We, the four Pima County representatives on the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Board of Directors, read with interest Tony Davis’ September 4, 2016 article “Lake Powell could dry up in as little as six years, study says” on the water resource issues facing Lake Powell and the Colorado River Upper Basin States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Weather forecasters are backing off their earlier prediction that La Nina atmospheric conditions would drive weather patterns this fall and winter. That means all bets are off when it comes to how — and how many — storms will approach the West Coast, advises Michelle Mead, a National Weather Service warning coordinator. The federal Climate Prediction Center had issued a “watch” for La Nina — a mixture of atmospheric and ocean surface temperatures that tends to steer storms toward the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.
Forecasters for the National Weather Service are tracking a neutral weather pattern for this upcoming fall and winter. Neutral means sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of the equatorial pacific are below El Niño criteria but above La Niña. Last year’s El Niño tied for the strongest on record and brought a lot of rain to Northern California and put a dent in the drought but did not live up to its hype. Cheryl Rauch was in Redding Monday to visit the Sundial Bridge and like most people in the region was looking for more rain to start the fall season.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) has come under criticism after a local TV station filmed one of the agency’s substations watering its artificial grass. The synthetic turf was installed in 2011 as part of a program to replace grass with drought-tolerant landscaping at 71 DWP facilities. “All told, this program has removed over 1.3 million square feet of grass and replaced it with California-friendly landscaping,” DWP spokesman Joe Ramallo told Reuters. “That’s enough water to (serve) 314 single-family homes in Los Angeles each year.” Nearby residents became angry after seeing the sprinkler systems running to water the synthetic turf.
The five-year drought in California may have the green lawns of Santa Barbara in its sights. In an unprecedented move, the Santa Barbara City Council on Tuesday is considering an outright ban on outdoor watering. As a conservation measure, the city already has limitations on what time of day people can water. Tom Fayram, deputy director of public works in charge of water resources for Santa Barbara County, said his department will continue to push voluntary conservation measures. “We need to conserve now, to save that water for later,” Fayram said.
A mountain lake in California may provide answers surrounding the current five year drought as well as the other major droughts in the history of the state. Glen MacDonald, a climate change researcher and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles led a study in which he has analyzed the relationship between prolonged drought, surface sea temperatures, and the previous periods indicating climate warming.
One year later, the shade balls dumped in the Los Angeles Reservoir have proven to be successful in saving water, according to the L.A. Department of Water and Power. In August of last year, L.A. officials released an additional 20,000 balls into the Los Angeles Reservoir, bringing the total number of balls in use to 96 million. The 36-cent plastic balls were designed to block sunlight, preventing chemical reactions that can cause harmful algae blooms.
California is now five years deep into one of its most severe droughts on record, and scientists are continually probing the different factors that affect the state’s climate, and how much those are related to the overall warming of the globe. Increasingly, this means looking back into the past for clues about how the region has changed over the last few thousand years and what influences might shape its future. In this connection, new research published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports suggests the Pacific Ocean may play a bigger role than anyone thought — and an unexpected one.
As the California drought persists, dying trees are slowly becoming the state’s largest natural disaster, Cal Fire said.
I drove out past Merced last year to see a dairy farmer testing a new idea. He irrigated 40 acres of feed corn with drip lines, which are much more common in orchards and vineyards than annual crops. The lines did more than conserve water. They delivered fertilizer, in the form of nitrogen-rich wastewater from one of the farm’s manure lagoons. Such precise application could reduce the risk of pollutants seeping into drinking-water aquifers – a concern with the widespread practice of flood irrigating with lagoon water.
