Three environmentalist groups filed a lawsuit Friday alleging that to increase water flowing to farms and cities, state and federal regulators in the drought have repeatedly relaxed water-quality standards on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the detriment of its wild fish species.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claims the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to enforce the Clean Water Act.
The City of Santa Barbara released an update on a future possible agreement with the Montecito Water District for the sale of desalinated water.
In the press release, the City says: “In response to inaccurate information in today’s Santa Barbara News Press concerning the assertion of an agreement between the City of Santa Barbara and the Montecito Water District regarding the sale of desalinated water, the City would like to clarify that there has been no agreement reached on the sale of desalinated water to the Montecito Water District.”
Predictions that La Nia conditions may deepen the drought in California this winter would be more alarming if the results of a Field poll released last week had been different.
Fortunately, the poll showed an overwhelming majority of Californians continue to believe that the state faces an extremely serious water shortage and are continuing to conserve water. With two notable exceptions: Los Angeles and San Diego. They’re failing to do their part.
A Juneau entrepreneur is asking the state to approve his plan to collect fresh water from the Pacific Ocean south of Ketchikan and transport it to drought-stricken California.
Steven Bowhay’s application to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, which he filed four years ago, has gone through two public comment periods. The second ends Wednesday, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. Under Bowhay’s River Recycler System plan, a system of buoys, anchors and sheeting would be deployed to trap fresh water on the ocean surface in Boca de Quadra, an inlet between the Ketchikan and Canadian border.
As El Nino was producing some powerful storms this winter, officials from a water district serving farms just outside of Sacramento got an idea.
They opened the gates of a swelling Cache Creek and let the flood waters flow into the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District’s system of irrigation canals. The canals’ dirt lining is porous enough to allow the water to seep into the aquifers, recharging a groundwater supply that’s becoming more and more important to growers.
The U.S. Drought Monitor says extreme and exceptional drought was reduced slightly in California last week and for the first time since the week of July 2013, there is no exceptional drought in Nevada.
“Little or no precipitation fell on the areas of dryness and drought in the Far West from the southeastern fringes of Washington southward through Oregon, California, and Nevada, but with the wet season winding down (especially in California), its impact on the long-term drought situation and the conditions being set up for the summer dry season are coming into better focus,” according to the report released April 21.
Local nonprofit water advocates AquAlliance filed a lawsuit on Friday (April 15) against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed multibillion-dollar water-tunnel system under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, now branded California WaterFix.
The lawsuit alleges that the Army Corps violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by withholding records requested by AquAlliance—first by failing to “conduct a reasonable search for records,” the document reads.
The 4 year historic drought in California has seen some major improvement this rainy season and millions of people are seeing slow but steady recovery. An update to the U.S. drought monitor came out this morning and declared a large area of Central California, from roughly Sacramento to Fresno, slightly improved regarding the drought.
They have many classifications of drought, but the top level drought is called D4-Exceptional drought. At the beginning of the water year for California in October, 46 percent of the state was in top level drought. With the latest update, we are now down to 21 percent.
There was once a time when fire season in California started in May and went to September. The state’s long-standing drought has turned the season into a year-round issue. “This time, now, we see the vegetation is ready to burn,” said Paul Lee, Battalion Chief for CAL FIRE.
Fire crews battled blazes on Thursday in Los Osos and Gaviota. Vegetation off Los Osos Valley Road caught fire around 1 p.m., burning eight acres before crews contained it. “The fire was a result of an escaped control burn that spread quickly with the strong winds,” said Lee.
In another sign that the so-called “Miracle March” storms in Northern California helped ease the state’s drought, farms and cities reliant on the State Water Project learned Thursday that they’ll likely get 60 percent of the water deliveries they requested from the state, an increase from a month ago.
As water rushed into northern reservoirs last month, state officials said contractors would receive 45 percent of what they requested for 2016 from the state-run delivery network that includes the California Aqueduct. They upped that estimate Thursday to reflect the continued strength of reservoir storage.
