Before Rick Lemos and the other directors of the Shasta River Water Association broke the law, they made a decision that under most circumstances might be considered unusual: they sent a letter to authorities spelling out exactly what they intended to do.
Over the past two years, Silicon Valley’s largest water provider, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, has had a long list of challenges and setbacks.
In 2020, the federal government ordered its largest dam, Anderson, near Morgan Hill, drained for earthquake repairs. The price tag has since doubled to $1.2 billion.
A developer’s proposal to build a surfing lagoon in the Coachella Valley desert has been rejected by the city of La Quinta after residents raised concerns about noise, lighting and the resort’s substantial water footprint in a time of severe drought.
California’s reservoirs will enter fall in a slightly better position than last year, but the Golden State should prepare for more dryness, extreme weather events and water quality hazards in 2023, officials say. The latest climate forecasting update from the Department of Water Resources came Wednesday, just days before the end of the water year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 in California.
Some members of Congress from Colorado and New Mexico are encouraging the Bureau of Reclamation to use new funding to find long-term solutions to the Western drought, and particularly the dwindling and overextended Colorado River.
In a letter to Camille Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, the lawmakers shared their priorities for how the $4 billion in drought money from the Inflation Reduction Act should be used.
The city of Tucson has agreed to cut back the amount of water it takes from the Colorado River over the next year and possibly longer. The deal comes with compensation from the federal government.
Late last year the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Lake Mead reservoir, offered customers the chance to get paid for not taking their full share of Colorado River water.
Colorado and three other Upper Colorado River Basin states have, for the first time in history, embarked on a series of formal meetings to find a way to negotiate jointly with some of the largest owners of Colorado River water rights: tribal communities.
This week’s rain has been a welcome sight for those dealing with the impacts of the Mosquito Fire. The early season moisture has helped to significantly dampen fire activity over the last several days. Estimates and measurements show that anywhere from 1 to 2.5 inches of rain has fallen over the burn region since Sunday morning.
People in California are not noticeably dirtier than other Americans, and yet residents of the country’s most populous state use less water than many of their fellow citizens to bathe, wash their hands, and flush their toilets.
Showerheads in California use a maximum of 1.8 gallons of water every minute; Texas residents, on the other hand, are inundated with 2.5 gallons, the most the Environmental Protection Agency allows. California’s toilets use no more than 1.28 gallons per flush even though the federal cap is 1.6.
Microplastics, or the small fragments of plastics and polymers from clothing, packaging and cosmetics, are now found virtually everywhere on Earth — from the highest peaks to the depths of the ocean.
At five millimeters long or less, these tiny specks are also cropping up in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Microplastics have been detected in commercially farmed shellfish and, recently, in beef and pork, with little known about how much plastic we’re ingesting — or the impacts of this material on our health or the health of the planet.
