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MMWD Delays Decision on Desalination Ballot Measure

/in , , /by /Marin Independent Journalby Will Houston

When Marin last considered building a desalination plant on San Francisco Bay more than a decade ago, residents wary of the high financial and environmental costs reacted by giving voters the power to make that decision.

Now comes the question: should voters retain the power to block what could be an emergency source of water in the event of another crisis?

“The strange weather we’ve had the last few years I think suggests that having more options in the event of a similar kind of emergency we were in this past year is prudent,” Marin Municipal Water District General Manager Ben Horenstein told the district Board of Directors on Tuesday. “With this ordinance in place, it does limit our ability in certain ways to move forward if we wanted to with an emergency desal system.”

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California Drought Now in Third Year

/in , , /by /Water News Networkby Ed Joyce Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

California officials have urged residents to prepare for a third year of drought and urged people to conserve water.

“With only one month left in California’s wet season and no major storms in the forecast, Californians should plan for a third year of drought conditions,” said California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth.

Opinion: California is Failing to Prepare for Droughts

/in , , /by /The Mercury Times

Climate change isn’t a problem for the future. It’s here, and California isn’t remotely prepared to deal with the consequences.

The state’s latest snowpack report makes that clear. The Sierra Nevada snowpack provides nearly one-third of California’s water supply. On Tuesday it was at 63% of its historical average for that date. That’s despite the heavy storms in October and December. The months of January and February were the driest in the state’s recorded history, meaning Californians are facing a third consecutive year of severe drought.

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UN: Droughts, Less Water in Europe as Warming Wrecks Crops

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Aritz Parra and Sergio Rodrigo

“Herders and farmers have their feet on the ground, but their eyes on the sky.” The old saying is still popular in Spain’s rural communities who, faced with recurrent droughts, have historically paraded sculptures of saints to pray for rain.

The saints are out again this year as large swaths of Spain face one of the driest winters on record. Even as irrigation infrastructure boomed along with industrial farming, the country’s ubiquitous dams and desalination plants are up against a looming water crisis that scientists have been warning about for decades.

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Valley Water Agencies Ask for More Water Now and in the Future

/in , , /by /The Sun Gazetteby Reggie Ellis

On pace to be the driest January-February on record, signaling a third straight year of drought, local water authorities are begging the state to release more water for farmers this summer or at least begin building capacity to withstand future droughts.

On Feb. 23, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced its initial 2022 water supply allocations for Central Valley Project contractors, including the water agencies which operate the Friant-Kern Canal to the east and Delta-Mendota Canal to the west. Allocations are based on an estimate of water available for delivery to CVP water users and reflect current reservoir storages, precipitation and snowpack in the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada.

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Sierra Snowpack ‘Well Below Average’ in Third Official Survey, Signaling Continued Drought

/in , /by /Times of San Diegoby Chris Jennewein

California’s vital Sierra snowpack has fallen “well below average” in the third official measurement of the season, signaling another year of drought is ahead.

That was the conclusion after the Department of Water Resources conducted the third snow survey of the season Tuesday at Phillips Station west of Lake Tahoe.

Following the driest January and February in state history, the manual survey recorded 35 inches of snow depth and a snow water equivalent of 16 inches, which is 68% of average for this location in March.

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California Snow Levels Plummet in February, Ensuring Third Year of Drought

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

With California’s wet season nearing its end, snow levels across the state remain disappointingly low, and state officials are warning that a lack of melt-off will mean another year of difficult water shortages.

Officials with the California Department of Water Resources, who are scheduled to conduct their monthly snow survey on Tuesday, will find snowpack in the state’s mountains measuring less than 65% of average for the date. The reading bodes poorly for the scores of reservoirs that fill with melted snow — the source of almost a third of California’s water.

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Forecasters: ‘Miracle March’ Not Likely for Tahoe, Sierra as Drought Continues

/in , , /by /Reno Gazette Journalby Amy Alonzo

It’s been a tale of two winters.

After record-breaking storms pushed Tahoe-area snowpack to 200% of normal on Jan. 1, winter has all but disappeared.

January and February are historically the wettest months for Nevada and California. But this year, many snow-measuring sites in the eastern Sierra recorded the lowest precipitation levels on record for the first two months of 2022.

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Cascading Climate Calamities Target West’s Water, Legal System

/in , , /by /Bloomberg Lawby Bobby Magill

A dire United Nations climate change report confirms what water lawyers in the West have known for a long time—that drought is becoming the norm in the region, and adaptation is essential.

“Every time we see it written down, it gets a little more real,” said William Caile, a water lawyer who is of counsel at Holland & Hart LLP in Denver, referring to the report’s forecasts of water scarcity.

The report, released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a 3,675-page deep-dive into what the latest scientific research says about what’s at risk as fossil fuels continue to warm the planet. Water scarcity amid rising air and streamwater temperatures will afflict much of North America, exacerbating biological diversity losses, agricultural productivity decline, and wildfire, the report found.

The Southwest is among the regions that the IPCC says will soon be profoundly different. The Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, courses through the increasingly arid Southwest, which is approaching a “tipping point” at which long-term water scarcity conflict with high water use and farming, the report concludes.

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Dry Boat Ramps, Exposed Rocks at Lake Powell Reveal the Cost of Colorado River Drought

/in , , /by /Arizona Republicby Brandon Loomis

A small bucket loader scraped Wahweap Bay’s expanding strip of red mud and gravel, its operator smoothing the shoreline where concrete workers were busy chasing a lake in retreat.

To the left, where the bay had long offered kayakers and water skiers a loop around Lone Rock, the monumental slab now rose from dust flats instead of from flat water. To the right, in the channel that leads to Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River’s sunken bed, formerly submerged islands and peninsulas mapped out a warming climate’s continuing transformation of one of America’s great water stores and pleasure grounds.

A desert flooded by impounded waters in the last century has visibly reasserted itself in this one.

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