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Tear Out Your Lawn, Check. Drought-Tolerant Plants, Check. Next Up: Recycled Water

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jeanette Marantos

Tearing out our lawns is a good start toward wiser water use in Southern California, but it’s not enough.

To do the job properly, we must also be ready to collect the rain that will someday fall out of the sky, advocates say. And these people have a vision that not only stores increasingly precious rainwater, but puts it to use for everything from drip irrigation to aquaculture to waterfalls surrounded by lush plantings and the soothing music of running (albeit recycled) water.

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What La Niña Means for California’s Summer

/in , , /by /KTLAby Alix Martichoux

While the lingering La Niña climate pattern is expected to bring soaking storms and strong hurricanes to parts of the U.S., it’s a different story here in California.

La Niña is favored to stick around through the end of the year, according to the latest outlook from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. While La Niña – and its opposite, El Niño – are characterized by the temperature of the Pacific Ocean, they have major impacts on the weather we experience on land.

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A Tale of Two Coastlines: Desalination in China and California – New Security Beat

/in , /by /Future News For You Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

The port city of Tianjin is in desperate need of water. The surface and groundwater supplies of this sprawling northeast Chinese metropolis have shrunk to dangerously low levels due to decades of reduced rainfall and overexploitation of the Hai River that flows through the city. According to the Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau, the city’s per capita water resources are one-twentieth of China’s national average, far below the UN benchmark for a water-stressed region.

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Skies Are Sucking More Water from the Land

/in , /by /Scientific Americanby Ula Chrobak

Drought is typically thought of as a simple lack of rain and snow. But evaporative demand—a term describing the atmosphere’s capacity to pull moisture from the ground—is also a major factor. And the atmosphere over much of the U.S. has grown a lot thirstier over the past 40 years, a new study in the Journal of Hydrometeorology found.

Evaporative demand can be thought of as a “laundry-drying quotient,” says Nevada state climatologist Stephanie McAfee, who was not involved in the study.

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Opinion: ‘All Hands on Deck’ for the Energy Storage Industry

/in , /by /Utility Diveby Kelly Sarber

Energy storage technology may be the singular, most important component in our nation’s transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, since utility-scale, battery systems provide the flexibility to absorb, store and deploy energy at locations where and when the power is most needed. Energy storage is crucial to replacing America’s fleet of polluting, fossil fuel plants because they integrate the increasing amounts of wind, solar and hydropower being transmitted hundreds of miles without jeopardizing grid reliability — sometimes the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining where and when the power is most needed.

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Kern County Officials, Growers Concerned About Lake Isabella Water Levels

/in , /by /23ABCby Mike Hart

Bakersfield and Kern County have been in drought mode since the end of last year with restrictions and cutbacks in place to try and save as much water as possible as we head into the hot summer months.

But water officials and growers are concerned as the flow from the Upper Kern into Lake Isabella now reduces to a trickle in the coming weeks and months.

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Opinion: The Colorado River Compact Hasn’t Aged Well | Writers on the Range

/in , /by /The Tribuneby George Sibley

The Colorado River Compact turns 100 this year, but any celebration is damped down by the drying-up of the big reservoirs it enabled. The Bureau of Reclamation’s “first-ever” shortage declaration on the river acknowledges officially what we’ve known for years: the Compact and all the measures augmenting it, collectively known as The Law of the River, have not prevented the river’s over-development.

Nearly every pronouncement from the water establishment about the centennial of the Colorado River Compact calls it the “foundation,” “the cornerstone” of the Law of the River — as though before the Compact was adopted, the river was lawless.

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As Colorado River Reservoirs Drop, Western States Urged to ‘Act Now’

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Ian James

With the Colorado River’s depleted reservoirs continuing to drop to new lows, the federal government has taken the unprecedented step of telling the seven Western states that rely on the river to find ways of drastically cutting the amount of water they take in the next two months.

The Interior Department is seeking the emergency cuts to reduce the risks of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s two largest reservoirs, declining to dangerously low levels next year.

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Colorado River States Need to Drastically Cut Down Their Water Usage ASAP, or the Federal Government Will Step in

/in , /by /CPR Newsby Michael Elizabeth Sakas

During a U.S. Senate hearing on Western drought earlier this week, the commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation told the states in the Colorado River Basin that they have 60 days to create an emergency plan to stop using between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in the next year or the agency will use its emergency authority to make the cuts itself.

For context, the entire state of Arizona is allowed to use 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year.

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California’s Continued Drought

/in , , /by /California Water Blogby Andrew L. Rypel

As California’s drought deepens, it is worth checking in on the status of water supplies and what might be in store for the rest of the summer, and beyond.

What started with the promise of a wet water year, ended up dry, again. In January, the 8-Station Index showed precipitation totals keeping pace with the wettest year on record. Then it got dry and accumulated totals flat-lined. The final result is a below average water year, although not one of the driest years on record.

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