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Water decision another nail in agriculture’s coffin

/in /by /Western Farm Pressby Todd Fitchette

The April 1 federal allocation of irrigation water to California farmers is no joking matter for those south of the Delta who were slapped across the face with the announced 5 percent allotment.

How much better 5 percent is than zero is a matter of degree akin to choosing your death slowly and painfully, or quickly and efficiently.

The announcement illustrates gross negligence on the part of federal and state regulators who hide behind court edicts and biological opinions that are proving to have no positive effect on fish populations in the Delta region and the two main river systems in California that feed it.

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Pact reached to remove four Klamath River dams that block salmon migration

/in /by /The Los Angeles Timesby By Bettina Boxall

California, Oregon and a private utility Wednesday signed an agreement that could finally take down four hydroelectric dams that block salmon migrations on the Klamath River.

The pact, signed by the governors of both states and federal officials at the mouth of the Klamath in Northern California, spells out a road map for pursuing the dams’ demolition without congressional approval.

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More Water Means No Water Transfers, Despite Shortage in Southern California

/in /by /Chico Enterprise-Record by By Heather Hacking

The rains this winter were more or less than expected, depending on where you live and what you expected.

In September of last year, many weather forecasters expected heavier than normal rains in Southern California, and mixed expectations for rains in Northern California. However, Northern California ended up receiving normal rainfall and Southern California did not.

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Stanford Study: California Moving Toward More Extreme Weather

/in /by /Daily News (Boonville, N.Y.)by By Daniel McDonald

Stanford researchers who studied trends in the atmospheric circulation patterns that affect California’s rainfall have found that conditions linked to the hot, dry weather during our latest drought have become more frequent in recent years, according to research published Friday.

That means that while this year’s El Niño-driven storms may have brought temporary relief to the Golden State’s parched soil and depleted reservoirs, Californians can expect more frequent droughts in the decades to come, said the study published by Science Advances.

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OPINION: California Doesn’t Let a Drought go to Waste

/in /by /The Christian Science Monitor

Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands recently announced a startling global statistic. About two-thirds of the world’s population experience a severe water scarcity for at least one month during the year. About half of these 4 billion people live in India and China. And the country that comes in third for periodic water shortages? The United States, with California as drought central.

Yet something just as startling should be noted about California and how its 39 million people have responded to a long and historic dry spell.

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Is California’s Drought Now the Rule, not the Exception?

/in /by /Futurity (Rochester, N.Y.)by By Ker Than-Stanford

Atmospheric patterns resembling those that appeared during the latter half of California’s ongoing multiyear drought are becoming much more common, a new study finds.

“The current record-breaking drought in California has arisen from both extremely low precipitation and extremely warm temperature,” says Noah Diffenbaugh, associate professor of earth system science at Stanford University.  “In this new study, we find clear evidence that atmospheric patterns that look like what we’ve seen during this extreme drought have in fact become more common in recent decades.”

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El Niño Helped, but no Panacea, as California Battles Drought

/in /by /Total Landscape Care (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)by By David Rountree

In the nine months since the effective date of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandate of a 25-percent reduction in water use in urban areas of the state, reports from the 400-plus suppliers of that water indicate they’ve fallen just short of the goal.

From June 2015 through February of this year, cumulative water savings among the urban suppliers totaled 23.9 percent, according to California’s State Water Resources Control Board.

 

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Things to know: The next Step in California’s Drought

/in /by /Associated Press (As Published by Napa Valley Register)by By Scott Smith

Some residents of drought-stricken California who let their lawns turn brown and took shorter showers could soon get some relief, while others may continue to feel the pain. In the coming months, state officials will undertake a monumental task of rewriting conservation orders for a fifth year of drought.

The challenge for state regulators will be treating millions of residents fairly, unlike the El Nino storms that soaked Northern California with considerably more rain and snow this winter than the drier Southern California.

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El Nino-Induced Snow Proves to be ‘Disappointing’ for Drought-Stricken California

/in /by /AccuWeather by By Kristina Pydynowski

Much-needed mountain snow and rain returned to California this winter, but fell short of expectations amid a super El Niño.

The official snow season for California’s Sierra Nevada came to an end at the start of April on a below-normal note and one that AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Ken Clark called “disappointing.” The amount of water stored in the snow for the entire mountain chain averaged 14 percent below normal on April 1, according to the California Cooperative Snow Surveys.

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Drought-Stricken California Ponders Future of Conservation

/in /by /Associated Press (As Published by Merced Sun-Star) by By Scott Smith

Taking a regional approach to saving water in California’s drought, state regulators suggest relaxing or dropping conservation orders for El Nino-soaked Northern Californians, while keeping in place strict rules for residents of drier Southern California.

Officials on Monday will launch a discussion about the best approach to saving water as California’s drought modestly improves, but clearly hasn’t ended as it stretches into a fifth year.

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