With much of California and other western U.S. states experiencing significant drought, the need to pursue further advancements in desalination has never been greater. This was a central theme of an Aug. 11 webinar, titled “Discussion on Desalination — Treatments, Research, and the Future,” conducted by the WateReuse Association.
Dangerously low water levels at Shasta Lake were captured on drone video by ABC10 reporter John Bartell and photojournalist Tyler Horst on Tuesday.
Shasta Lake is California’s largest reservoir, capable of holding 4,552,000 acre feet of water. Right now, it has 1,186,057 acre feet of water stored. Breaking that down into percentages, the reservoir is at 26% capacity and 42% of average for this date.
The Bureau of Reclamation recently declared a water shortage on the Colorado River, but that hasn’t stopped states from proposing new water projects.
Just about every drop on the Colorado River is accounted for. But climate change has reduced the amount of water in the system.
Gary Wockner is with Save the Colorado, a conservation group that is tracking new projects.
On June 9, as California’s historic drought deepened, the largest water agency in Santa Clara County declared a drought emergency and asked the county’s 2 million residents to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels to preserve dwindling supplies.
As drought-stricken California considers constructing new dams, a new study finds that many of the state’s existing structures— despite efforts to prioritize healthy water temperatures— are failing the cold-water ecosystems that depend on them.
San Francisco, along with a handful of Central Valley irrigation districts, is suing the state for enacting drought restrictions that are keeping thousands of landowners and suppliers from drawing water from rivers and creeks.
San Francisco, along with a handful of Central Valley irrigation districts, is suing the state for enacting drought restrictions that are keeping thousands of landowners and suppliers from drawing water from rivers and creeks.
Record dry conditions once again in the West have led the federal and state governments to declare water supply shortages. California’s governor has declared that 50 counties, in which approximately 41% of the state’s population exists, are now under a drought state of emergency. This prompted the adoption of emergency regulations ordering water rights holders to curtail their water diversions on numerous northern California rivers.
The state and federal water projects, which together deliver water to approximately 30 million Californians and more than one-third of the state’s agricultural farmland, have reduced deliveries to 5% or less. As a result, agricultural, urban, and environmental water users are being forced to cut back with “devastating impacts on our communities, businesses and ecosystems.”
First came the asparagus field. Then came the melons. And now Joe Del Bosque is considering the unthinkable: tearing out a sprawling almond orchard bursting with healthy, nut-producing trees.
South San Joaquin Irrigation District is suing the state in a bid to avoid a curtailment order from creating severe water shortages in 2022 for 200,000 Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy residents and growers farming nearly 55,000 acres
SSJID, along with Oakdale Irrigation District, over a century ago secured first-in-line rights under state law for the initial 600,000 acre feet of annual water runoff in the Stanislaus River Basin.
A curtailment order issued Aug. 20 by the State Water Resources Control Board is essentially seizing the water the SSJID and OID legally own and prevents the agencies from diverting and storing Stanislaus River runoff in Donnells, Beardsley, New Melones and Tulloch Reservoirs.
The city of Antioch’s water supply has been challenged in recent years by a variety of factors. But the Brackish Water Desalination Project, the first desalination project of its kind in the five-county Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region, is intended to improve the reliability of the city’s water.
The city filed its notice of preparation for the project just over four years ago and then broke ground on the plant in February of this year.
