The heat wave gripping parts of the country including Philadelphia, where tens of thousands are descending upon the city for the Democratic National Convention this week, is not going away anytime soon and will hit a peak Monday with temperatures in the city feeling like 108 degrees. Excessive heat warnings will continue Monday, the first day of the convention, in the Philadelphia area, most of the Midwest and regions out west.
This week, Governor Jerry Brown’s controversial water project is back in the public eye. State officials are launching a marathon series of hearings for the “twin tunnels,” as they’re known, that will ultimately decide the fate of the project. What are the Delta water tunnels? They’re two, 30-mile water tunnels that would be built in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, east of the San Francisco Bay Area. Each tunnel would be 40 feet in diameter, larger than the tunnels that carry BART trains under San Francisco Bay. The project, dubbed “California WaterFix,” would be buried 150 feet below ground.
Every year, the state battles invasive water weed species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The state Division of Boating and Waterways is at it again in 2016, and the hot, dry conditions created by the ongoing drought continue to make the job even harder.
The State Water Resources Control Board’s five members, all of whom owe their 120,000-plus a year jobs to Gov. Edmund Brown Jr., on Tuesday begin the first part of a two-part, multi-month water right change petition hearing for what is marketed as the “WaterFix Project.”
The project would dig two massive tunnels beneath the California Delta to drain fresh water out of the Sacramento River before it could flow naturally into the Delta.
Still swirling in controversy, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $15.5 billion re-engineering of the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is heading into a critical phase over the next year that could well decide if the project comes to fruition. Crunch time starts Tuesday. The State Water Resources Control Board begins months of grueling public hearings on the details of Brown’s plan to burrow a pair of massive tunnels beneath the heart of the Delta, a grand public works project designed to shore up the reliability of water deliveries to millions of Southern Californians and San Joaquin Valley farmers.
Now that Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has completed its $175 million purchase of four islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, totaling almost 20,000 acres in size, it is time to engage in a discussion of how Met can be a good Delta neighbor. Delta interests are rightly concerned about the presence of Met in our midst. The overpumping of the Delta by water contractors, led by Met, has had a negative impact on Delta water quality for farms and wildlife.
Californians living through a fifth year of historic drought received what seemed like a bit of good news last month: Researchers at Stanford found significantly larger-than-expected groundwater supplies 1,000 to 3,500ft (300 to 1,000m) below the state’s surface, in a first ever assessment of water supplies in California’s deep underground aquifers.
Updated estimates of our precious groundwater supplies are much-needed progress, as some estimates date back to 1989, but it’s critically important to approach these findings with a 21st-century mindset.
California decision makers are at a historic crossroads in the long-standing California water crisis. The outcome will permanently alter the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. Your voice can steer these decisions in the right direction and now is the time to speak up.
On July 26, 2016, the State Water Resources Control Board will begin a series of hearings that will help determine whether the governor’s proposed twin tunnels project will continue to move forward.
Forget about Tesla Motors Inc.’s batteries: The hottest way to store energy in the electricity business today is a century-old technology that involves moving water to stash power.
Known as pumped storage, the giant facilities push large volumes of water uphill when there is surplus electricity, and then let gravity move it back down through turbines to generate hydroelectric power when extra kilowatts are needed.
Leaders in the Bay Area community of East Palo Alto imposed a moratorium on development until the city can increase its water supply. For the past 14 years, the city has used nearly all of its annual water allotment, making it increasingly difficult for East Palo Alto to approve new developments, unless they can essentially provide their own water. With no easy or affordable solution in sight, developers are caught in limbo as they wait for the city to obtain additional water resources — a process that could take years, reports Kaitlyn Landgraf of the Bay Area News Group.
