It’s already late May. But parts of Northern California got another blast of rain and snow this weekend, helping the state’s drought relief efforts.
A spring storm dropped rain in parts of Northern California on Saturday afternoon, but it was less severe than the one a day earlier that dumped up to 13 inches of snow on a Sierra Nevada highway and hit the Sacramento area lightning, winds gusting to 40 mph and dime-sized hail.
Congress could be taking another swing at modernizing the state’s water management policies to provide both short- and long-term solutions, under legislation introduced by 3rd District Congressman John Garamendi, D-Fairfield.
Whether the package introduced Tuesday will make it through Congress, however, is anyone’s guess. California lawmakers have been trying for the last three years to produce a plan that would deal with the state’s drought without success. Meanwhile, in related action, the California Farm Bureau Federation urged the U.S. Senate to take up drought legislation.
Despite the strongest El Niño event on record and the well above normal amounts of rainfall it brought to Northern California, the worst category of drought (D4 Exceptional Drought) continues to persist throughout most of San Luis Obispo and Kern counties and all of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
Since the start of 2016, nearly all the long-range models have consistently advertised that a La Niña condition — which historically produces below average rainfall for the Central Coast — will develop in the eastern equatorial Pacific this upcoming winter.
This week, California lifted some — but not all — of its statewide restrictions on urban water use. This comes as Lake Mead’s water level, affected by the same dry conditions that have devastated California, reached its lowest level on record.
Unlike several past winters, this last one was relatively wet, relieving drought conditions in the northern part of the state and allowing the state to lift some of water restrictions. Conditions in much of the southern part of the state, however, remain unimproved.
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.
