California will consider lifting a mandatory statewide water conservation order for cities and towns after a rainy, snowy winter eased the state’s five-year drought, water officials said Monday.
But an executive order by Gov. Jerry Brown would make permanent some of the measures adopted to deal with the current drought, including prohibitions against excessive water use while washing cars and watering lawns.
Just a year ago, California regulators ordered cities and suburbs across the state to make drastic cuts in water use, telling residents the time had come to make longstanding lifestyle and landscaping changes consistent with a state with limited water.
One modestly rainy season later, the State Water Resources Control Board has backed off its sweeping mandate, issuing draft revisions to its conservation regulations that would allow individual water agencies to propose their own standards for water use.
After years of drought, winter’s rain and snow storms generated close to a normal supply of water for California. As winter turned to spring, the Bureau of Reclamation announced allocations to farmers.
Rice growers and other farmers in the Sacramento Valley north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were pleased to learn that they would receive 100 percent of their contracted water supplies. However, it was bad news for farmers south of the Delta, who were told they would get, at most, just 5 percent of contract water this year.
Behind the gates of Blackhawk, California, an exclusive community of homes costing more than a million dollars, the warning has gone out: no more brown lawns.
Over the past year, some Blackhawk residents let their lawns die as Californians were ordered to reduce water use, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone. Now, the Blackhawk Homeowners Association is telling residents they must beautify their front yards, even though officially California is still in a drought.
Several Arizona water experts are calling on Gov. Doug Ducey to veto legislation passed this week that they denounce as weakening groundwater protection standards in two counties and threatening Arizona’s reputation for smart water management.
The bills’ proponents, including lawmakers who represent Cochise County, said they are written narrowly to avoid upending statewide water law but are necessary to protect individual rights. Both passed with overwhelmingly Republican support.
California’s devastating 4-year-old drought showed signs Thursday of easing its grip on the nation’s most populous state — if only a little.
For the first time in three years, less than 90% of California is in drought, the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks the dry conditions, reported. The decrease may not sound like a lot, but it’s still welcome news for the state’s 38 million residents dealing with widespread water restrictions, which could soon be amended.
The El Nino rains have brought some relief to drought-stricken California. The U.S. Drought Monitor is reporting that the percentage of the state in exceptional drought is half of what it was at the beginning of the year – 21 percent versus 44.8 percent in January. At least one water district has decided to loosen its water usage restrictions.
But Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says water scarcity is a chronic condition in California and the drought is far from over.http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/05/05/california-drought-eases
There’s something different about Will Bucklin’s grape vines. At first it’s hard to notice, but a drive through northern California’s Sonoma Valley, past waves of green, manicured vineyards, makes it clear. The black ribbon of PVC irrigation pipe that typically threads the vines is curiously absent here – because Will doesn’t water his crops.
Bucklin’s Old Hill Ranch, purchased by his stepfather Otto Teller in 1980, claims to be the oldest-rooted vineyard in the area. Teller fell in love with the vineyard because it was one of the few that still “dry-farmed”.
Water supplies in many California public schools have repeatedly exceeded safe drinking standards. The report from the Community Water Center looked at nearly 7,000 public schools around California. It found between 2003 and 2014, up to 24 percent of the schools had water that violated safe standards.
“Bacterial and arsenic violations were the most common types of violations impacting schools, but they were also followed by the pesticide DBCP, disinfectant byproducts, and nitrates,”says lead author Jenny Rempel with the Community Water Center.
California’s attempt to exert tighter control over groundwater use, the purpose of a landmark 2014 state law, was designed to be a compromise between state authority and local oversight.
The tension dogged the writing of the law two years ago, and is playing out again as the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) drafts the regulations that will put the law into practice. The regulations in question are those that the state will use to evaluate groundwater sustainability plans, the 20-year planning documents required of local management agencies by the 2014 law.
