Some comments carry more weight than others – such as comments from Gov. Jerry Brown.
The State Water Resources Control Board unveiled its plan to take 30 to 50 percent of the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers late last week. After taking four years to compile the 2,000-page report, the water board gave the people of the Northern San Joaquin Valley 60 days to digest it and make objections.
One Londonderry well owner left a trash can outside with the lid open in the rain Sunday night. She needs the water to flush her toilet.
She has also been doing laundry at her daughter’s house, showering in small increments so as not to let the water run continuously, and using paper products at meal time to wash fewer dishes. She, like many of her neighbors in Southern New Hampshire, is experiencing the affects of a months-long drought.
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded. Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in this Amazonian ant-mimic treehopper, is another reason to preserve carbon storing forests. Credit Andreas Kay at flickr A Key Preserver of Carbon Storage in Rainforests – are tapirs, which help disperse the seeds of the largest carbon-storing trees. The Surprising Link Between The Tapirs Of Costa Rica And Climate Change – They disperse seeds of the largest trees that store the most carbon, suggest new studies. Protecting tapirs and other large seed-eating mammals is key to preserving carbon storage capability in rainforests.
With California in its fifth year of severe drought and many western states experiencing another year of unusually dry conditions, plants are stressed.
Agricultural crops, grasses and garden plants alike can get sick and die when factors such as drought and excess sun force them to work harder to survive.
Now, plants can better tolerate drought and other stressors with the help of natural microbes, University of Washington research has found. Specifically, plants that are given a dose of microbes stay green longer and are able to withstand drought conditions by growing more leaves and roots and using less water.
Central California is under a pollution alert for air more normally seen streaming from a pig smoker than in the sky. Multiple fires throughout the state are carbonizing vast amounts of forest, where the vegetation is dry as a wick from hot temperatures, scant precipitation, and years of persistent drought.
Now, one of the largest and longest-lasting of these blazes—the Soberanes Fire in the Los Padres National Forest—has become the most expensive wildfire to battle in U.S. history.
When Erin Brockovich went after PG&E for poisoning groundwater in the desert town of Hinkley, California — a campaign that later became a film starring Julia Roberts — the toxic chemical was a heavy metal called hexavalent chromium. Also known as chromium 6, the chemical is listed under California’s Prop 65 as causing cancer, developmental harm and reproductive harmin both men and women. A new report out today finds Hinkley isn’t the only California city with chromium 6 contamination. The report found 11 water districts serving some 400,000 Californians had hexavalent chromium in their tap water at levels above the state’s legal limit.
We may someday have to stop calling our drought a temporary phenomenon and just label it the new normal. Climate change could lock the state into a dry pattern lasting centuries or even a millennia if history repeats itself, according to a new study out of UCLA. Researchers correlated findings from Sierra Nevada soil samples and found that energy changes from natural occurrences like a shift in the Earth’s orbit or sun spots may have triggered prolonged dry weather in California.
It is now possible to imagine a future in which highly treated wastewater will be plumbed directly into California homes as a new drinking water supply. On September 8, the State Water Resources Control Board released a long-awaited report on the feasibility of so-called “direct potable reuse.” This means recycling urban sewage flows in a process akin to seawater desalination, then plumbing it directly into a city’s freshwater distribution lines without first storing it in a groundwater aquifer or reservoir (known as indirect potable reuse).
From high-school students to high-tech companies and local breweries, Max Gomberg of the State Water Resources Control Board has been astounded by Californians’ efforts to conserve water amid the drought. “More and more people are seeing how climate change is impacting their lives, and, in the case of droughts, taking personal initiative along with demanding more government action,” he told Water Deeply. Gomberg works on water conservation and climate change management for the board.
To support our prosperity and growth, California needs to expand its investments in our physical and natural infrastructure.This is particularly apparent as climate change puts stress on our ability to provide safe, clean water. One of the bills awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision stands out as a common-sense measure that would help secure California’s future water needs. Assembly Bill 2480, by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, would require formal recognition of the five watersheds that feed Northern California’s primary reservoirs as state infrastructure, just like the state’s dams, canals and levees.
