The continents are rapidly drying out and the earth’s vast freshwater resources are under threat, according to a recently released study based on more than 20 years of NASA satellite data. Here are the report’s key findings and what they portend for humankind.
California regulators are supporting a controversial plan backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — and opposed by environmental groups — that would give water agencies more leeway in how they comply with water quality rules.
The Newsom-backed approach is included as part of a proposed water plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, released by the State Water Resources Control Board on Thursday.
A bill introduced in California by state senators Anna Caballero and Alexandra Macedo, a Democrat and Republican, respectively, would give water agencies immunity from civil lawsuits regarding chromium-6 contamination in their supply if they are actively working on plans to address the issue.
Caballero argued California Senate Bill 466 is needed so water agencies can concentrate on removing the potentially cancer-causing contaminant from their supply, rather than spending their limited resources on legal cases.
After decades of deterioration and ecological collapse in the heart of California’s water system, state regulators today embraced the Newsom administration’s controversial plan to overhaul how farms and cities take water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and rivers that feed it.
It’s a major development in a long-running battle over how much water must flow through the Delta for the survival of iconic Chinook salmon, sturgeon and other species — and how much can be tapped for tens of millions of Californians and vast tracts of Central Valley farmland.
In Arizona’s desert Southwest, water is life. It grows the food that fills grocery stores across the nation — even in the middle of winter.
But today, Arizona farms face unprecedented challenges, and our food security hangs in the balance.
The worst water Colt Smith has seen in 14 years with Utah’s Division of Drinking Water was at a mobile home park, where residents had been drinking it for years before state officials discovered the contamination.
The well water carried cancer-causing arsenic as much as 10 times the federal limit. Smith had to put the rural park under a do-not-drink order that lasted nearly 10 years.
California legislative staffers and environmental advocates took flight Tuesday to get a rare aerial view of watershed restoration in the Sierra Nevada, a project they say is critical to protecting the state’s water supply.
Much of California’s drinking water begins in places like the Yuba River Watershed, where decades of fire damage and climate change have left ecosystems fragile. From above, the contrast between green recovery zones and fire-scarred forest land was stark.
Groundbreaking on one of California’s newest reservoirs could begin by the end of next year, officials announced Friday.
Work on the Sites Reservoir, west of Maxwell in Colusa County, starts when crews begin testing soils and rocks in and around the 14,000 acre site of the proposed lake, said Fritz Durst, chairman of the Sites Project Authority Board of Directors.
The Imperial Irrigation District, which provides water to farmers in the southeastern corner of California, drew a figurative line in the sand earlier this month, calling for a halt to the conversion of agricultural fields into solar panel farms.
Noting that more than 13,000 acres of fertile land had already been converted, the water district asked the Imperial County Board of Supervisors to protect productive farmland.
Nebraska is suing Colorado over the amount of water it draws from the South Platte River, the latest in a long history of water rights disputes between the states that have been left increasingly dry by climate change.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and state Attorney General Mike Hilgers held a news conference Wednesday to announce the lawsuit, which was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.
