Facing down a second consecutive dry year, the East Bay Municipal Utility District board decided this week to impose an 8% drought surcharge that customers will see on bills starting July 1.
The estimated $30.8 million collected from the surcharge will cover about half the estimated $64.5 million needed to manage the drought this year, according to EBMUD. The rest of drought expenses will be funded by reserves.
Water is flowing through two of three hydropower turbines in a blockish building at the base of Flaming Gorge Dam, so I can feel the floor buzzing — vibrations pulsating through my body — as Billy Elbrock leads me past the blue-and-yellow Westinghouse generators. The warehouse-like space is adorned with an American flag, and with the 1965 logo of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
After California saw extended periods of dry weather in the middle of winter, a series of late-season storms swept the Golden State in April and May, dusting the Sierra Nevada with fresh snow.
Did those spring snow showers help bolster the dwindling snowpack that historically provides about a third of the state’s water supply?
The short answer is that every little bit helps, but the snow did not come close to making up for almost no precipitation in January through March, normally the height of California’s wet season, said David Rizzardo, chief of hydrology for California’s Department of Water Resources.
The Sacramento is California’s largest river. It arises near the lower slopes of Mt. Shasta, in the northernmost part of the state, and runs some four hundred miles south, draining the upper corridor of the Central Valley, bending through downtown Sacramento, and, eventually, reaching the Pacific Ocean, by way of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Erik Vink, the executive director of the Delta Protection Commission, a state conservation agency, described the Sacramento to me as “California’s first superhighway.” By the eighteen-fifties, daily steamboats ferried passengers between San Francisco and Sacramento in as little as six hours.
California officials are poised to decide the fate of a controversial desalination plant planned along its southern coast, in a vote that comes as the American west battles an increasingly perilous drought.
California water use leapt 19% in March, amid one of the driest months on record. After more than a decade of debate, the California coastal commission on Thursday will finally vote on a proposal for a $1.4bn desalination plant in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles.
Colorado didn’t see enough snow this winter to fully recover from the ongoing megadrought and now what snow the state did see is melting too quickly, experts say.
“If we continue on at the rate we’re at we’re looking at probably a complete meltout by the end of May or beginning of June,” Becky Bolinger, of the Colorado Climate Center, told The Denver Post.
That’s too soon. By several weeks, she said. So drought conditions are likely to worsen, exacerbating what officials are anticipating could be the worst wildfire year in Colorado’s history.
The pendulum of Northern California weather is getting ready to swing once again, from rain, hail, thunderstorms and snow showers at the start of this week to sunny and much warmer than average temperatures by the weekend.
Temperatures near Sacramento are expected to soar from a forecast high of 65 degrees Tuesday to 92 degrees by Saturday, staying in the upper 80s to low 90s early next week, according to the National Weather Service.
Daytime highs near South Lake Tahoe will jump from the mid-30s Tuesday to the mid-70s this coming weekend. Both are roughly 10 degrees hotter than normal for this time of year.
Californians emerged from the driest January, February and March on record with the biggest jump in water use since the drought began: a nearly 19% increase in March compared to two years earlier.
Despite the urgent pleas of water officials, California’s water use in March is the highest since 2015, standing in stark contrast to February, when residents and businesses used virtually the same amount of water in cities and towns as two years ago.
California had its driest start to a year since the late 19th century, raising drought and wildfire concerns heading into the summer.
In data released Monday, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information found January through April precipitation in the state was the lowest on record dating to 1895.
The statewide precipitation of 3.25 inches was only 25% of average, topping the previous record-dry January through April from 2013, according to NOAA statistics.
