California residents can expect an increase in their water allocation next year, the Department of Water Resources announced Monday.
Supplies from the State Water Project have risen from 5% earlier this month to 15%, providing more water for 27 million Californians.
New York City is the water poverty capital of the United States, according to a study citing census data, with 56,900 residents living without access to running water in 2021.
In second place was Los Angeles, with 45,900 people, followed by San Francisco, with 24,400. In Chicago and Houston, more than 22,000 residents do not have access to running water.
For decades, California’s water debates have centered on a familiar tension: agriculture versus urban consumption. Agriculture, which consumes 80% of the state’s developed water supply, has long dominated discussions about conservation and efficiency. Yet, a new contender is emerging, one poised to dwarf agriculture in water demand and reshape the state’s water future: artificial intelligence (AI).
California’s agricultural sector is the backbone of the nation’s food supply, using approximately 34 million acre-feet of water annually — over 11 trillion gallons. This water sustains crops like almonds, grapes and rice, many of which are highly water-intensive and vital to the state’s economy. For decades, agriculture has been framed as the primary focus of water conservation efforts, with farmers frequently cast as both stewards and villains of California’s strained water resources.
A barrage of storms known as atmospheric rivers is expected to soak the West Coast over the next eight to 10 days, raising the risk of flooding, power outages and holiday travel disruptions leading up to Christmas in a region that has already experienced significant weather activity this season.
The bulk of the rain and snow is likely to fall between British Columbia and Northern California, with Washington and Oregon poised to have some of the wettest, sloppiest weather.
Since last month’s atmospheric river that drenched the North State, the water level in Lake Shasta — California’s largest manmade reservoir — has shot up nearly 20 feet.
And after a few dry days this week, get ready for more rain in the northern Sacramento Valley as the region enters another wet pattern that is expected to go through Christmas.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the nation’s health agency, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has railed against the practice of adding fluoride to drinking water, a measure that public health experts and dentists credit with reductions in tooth decay. Seven out of 10 Americans who get their drinking water from public water systems receive fluoridated water, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Juana Valle never imagined she’d be scared to drink water from her tap or eat fresh eggs and walnuts when she bought her 5-acre farm in San Juan Bautista three years ago. Escaping city life and growing her own food was a dream come true for the 52-year-old.
Then Valle began to suspect water from her well was making her sick.
A recent bit of good news from the western United States is a welcome bright spot in the region’s long-running efforts to conserve precious water resources amid a growing population and an expanding agricultural industry.
Water levels in Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, have risen nearly 5 metres in the past two years after a sustained conservation effort in the state of California.
The Newsom administration is refining a contentious set of proposed rules, years in the making, that would reshape how farms and cities draw water from the Central Valley’s Delta and its rivers. Backed by more than $1 billion in state funds, the rules, if adopted, would require water users to help restore rivers and rebuild depleted Chinook salmon runs.
The administration touts its proposed rules as the starting point of a long-term effort to double Central Valley Chinook populations from historical levels, reaching numbers not seen in at least 75 years. But environmental groups have almost unanimously rejected it, saying it promises environmental gains that will never materialize and jeopardizes the existence of California’s iconic salmon and other fish.
By this time of year, Southern California has usually recorded some measurable rainfall. Santa Ana winds, meanwhile, are typically dying down.
But this December, neither is the case.
