Although much of California no longer suffers from drought conditions thanks to the recent record rainfall, the Golden State isn’t quite yet out of the woods when it comes to a scarcity of water.
And that means sustainable water management must continue to be top of mind for executives in a variety of industries, including turf management, agriculture, and hotel and resorts.
While drought conditions have improved on the Central Coast following our wet winter —saving water is still a priority. That’s why the city of Soledad is getting creative when it comes to how they water their public sports fields and parks.
Soledad is using a $16 million state grant to build a pipe system from their wastewater treatment plant to deliver recycled water to public fields across town. The city made history a few years back with the construction of a wind turbine that powers the treatment plant Their newest accomplishment comes in the form of purple pipes.
More than a century ago, an accidental oasis in the California desert created a popular residential and vacation spot for families.
But over the last few decades, environmental experts say climate change and drought in the Salton Sea have led to a destination that’s been plagued with dust bowls, receding waters and other hazards.
In the Central Valley, agriculture is everything. Farmers here grow 25% of the country’s food, yet copious amounts of flawed produce is dumped or left to rot.
For many supermarkets, an orange with a hail scratch is deemed unsellable. In 2019, researchers from Santa Clara University found that an estimated one-third of food in northern and central California is wasted, largely because of supermarket standards and consumer habits. We cannot follow this model of growing more produce than we need – or wasting this much – given California’s limited water resources, drought on surface water, and severe overpumping of groundwater.
Despite a wet winter, California and other western states will still need to cut back how much water they draw from the Colorado River. The question federal and state officials are weighing is: How much will they each need to cut?
The Biden administration floated two ideas this week to reduce water usage from the dwindling Colorado River, which supplies 40 million people.
The federal government has laid out its ideas for water cuts in the Colorado River Basin, which means time is running out for basin states to agree on a plan of their own.
In Colorado, water officials say the onus is on California and Arizona to make it work.
Just as federal officials were laying out alternative scenarios last week for steep water supply cuts from the Colorado River due to the drying Southwest, California officials were warning that this year’s historic Sierra snowpack could flood much of the state later this year.
Tom Barcellos has farmed the reclaimed soil of the Tulare Lake Basin for nearly five decades, and he’s rarely witnessed a winter like 2023.
A slew of drenching storms, funneled across the Pacific Ocean as atmospheric rivers, have prompted prolonged flooding in large swaths of the San Joaquin Valley.
The city of Phoenix announced its plans Wednesday to recycle wastewater for drinking purposes in the near future as Arizona is on the heels of even more cuts due to the shrinking Colorado River.
The plan is set to be implemented within the Valley by 2030.
