In California, a sprawling 4,000-mile network of canals winds through citrus orchards and fields of tree nuts, delivering irrigation and drinking water to homes and farms across the state.
The canals are critical in an increasingly arid part of the country. But what if they could help fulfill another urgent need: renewable energy?
From a fast-melting snowpack in the Sierra to over-pumped groundwater in the Central Valley and a drought on the Colorado River, California’s water supply is facing enormous pressure. Increasingly, some believe the only real alternative is to draw water from the Pacific Ocean offshore.
Former Water Manager Tim Quinn believes he and his team at OceanWell can do it safely and more affordably.
Water in the Colorado River is dwindling to levels that haven’t been seen in decades, and the seven states whose residents and farmers depend on the river can’t agree on a fair way to divide up what’s left.
Negotiations are going nowhere despite more than six months of ongoing talks, plus cajoling by the Trump administration, which twice gathered governors in hopes of a breakthrough that never came. States are already sniping at aspects of a water-use plan the federal Bureau of Reclamation is set to unveil this summer and impose later this year, and they’re threatening to sue each other over water deliveries, raising the prospects of prolonged legal battles just as Western states face demands to sharply reduce water use.
The state of California is walking back protections meant to keep destructive golden mussels out of Lake Oroville, one of the largest and most important reservoirs in the state.
The move follows a new state-funded risk assessment that the invasive species poses a lower risk to the lake, which water managers say changes the state’s calculus on costly and difficult measures aimed at keeping the invaders at bay.
Third-generation farmer from California’s San Joaquin Valley may become the next head of the federal agency that oversees water supplies in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin.
Aubrey Bettencourt, who recently stepped down as head of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, is expected to be formally nominated by President Donald Trump as the next commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Colorado’s low snowpack and ongoing drought conditions led Gov. Jared Polis to declare a statewide drought emergency Thursday.
The governor activated Phase 3 of Colorado’s Drought Response Plan, which allows the state to take additional emergency response actions, such as emergency funding for unmet response needs, a request for a federal disaster declaration, and reductions in outdoor water usage at state facilities.
In a neighborhood flanked by grapevines and orange groves on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, people cannot drink the water from their faucets because it’s contaminated.
Residents in the area north of Porterville, many of them farmworkers, have been discussing a solution, which they expect will require running pipes to connect to the nearby city system.
After the West’s warm winter and fast spring thaw, reservoirs that many communities depend on are entering summer with little margin for error.
With reserves already thin, water managers in places such as Utah and Idaho are warning that summer could bring stricter conservation rules and heightened wildfire danger.
Summer is just around the corner, but our recent hot weather makes it feel like it’s already here. So, if you’re thinking about hitting the lake to go fishing, boating, or just relaxing… how full is that lake? And how about the water temperatures in the local rivers?
We’ve been talking about how the Sierra Nevada snowpack started it’s Spring melt-off early this year for a while now, so now it’s time to take a look at how our reservoirs are doing as we near Summer. And while the snowpack news has been bad, the reservoir news is pretty good. Most major reservoirs around the state are 75% to 95% full – great news! Because the Sierra snowpack is just about done, this will likely be their peak for the year – they likely won’t see any significant inflow until next November, at the earliest.
An elephant standing full weight on a smartphone. That’s the pressure 1,400 feet underwater that a startup hopes to use to push seawater through ultrafine filters and make drinking water off the coast of Malibu — without much of the controversy that surrounds desalination.
Desalination plants are notoriously large electricity users. Some have natural gas pipelines running to them to fuel dedicated power plants. The company OceanWell estimates its technology will cut that electricity use by up to 40%.
