NOAA Creating Real-Time Data on Nation’s Water Supply
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release a new national model that will work 20 times faster than the existing model to bring real-time data on the country’s water supply.
You are now in California and the U.S. category.
Feds: Climate Change to Impact Western Water Trends
Climate change will hasten existing water supply concerns in the Western United States, the Interior Department concluded in a report released Tuesday.
A warming climate is excepted to bring higher temperatures and changes to precipitation, snowpack and water flow throughout the West, the report found. Officials said the threat highlights the need for “collaborative strategies acres each river basin” in the west to protect water supplies there.
Could Harvesting Fog Help Solve the World’s Water Crisis?
March 22nd marks the twenty-third annual observance of World Water Day, an initiative overseen by U.N.-Water, which bills itself as “the United Nations inter-agency mechanism on all freshwater related issues.” It also marks the first anniversary of an ambitious international collaboration between Dar Si Hmad, a Moroccan N.G.O., and several German partner organizations to bring potable water to the Aït Baâmrane tribal region of southwest Morocco using a technology called CloudFisher. Aït Baâmrane borders the Western Sahara; like the Atacama, it is an area marked by centuries of desertification.
OPINION: California’s High Water Should be Captured
The Sacramento River, by far the state’s most important waterway, has been running high, fast and dirty in recent days.
Upstream reservoirs on the Sacramento and its two major tributaries, the American and Feather rivers, have been increasing releases to make room for water from melting snow later in the spring. California’s drought may not be officially over, but what’s been happening during the winter, thanks to the El Niño ocean phenomena, is a far cry from years of severe water shortages that Californians have been enduring.
Feds Warn of New Threats to Water Supplies with Climate Change
The Obama administration underscored the threat of climate change to Western water supplies Tuesday, releasing a report that projects less snowpack in the mountains and reduced flows in major rivers — all of which spells a much drier future for places such as California.
The report estimates that diminished runoff from the Sierra Nevada will prompt an average 9 percent drop in state reservoir levels by the end of the century and a 3 percent dip in deliveries to cities and farms from the major water projects.
Engineers consider releasing water from Lake Oroville Dam
“Lake Oroville is currently at elevation 854 feet, which is 46 feet from the top,” says Kevin Dossey, Senior Engineer with the Department of Water Resources, “It’s come up more than 204 feet since the low point in December…so it’s really been coming up fast.”
Engineers could begin releasing water from the Lake Oroville Dam soon. Says Dossey, “The snow levels have been pretty high, so these big storms, while they’re producing snow in the upper elevations, they’re also producing a lot of runoff directly into the lake from the basin.”
New Dispute Erupts Over Sacramento Delta tunnels Project
A potentially major new fight has erupted over Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to build two huge tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and this time the protests are coming from a group of farmers that wants the tunnels built.
The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, a powerful San Joaquin Valley farm water agency, demanded Monday that two members of the State Water Resources Control Board be disqualified from a crucial hearing on the tunnels scheduled for early May.
In First -of-a- kind Summit, White House Rallies Corporate Investment in Water Supplies
The White House on Tuesday unveiled several billion dollars’ worth of corporate commitments to water research and development during a high-level summit.
Pegged to World Water Day, the summit was intended to draw attention to specific state and corporate pledges as well as new Obama administration initiatives prompted in part by Western states’ drought and the Flint, Michigan, drinking water scandal.
Why Some Reservoirs Don’t Fill as Quickly
Years of drought followed by the recent pounding storms to hit the Bay Area and Northern California has turned water watching into a spectator sport.
It has been a spectacular show this month. The formula is different for every watershed and every lake.Lakes in the foothills of the Bay Area are fed 100 percent by rain. Those above 8,000 feet elevation are fed 100 percent by snowmelt. In the foothills of the Sierra, Cascades and Shasta-Siskiyous, it’s a volatile mix.
Rice-Growing Experiment Will Cut Water Use but Subtract From Habitat
California’s rice farmers pride themselves on environmental stewardship, saying their flooded fields provide habitat for millions of ducks and geese in an era when traditional marshlands have largely disappeared.
Now a giant Yolo County farm controlled by the family of Sacramento land baron Angelo K. Tsakopoulos will test whether it can grow rice with water measured in drops. Conaway Ranch, a 17,000-acre farm in which the Tsakopoulos family acquired controlling interest in 2010, said Monday it will work with water-use experts from Israel to experiment with drip irrigation on a small portion of its rice fields.
