Remember that “historic” drought? The one that erased snow from the Sierra and was turning the Central Valley into a dusty bowl?
Remember how it was supposed to be permanent? How all Californians need to forever change the wasteful ways we use water because most of the state is, in fact, a desert? We remember. We’re not sure about the State Water Resources Control Board and some local water agencies, though.
A judge has upheld major provisions of a state plan that lays out a long-term strategy for managing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, rejecting most complaints included in a cluster of long-standing lawsuits.
But in a ruling Wednesday, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny also found that some aspects of the plan are inadequate, raising fresh questions about Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial $15.5 billion plan to build two tunnels through the estuary.
Winter and spring rains put a decent-sized dent in California’s water woes.
In Yosemite National Park, its storied falls are flowing with the kind of force not seen in four years. But the return of torrents of swift, cold water also have park officials concerned about increased drowning hazards. “The hazard is the water is flowing very swiftly and the bottom has all kinds of entrapments to catch people,” said park ranger Alan Hagman, who heads Yosemite’s rescue operations. “What attracts people to the river is also what will hurt them.”
Wedged between Arizona and Utah, less than 20 miles up river from the Grand Canyon, a soaring concrete wall nearly the height of two football fields blocks the flow of the Colorado River. There, at Glen Canyon Dam, the river is turned back on itself, drowning more than 200 miles of plasma-red gorges and replacing the Colorado’s free-spirited rapids with an immense lake of flat, still water called Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reserve.
Water rates for some 200,000 Central Contra Costa residents will drop in early June after the Contra Costa Water District board agreed Wednesday to end a temporary drought surcharge. With plenty of water this year, the water board decided there is no need to continue collecting the higher drought rate that was passed last summer to encourage saving.
The decision will reduce the typical water bill from $72 to $66 per month — a $6 decrease — for an average household using 320 gallons per day in the district’s treated water service area in Concord, Clayton, Clyde, and parts of Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill and Martinez.
On Wednesday, California said goodbye to its mandatory statewide water restrictions for urban use, a tip of the umbrella to the relatively wet winter northern parts of the state had, which helped fill reservoirs and brought a relatively normal snowpack to the Sierras.
That decision was probably premature. For Southern California especially, the drought is still just as bad as ever. In much of the Sierra Nevada and Southern California, there’s still two or three entire years of rain missing since this drought began five years ago.
A plan that was supposed to serve as a comprehensive roadmap for the Delta through the year 2100 now must be partially rewritten, after a judge this week ruled on complaints stemming from no fewer than seven lawsuits.The “Delta Plan,” as the document is known, had been challenged by players on multiple sides of California’s water battle — by environmentalists, by Delta farmers, and by Southern California water users who rely on the Delta for a portion of their water supply.
The lake is drying up, uncounted dead fish line the shore, and the desert town is losing people.
It could be the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie set in the future, but this is actually happening here and it has been going on for years. It wasn’t always like this, of course. There was a time when this town was booming. There was a time when the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, was the “French Riviera” of the state, and the pride and joy of Imperial County.
California today moved a big step closer to implementation of an historic law to protect groundwater basins from overdraft, as the California Water Commission approved regulations that will guide creation of sustainability plans by local groundwater agencies. Approval of the regulations advances the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. in September 2014 after more than a century of largely unregulated groundwater pumping in California. Groundwater supplies over a third of the water Californians use on average. In drought, some regions rely on groundwater for 60 percent or more of their water supplies.
The State Water Resources Control Board is reconsidering the state’s water supply and conservation regulations. Meanwhile, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is being implemented and Valley cities are updating their pre-drought 2010 Urban Water Management Plans.
This convergence of state, regional and local regulatory regimes provides an opportunity to address urban water reuse in the city of Merced and other Valley communities.
