It’s not long ago that Lake Cachuma, the main water source on the South Coast, was in danger of going dry in a seven-year drought.
Water agencies from Carpinteria to Goleta spent millions of dollars scrambling to buy surplus state aqueduct water from around the state to avert a local shortage. They did so not only because their groundwater levels were plunging and Cachuma was failing, but because their yearly allocations from the aqueduct had dropped to zero.
San Francisco’s rain total for February — typically the heart of the rainy season along with December and January — was just 1.71 inches, compared to the 4.46 inches that’s considered normal, National Weather Service Bay Area officials said. A year ago it was even worse: February 2020 brought no rain to San Francisco.
Fire-prone areas of Southern California can expect to see landslides occurring almost every year, with major events expected roughly every 10 years, a new study found.
The results show residents face a double whammy of increased wildfire and landslide risk caused by climate change-induced shifts in the state’s wet and dry seasons, according to researchers who mapped landslide vulnerability in the southern half of the state.
California’s tiny delta smelt is not a terribly impressive fish at first glance, and not really at second glance either. It’s about the length and width of a finger, silvery and kind of see-through – looks a bit like a sardine.
Millions of people in the US are drinking water that fails to meet federal health standards, including by violating limits for dangerous contaminants. Latinos are disproportionately exposed, according to the Guardian’s review of more than 140,000 public water systems across the US and county-level demographic data. Water systems in counties that are 25% or more Latino are violating drinking water contamination rules at twice the rate of those in the rest of the country.
The Department of Justice can proceed with its claims that California violated state law when it changed its water quality control plan for the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta system in federal court, the Ninth Circuit ruled.
To highlight the escalating global water crisis, this year’s UN World Water Day on March 22 will focus on valuing water. With water demand expected to exceed supply by 56% within the decade, companies, investors and institutions are being called on to not only recognise the challenges of pricing water appropriately, but consider the social, environmental and cultural value of water. To address this growing concern, sustainability nonprofit Ceres partnered with the Government of the Netherlands’ Valuing Water Initiative to form the Valuing Water Finance Task Force, a coalition of influential investors who seek to drive corporate action on water-related financial risks.
An enormous ocean current that flows between continents in a worldwide circuit that can take centuries to complete is slowing down, scientists say. And climate change may be partly to blame.
New research finds that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — a major ocean system that ferries water and heat between the equator and the poles — is at its weakest point in more than a thousand years.
A Senate committee unanimously approved a bill Thursday to create Utah’s Colorado River Authority, which would be tasked with helping the state renegotiate its share of the river.
Originally the bill allowed broad reasons to close meetings and protect records. It’s since been changed twice to come more into compliance with the state’s open meeting and record laws. Critics of the bill said it’s still not enough.
