Beneath California’s Salton Sea, there is so much metal essential to rechargeable batteries that Gov. Gavin Newsom calls the vast lake “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
An estimated $500 billion worth of lithium here could help power our smartphones, electric cars and electricity grids. And a so-called white gold rush could bring jobs, tax dollars and economic revitalization to one of the most impoverished places in the nation.
Pasadena Water and Power announced that the city’s two-day-per-week outdoor watering schedule is now in effect through October 31 as part of the City of Pasadena’s ongoing Level 2 Water Supply Shortage Plan. This measure limits outdoor irrigation to conserve water during the dry season.
Under the schedule, residents and businesses with even-numbered addresses may irrigate their landscapes on Mondays and Thursdays, while those with odd-numbered addresses may water on Tuesdays and Fridays. All outdoor watering must occur before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. Exceptions are made for hand-watering, tree maintenance, and irrigation systems that use low-flow drip emitters producing no more than two gallons per hour.
The recent rupture of a massive pipe at the New Colgate Powerhouse on the Yuba River, about 50 miles north of Sacramento, was not a natural disaster. It was an infrastructure failure.
The rupture of the penstock pipe in February sent a torrent of water down a steep hillside, triggering erosion that carried sediment and man-made debris into the Yuba River. An oil sheen was detected. The emergency also triggered the shutdown of another powerhouse downstream, causing a sudden drop in river flows, killing hundreds — possibly thousands — of young Chinook salmon at a time when the state has been trying to help struggling salmon populations recover.
Corpus Christi’s reservoirs are critically low, and a water emergency looks almost unavoidable.
The city has been under drought restrictions since June 2022 and is now preparing for a Level 1 water emergency. This step triggers when the city is within six months of not meeting demand.
Hydrologist Maureen Gutsch trudged through the mud and slush to confirm a grim picture: Colorado just had its worst snowpack since statewide recordkeeping began in 1941.
Even more troubling, mountain snow accumulations peaked a month early and contained just half the average moisture.
California’s snowpack is supposed to reach its peak April 1, so today, state surveyors hold their final Sierra snow survey of the year.
But instead of peak snow, there’s almost none.
What if nuclear power could fix the Colorado River’s water crisis?
That’s the pitch from Ben Burr, president of the Idaho-based Blue Ribbon Commission, who is shopping a proposal to build new desalination plants on California’s coast. The plants would convert Pacific Ocean seawater into freshwater and pump it hundreds of miles inland, adding new water to a system that has spent decades losing it.
Under pressure to strike a compromise on water cuts, and amid talk of litigation, Wyoming and other upper Colorado River Basin states are pointing to the climate-driven disaster unfolding in the West to insist they can’t cut what Mother Nature isn’t providing in the headwaters.
While some observers suspect that argument is cover for withholding more cuts in water use, the upper-basin contingency insists it has negotiated in good faith, and still hopes to strike a deal with its lower-basin counterparts, despite missed deadlines. They simply cannot commit to calculations that are beyond their control.
A major milestone has been reached for the proposed Sites Reservoir project, a plan to build a large new water storage facility west of Colusa.
The state has issued a draft decision to conditionally approve a key water right permit for the project. Under the proposal, water would be pumped from the Sacramento River to the reservoir, which would store up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water. Supporters say the added storage would help improve water supply during dry years for farms, communities and wildlife.
A historic drought has gripped Corpus Christi, the eighth-largest city in Texas, placing unprecedented strain on a water system that serves roughly 500,000 people across seven counties, along with one of the nation’s largest petrochemical corridors and Port of Corpus Christi, the country’s top port for crude oil exports.
Industrial demand accounts for more than half of the region’s water use.
