A California public water district that has lost several legal battles over flows released for Klamath River salmon and earned a rare federal penalty over what it described as “a little Enron accounting” loaned one of its executives $1.4 million to buy a riverfront home, and the loan remains unpaid nine years later although the official has left the agency, according to records and interviews.

Westlands Water District says its 2007 loan to deputy general manager Jason Peltier — now at $1.57 million with a 0.84 percent annual interest rate — is allowed under agency rules on salary.

 

The much-hyped ocean-atmosphere oscillation was declared dead by the National Weather Service today. The pool of unusually warm water in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, the telltale indicator of El Niño, has cooled to nearly normal. “We’re sticking a fork in this El Niño and calling it done,” writes NOAA climate analyst Emily Becker on its El Niño blog. But this year’s El Niño, among the strongest on record, will long be remembered for profoundly altering weather extremes in parts of the world while pushing the planet’s temperature to shocking record highs, with devastating consequences.

Last summer was a rough one for Don Engineer, the owner of Prestige LawnCare, a landscape maintenance company that services homes in the Sacramento region.

“Last year was really bad because of the restrictions and the fines,” Engineer said. “People were scared, so they stopped watering their grass and the grass died.” But as dry skies and triple-digit heat make their annual return to the Sacramento region, business seems to be looking up for Engineer and his three employees. Communities across the region are relaxing or outright lifting the unprecedented outdoor watering restrictions enacted in 2015.

A new government study casts doubt on predictions of severe continental-scale droughts plaguing the planet because of global warming.

It turns out, climate models predicting mega-droughts from increased warming may be wrong since “such drying seems inconsistent with observations of dryland greening and decreasing pan evaporation,” according to government scientists.

Low-elevation snowpack across the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades will disappear in the coming decades if global warming continues unabated, according to a new study. The changes will cause water shortages in the region and dry out forests and grasslands, the study’s authors say.

According to the research, the snow line—the altitude above which it snows, and below which it rains—will climb as much as 800 feet in the Colorado Rockies, and 1,400 feet in the Rockies of Idaho and Wyoming by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate.