The House on Thursday approved an approximately $715-billion transportation infrastructure plan that would build and repair roads, bridges and rail systems around the country.

The bill forms the House’s framework for President Biden’s infrastructure plan. While the proposal is likely to change during negotiations with the Senate as it progresses toward Biden’s desk, the bill includes $920 million specifically targeted to projects throughout California.

The most expensive California project, at $25 million, will be pre-construction work on a transportation hub in San Diego. Major projects in Los Angeles include a Metro transit line through the Sepulveda Pass and improvements to existing transit in the Vermont Corridor.

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Water Project in Mission Trails Park More Than 50% Complete

/in , , /by /Water News Network Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority’s Mission Trails FRS II water project is now more than halfway complete.

The project will upgrade the Water Authority’s untreated water system in Mission Trails Regional Park. When finished in 2022, the upgrades will provide more reliable water delivery to treatment plants that serve the central and south sections of San Diego County.

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California’s Rain Year Just Ended – and the Data Shows We’re in Trouble

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kellie Hwang

California’s rain year officially ended Wednesday, and the data reflects what the dry landscape in much of the Bay Area already shows: It wasn’t pretty. Data shows that for many of the major regions of California, the July 2020-June 2021 rain year was one of the top 10 driest ever. Even more troubling is that the extreme dry spells are starting to stack up, especially in the Sierra Nevada watersheds that supply so much of the state’s water.

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The Colorado River is Shrinking. Hard Choices Lie Ahead, This Scientist Warns

/in , , /by /Science Magby Erik Stokstad

On a spring morning in 1996, then–Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood at Glen Canyon Dam, a concrete bulwark in Arizona that holds back the Colorado River to form Lake Powell. During a live broadcast on the Today show, a popular national TV program, Babbitt opened valves to unleash an unprecedented experimental flood into the Grand Canyon just downstream. As onlookers applauded, water gushed from gaping outlet pipes. Babbitt called the experiment, which was testing one way of restoring Grand Canyon ecosystems damaged by the dam, the start of “a new era” in environmental management.

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Native Plant Communities in Sustainable Landscaping

/in , , /by /Water News Network

Plants growing wild naturally arrange themselves into communities with other plant varieties based on their shared characteristics such as water and nutrient needs. This natural selection extends to interactions with each other, and with other species such as insects, birds, and other animals.

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Santee Lakes Celebrates 60th Anniversary

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Karen Pearlman

Santee Lakes Recreation Preserve has been celebrating its 60th anniversary during the month of June. The 190‐acre park surrounding seven lakes has been around since it received San Diego County Health Department approval in 1961. The site has five miles of walking and biking trails, a campground with 300 full hook-up sites, seven lakefront cabins and three floating rental cabins on Lake 7. The lake allows for fishing with a permit and there are more than 200 species of birds that have been documented at the park. The preserve also has seven playgrounds, a brand new administrative building and a revamped general store that rents out pedal boats.

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