Rising river levels? It’s been a surprising sight in recent days for people out along the American River.
California is in year three of a severe drought and people are being asked to conserve, but water releases from Folsom Dam are being dramatically increased this week.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a sweeping plastic-reduction measure that aims to dramatically shrink the amount of disposable packaging and food ware that Californians use in their daily lives.
The bill, SB54, is the result of a breakthrough legislative deal between some environmentalists, business groups and waste haulers, a last-minute compromise that led proponents to withdraw an anti-plastic waste initiative from the November ballot.
Mountain View is the latest Bay Area city to approve new water restrictions as California deals with dry conditions for its third consecutive year.
As Bay Area residents deal with newly announced restrictions seemingly by the week the restrictions are even more severe in southern California and around the southwest.
Farmers up and down California are once again facing an uncertain season ahead of them as a state water curtailment order issued in August 2021 continues to take its toll on farming and ranching families.
In July 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order calling a drought emergency and asking for water conservation. Soon after, farmers and ranchers in California received curtailment orders from the California Water Board (CWB) to either immediately or prepare to suspend their senior water rights.
Unprecedented dryness across the western United States is meeting with increasingly warm temperatures to create climate conditions so extreme that the landscape of California could permanently and profoundly change, a growing number of scientists say.
The Golden State’s great drying has already begun to reduce snowpack, worsen wildfires and dry out soils, and researchers say that trend will likely continue, along with the widespread loss of trees and other significant shifts.
Bakersfield City water managers learned from California’s last “epic” drought – don’t wait to make a deal.
In 2015, city water managers scrambled to keep taps flowing for more than 20,000 Bakersfield residents as the Kern River ran so low the city had zero water entitlement coming down the river.
At least 2 million Americans don’t have running water or a working toilet at home, a crisis that costs the U.S. economy $8.58 billion each year, according to a report released Tuesday by nonprofit DigDeep.
These water access issues disproportionately impact Indigenous tribes, people of color, immigrants, low-income people and those living in rural areas — communities that have been largely excluded from past investments in water infrastructure, according to the report.
With numerous municipalities and states considering or enacting strict limits on residential grass, you may have considered ditching your home’s turf. Xeriscaping — or designing a landscape that needs little irrigation to survive — is no longer a radical idea, even if you don’t live in an area where lawns are being restricted. Traditional lawn grasses are thirsty.
The West saw an aspect of the climate crisis play out this month that scientists have warned of for years.
In the middle of a prolonged, water shortage-inducing megadrought, one area, Yellowstone, was overwhelmed in mid-June by drenching rainfall and rapid snowmelt that — instead of replenishing the ground over a matter of weeks or months — created a torrent of flash flooding that ripped out roads and bridges and caused severe damage to one of the country’s most cherished national parks.
The Colorado River’s precipitous decline pushed Arizona lawmakers to deliver Gov. Doug Ducey’s $1 billion water augmentation fund — and then some — late Friday, their final night in session.
Before the votes, the growing urgency for addressing the state’s oncoming water shortage and the long timeline for approving and building new water projects nearly sank the legislation.
