A $38 million state grant awarded this week will be used to increase rebates to businesses and institutions that replace turf with water-efficient landscaping as a deadline looms to phase out turf at commercial, industrial, municipal and institutional properties.
In addition to the rebate program, the money will also be used to help thousands of low- income households install water-efficient irrigation systems.
As forecasts tease California with rainstorms this week, the state’s reservoirs are already flush with water.
It’s a big departure from a year ago: The state’s major reservoirs — which store water collected mostly from rivers in the northern portion of the state — are in good shape, with levels at 124% of average. In late 2022, bathtub rings of dry earth lined lakes that had collectively dipped to about two-thirds of average — until heavy winter storms in January filled many of them almost to the brim.
Millions of Southern Californians who were required to dramatically reduce their water use last year will have increased access to water in the future under two projects recently announced by the Metropolitan Water District.
Metropolitan—the nation’s largest water wholesaler and sole water provider to the local Las Virgenes and Calleguas municipal water districts—approved a $9.8-million contract for the Sepulveda Feeder Pump Stations Project that will bring additional water from the Colorado River, as well as water stored at Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County, to the two local districts.
The Elk Grove Water District is putting together a free sign-up event Friday that will provide a leg up for low-income households struggling to pay bills. The event will help residents apply for assistance through the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP), a federally funded program operated by California Department of Community Services and Development.
A judge’s order signed Tuesday ensures there will be at least some water flowing in the Kern River through Bakersfield in perpetuity. Unless, of course, it’s overturned.
Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp signed an order that requires 40% of the Kern River’s flow to remain in the river to keep fish populations healthy.
This order is the implementation of an injunction granted by Pulskamp October 30 mandating that some amount of water must flow through the river for fish populations.
In 2014, California voters passed a proposition using $7.5 billion dollars in state funds to expand water storage capacity. Nearly 10 years later, people say not much has come from the vote. The main focus on their minds is the failure to expand Shasta Dam.
Kern County Congressman David Valadao (R-CA) has authored legislation that makes it easier for Shasta to receive federal funding.
A month ago, predictions for Lake Mead’s future were reassuring. Now, the federal government is forecasting the lake will drop to a new low in less than two years.
A “most probable” report released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicts the lake will be down to 1,040.77 feet in September 2025. That’s nearly a foot lower than Lake Mead was on July 27, 2022 — and the lowest the lake has been since it was filled in the 1930s.
Microplastics are turning up in unusual places increasingly often as they filter into nearly every facet of life on Earth. They’ve been discovered in drinking water, food, air and even in blood. Now, scientists have found that these tiny particles might even be able to influence the weather.
Researchers reported Wednesday they detected microplastics in a majority of cloud samples taken from a mountaintop in China, in a study published in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
California water agencies say they have nearly secured $4.5 billion in funding needed to build the state’s largest reservoir in nearly a century, Sites Reservoir, as a state environmental review process for the project comes to a rapid close after decades of delay.
The historically wet winter early this year motivated greater adoption of a water management strategy known as flood-managed aquifer recharge, or flood-MAR, in which excess flood flows are diverted onto farmland to boost depleted groundwater aquifers.
