Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein shaped California’s environment like no one else.
Since her first election to the Senate in 1992, the onetime San Francisco mayor made herself the Golden State’s go-to legislator. With key committee assignments and a pragmatic bent, the veteran lawmaker put herself into the room where the deals got done.
Against the backdrop of a severe drought linked with global warming, conservation advocates and Native Americans in California are calling for a temporary emergency stop to all surface water diversions from Mono Lake, contending that continuing to drain the watershed, along with the long-term drought, threaten critical ecosystems, as well as the Kootzaduka’a tribe’s cultural connection with the lake.
California is under new orders as of Monday to aggressively work to protect all water supplies from weather extremes brought on by climate change.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to expand statewide storm runoff capture capacity, noting how years of prolonged drought finally paused after three weeks of atmospheric river storms slammed the Golden State at the beginning of the year.
For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a third of the state’s supply of water. But as the state gets drier, and as wildfires climb to ever-higher elevations, that precious snow is melting faster and earlier than in years past — even in the middle of winter.
California and other southwestern states have been in the grip of a megadrought for the past two decades.
Scientists say that, despite recent storms, these drought-stricken states won’t be relieved from the hot and dry weather for a long time, and not without large amounts of rain.
Upper Colorado River Basin states have a new $125 million pot to rent and dry agricultural land and keep more water in the drought-plagued waterway, in a major expansion of a previous conservation pilot announced by the Biden administration’s Bureau of Reclamation.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Monday to safeguard his state’s water supplies from the effects of extreme weather.
The order will help expand California’s capacity to capture storm runoff during wet years by accelerating groundwater recharge projects, according to the governor’s office.
Push is coming to shove on the West’s most important river.
The seven states that share water from the Colorado River are as close to open conflict over dwindling supplies as they’ve ever been. Six of them ganged up on California last week, arguing that it should bear the brunt of supply cuts because a greater share of the water evaporates before it gets that far downriver.
California is bristling at the proposal. “We didn’t just learn last year that water evaporates,” said J.B. Hamby, the chair of the Colorado River Board of California.
Another top California water official, Jim Madaffer, vice chair of the Colorado River Board of California, who represents the San Diego County Water Authority, said California has a blueprint for other states — a multi-agency, multi-year process that California used to rein in its water use two decades ago.
“California has done its part and is willing to do more, but it’s time for the other states to step up,” Madaffer said in an email.
It may feel like California is flush with water at the moment, after a winter of historic storms that replenished drought-starved lakes and left the Sierra Nevada snowpack at the deepest it’s been in 28 years. But follow the Colorado River, which supplies 15% of California’s water, back to bottomed-out reservoirs like Nevada’s Lake Mead, and it becomes clear the future of water in the Golden State is still very much in flux.
Lake Oroville, a key component of California’s water supply, looks noticeably fuller after a series of January storms.
The atmospheric rivers dumped trillions of gallons of moisture on the state, spurring widespread flooding and destruction but also providing a healthy boost to snowpack and drought-sapped reservoirs.
