Water managers, federal and state regulators and public health experts will convene in Long Beach, Calif., Jan. 25-27, at the first International Symposium on Potable Reuse to discuss advanced technologies that purify wastewater and ultimately turn it into high quality drinking water.
The event is hosted by the American Water Works Association, the world’s largest association of water professionals.
Federal forecasters say an “atmospheric river” is headed for the soggy North Bay.
Following an inch of rain overnight Wednesday, the El Nino forecast calls for bands of rain Thursday, Friday and Saturday before a “super soaker” that amounts to a “firehose pointed at the North Bay” moves in late Sunday or early Monday.
National Weather Service forecaster Steve Anderson said it will be “an atmospheric river … a long, continuous string of moisture” Sunday and Monday that could alone dump 3 inches or more, doubling rainfall over the previous several days. “It will be a big shot of rain.”
The now-distant December of 1988 was a big month for California water lawsuits that would last a generation and eventually land in Congress’ lap, where their ripples linger to this day.
Each of the two major lawsuits, introduced within weeks of each other 27 years ago, offers enduring lessons – in law, in politics and in the long, long time it takes to get things done in Washington.
It turns out “emergency drought relief” can take up to two years to distribute. On Wednesday, California regulators awarded the final pieces of the $680 million drought aid package Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers approved in March 2014.
As the harshness of California’s drought first came into focus two years ago, the state’s leaders scrambled to respond. They put together a package that included emergency aid for farmers, farm workers and communities running out of drinking water.
A break in the California Aqueduct has halted the flow of water in the canal that supplies millions of Southern California residents, but there’s no concern that taps will run dry, officials said Wednesday.
Reservoirs below the break hold enough water to supply customers until a work crew repairs the damaged canal lining, said Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Water Resources.
Don’t let this week’s sunny skies and balmy temperatures fool you — El Nino isn’t gone, it’s just taking a bit of a breather, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service said Wednesday.
While last week’s saturating storms have been notably absent this week, meteorologist Emily Thornton said the expectation is still that Southern California will see more rain than usual this winter.
Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the majority whip in the House of Representatives, explained how the fight to get more water for farmers played out in the last session — a fight which ended with no resolution.
We encourage him to keep up that fight.
The congressman placed the defeat of a water bill at the feet of California U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, saying the long-time senator pulled her support at the 11th hour, leaving no time for negotiations and thus, killing the bill. Feinstein blamed Republicans for the bill’s demise, saying she had never agreed to any part of the proposed legislation which would have moved more water out of the San Joaquin Delta to the Central Valley and also paved the way to develop more storage of water in the future. McCarthy said she pulled her support at the last moment, saying he was “blind-sided” by her action.
Meteorologists are unsure if the current El Niño weather patterns will provide enough rainfall to pull California out of its historic four-year drought. But we do know that things are trending that way after a wet December that marked the halfway point in the water year.
Particularly, the second quarter of the water year finished with the highest number of inches since 2010-11. From Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, Exeter Irrigation District reported 2.36 in October, 2.05 in November and 3.30 inches in December, for a total of 7.71 inches of rain. Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District showed a similar trend with .99 inches in October, 2.05 inches in November and 3.12 inches in December, for a total of 6.16 inches. But the real story was in Ivanhoe, where Ivanhoe Irrigation District reported 3.52 inches of rain in October, 1.73 inches in November and 2.48 inches in December, for a total of 7.73 inches of rain.
As robust storms continue to move through California, El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean are already starting to weaken, a National Weather Service expert says.
Sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that serve as a key fuel for the weather phenomenon are starting to cool, although a strong El Nino is expected to persist in the Northern Hemisphere through the winter, said Michelle Mead, a National Weather Service warning coordinator.
The current weather pattern, fed by a dominant subtropical southern jet stream, is typical for a strong El Nino winter, Mead said in an email.
U.S. lawmakers from California have more political turbulence ahead of them with the introduction Tuesday of a bill to settle a long-running San Joaquin Valley irrigation drainage dispute.
The legislation by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, would implement a sweeping drainage settlement reached between the Obama administration and the Westlands Water District. It also reignites some of the same regional and partisan conflicts that have dogged past water bills.
