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Legislation to prevent ongoing drinking water contamination like that seen in Flint, Mich., from harming families in disadvantaged communities throughout California was approved Monday on a 4-2 vote by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill will be heard next by the full Senate.

Senate Bill 1318, authored by state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, would help protect hundreds of thousands of California families living in communities that still do not have access to safe and reliable drinking water or adequate sanitation services.

If item number one on your summer to-do list is to witness the booming waterfalls of Yosemite National Park, you’re in for a treat. Water levels appear to have rebounded from four years of drought and we’re now in a window of peak waterfall conditions.

United States Geological Survey numbers indicate water under the Pohono Bridge at the west end of the Yosemite Valley has been climbing, and reaching heights not seen since 2012.

Those tasked with keeping gritty stormwater from reaching Lake Tahoe are looking into whether the roads are actually a problem.

“Pavement wear” is what Russ Wigart, with El Dorado County, called it. “We completely annihilate our roads on an annual basis,” Wigart said. “Fifteen to 25 percent of fine sediment is from pavement. Maybe we could resurface our roads and call them water quality projects.”

 

Think the current California drought has been tough? It will get worse in the future, because the state is always growing. But quantifying that effect has largely been guesswork. Until now.

A new study in Environmental Research Letters by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Nature Conservancy estimates how water demand will change in 2062 by projecting the present rate of land-use change. This includes urban growth and farmland conversion – both conversion of farms into urban areas and conversion of annual crops to permanent crops, like orchards and vineyards.

The water in the largest U.S. reservoir has sunk to a record low, due to the severe drought in the American Southwest.

Lake Mead, in Nevada, had dropped 10 feet in three months. With an average depth of 1,084 feet in February, last week the reservoir measured only 1,074 feet deep, or only 37 percent of capacity, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The manmade lake — formed during the Great Depression by the blocking of the Colorado River with Hoover Dam — has endured despite the drought that has dried up the mountain snowpacks that feed the river.