You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Just two months after Folsom Lake hit historically low depths, federal officials have increased water releases from the lake for flood control.

Folsom Lake has filled up at a near-unprecedented pace since early December, thanks to rain, snow and what had been a sharp curtailment on water releases because the drought had left the reservoir severely depleted. In recent weeks, regular rainfall and runoff from higher-than-average Sierra snowfall helped return the reservoir to above-average levels for this time of year.

Checking on the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in California to see if there is enough snow to end the historic drought. Dave Malkoff takes a 6.6 Mile roundtrip snowshoe hike with California’s Department of Water Resources to find out.

This week I testified at a legislative hearing on implementing the $7.5 billion water bond passed by voters in November 2014. One legislator asked me if the state was positioned to capture extra rainwater if El Niño brings a strong rainy season.

I pointed out that many California reservoirs are empty enough to capture much of the runoff from this year’s rainstorms, but that isn’t the full story.

In the wake of drought and environmental concerns, more water agencies in California and across the West are finding a new water source for human consumption in an unexpected place: the sewer.

 

The treated sewer water isn’t going directly to your tap after treatment. In most cases, it’s put into an aquifer and withdrawn later — years later.

 

The snow keeps piling up, but the rules requiring water conservation aren’t going away.

California’s drought regulators agreed Tuesday to extend water conservation mandates through the end of October. The decision came in spite of increasing evidence that El Niño is delivering better-than-average precipitation, including an encouraging measurement of the Sierra Nevada snowpack recorded just hours earlier.

 

The new regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board mean urban Californians will have to reduce their water usage between March and October by about 23.4 percent compared with the baseline year of 2013.