Now that 2016 has gotten off to a wet start, with a series of El Niño storms drenching California in recent days, the question is turning up with increasing frequency at dinner parties and coffee shops:
“How will we know when the drought is over?”
The answer, water experts say, is more complicated than you’d think.
Despite of all the rain, California’s reservoirs are still very low. The storage system is used to capture rainfall and snowmelt runoff for use later in the year.
El Niño is producing snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The snowpack is looking promising according to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). Current snowpack measurements are 16 inches more than they have been recorded since 1965.
A California lawmaker is dramatically raising the stakes when it comes to water, proposing fines that could reach thousands of dollars a day and public shaming of everyone who fails to conserve.
Legislation introduced this week would require the state’s 411 urban water districts to set a local limit on household water consumption for drought emergencies.
Violators would be fined at least $500 for every 748 gallons of excess use.
An Alamo house identified last month as using more than 11,200 gallons per day would be assessed $6,800 a day in fines, or more than $200,000 a month, under the penalties called for in the bill.
Much of the torrential rain that fell on Southern California this week flowed right into the ocean, just like it did before the state’s epic drought.
That seemed like a good idea for many years, as storm drains provided a crucial defense against flooding. But with California entering what may be a fifth year of drought, water agencies are slowly moving to capture and store more of this precious resource.
Folsom Lake, one of the water storage areas in northern California, rose almost 30 feet in just 30 days. The increase was thanks in big part to the recent series of storms, bringing multiple days of rain to the Central Valley.
According to the National Weather Service, Folsom Lake rose steadily at the end of December, then took a sharp increase starting December 22. Folsom Lake is now at 52 percent of average for this date.
A California lawmaker is dramatically raising the stakes in water management, proposing fines that could reach thousands of dollars a day and public shaming of people who use too much.
Legislation introduced this week would require the state’s 411 urban water districts to set local limits on household water consumption during drought emergencies.
Cold weather and heavy snowfall this winter may mean the end of drought in 2016 — maybe.
According to the first water supply outlook report for the year — released by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service — all basins in Oregon are experiencing above-normal snowpack levels, an estimated 125 percent of average.
That’s for the basins. The news gets even better. Snowfall levels already have surpassed the peak levels of last year’s snow season in all locations statewide. All locations.
Water managers are cautiously optimistic that the state will see drought recovery.
The Vallecitos Water District is now receiving high-quality desalinated water directly from the Claude “Bud” Lewis Desalination Plant in Carlsbad, California. The direct connection pipe, located at the corner of Pawnee and Cherokee Streets in San Marcos, will deliver as much as 4,083 acre feet of desalinated water annually to Vallecitos’ distribution system. This equates to approximately 27 percent of the District’s annual supply and is enough water to meet the needs of more than 8,100 families for one year.
The San Diego River is overflowing from this week’s El Niño-driven downpours. Four days of relentless rain have transformed the river to a raging torrent at times, flooding roads and parking lots across Mission Valley.
The U.S. Geological Survey is closely monitoring conditions with a small, boat-like instrument called an acoustic Doppler profiler, which is floated back and forth across the river.
Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814 billion gallons of water from under the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2 billion doing so.
“Yes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Slater, the 57-year-old chief executive of Cadiz Inc, says as he stands in front of a scale model of the project in the foyer of the company’s office on the 28th and top floor of a LA city centre office block. “It’s worth whatever the community who wants the water is willing to pay for it to meet their demands.”
