After nearly a year wrestling over the fate of their water supply, California, Arizona and Nevada — the three key states in the Colorado River’s current crisis — have coalesced around a plan to voluntarily conserve a major portion of their river water in exchange for more than $1 billion in federal funds, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
According to a release from credit rating firm Fitch Ratings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) requirement that all public water systems incorporate cyber risk and resiliency in their periodic reviews will add an increased regulatory and financial burden that could be even greater for smaller systems and systems with minimal existing cyber infrastructure.
Fitch Ratings says the requirement could have a significant effect on water utilities’ capex budgets, and margins would be pressured if systems are unable or unwilling to pass on the added costs to customers through rate increases.
California officials on Tuesday said they will spend about $60 million to build a channel along the Yuba River so that salmon and other threatened fish species can get around a Gold Rush-era dam that for more than a century has cut off their migration along the chilly waters of Sierra Nevada streams.
In a unanimous vote, the Yuba Water Agency Board of Directors approved a $39.46 million budget on Tuesday for the Power Systems Headquarters facility, a power plant project which will allow current staff and future hires to work in an upgraded workspace.
Mountains are capped with record snowpack, rolling hills are covered in a rainbow of wildflowers, reservoirs are filled to the brim, and rivers are rushing with snowmelt.
A vast majority of California is finally out of drought this month, after a punishing multiyear period of severe aridity that forced statewide water cuts and fueled existential fear over the future of the water supply.
So far, in 2023, seven different weather and climate-related disasters have cost the United States at least $1 billion.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data dating back to 1980, that is the second-highest number of events on record for the first four months of a year.
California when it rains: water cooler talk.
Both Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta reported near-full capacity Monday with plenty of snow in the northern mountains anticipated to melt.
Lake Mead’s levels have risen as planned, after a large amount of water was released from the Glen Canyon Dam.
The Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell, the huge Colorado River reservoir that lies between Arizona and Utah.
A sweeping water conservation bill that would give Las Vegas Valley water managers the unprecedented ability to limit how much water single-family residential homes in Southern Nevada could use continues to make its way through the state Legislature.
Flying thousands of feet above the Sierra Nevada in a plane equipped with specialized imaging devices, Elizabeth Carey has been scanning the mountains with lasers to precisely map the snow.
The snow blanketing the Sierra lies so deep that the mountain range looks surprisingly swollen and “puffy,” said Carey, who leads the flights as part of a state-funded program.
