A Scripps Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes report shows that more atmospheric rivers have made landfall over the U.S. West Coast in the first four months of Water Year 2021 compared to the previous period in 2020.
Customers of Silicon Valley’s largest water company are in an uproar after receiving yet another proposal to substantially hike up their monthly water bills. Under a new proposal from San Jose Water, the monthly bill of a typical customer would increase nearly 30% over the next four years — and that’s on top of an about 60% rise in rates since 2015.
A new advisory offering details on a remote hacker’s attempted sabotage of an Oldsmar, Florida city water treatment plant has revealed a disregard for certain basic cyber hygiene best practices among employees. Experts say it’s an indicator that operators of critical infrastructure could use a serious infusion of security controls. However, due to budget restrictions, these controls may first require a thorough risk assessment and prioritization exercise.
In 2014, as California was in the midst of one of the worst droughts in its recorded history, Julia Szinai was working for an electric utility. The worst years of the drought were still ahead, but the impacts of the dry spell on California’s energy system were already clear to Szinai. As water levels dropped, so too did hydropower generation—an energy gap that was filled by fossil fuels.
A series of storms will usher in a wet holiday weekend across Northern California, threatening to put a damper on outdoor activities and cause driving delays for holiday travelers.
If our water supply is dwindling, why is Arizona still growing?
I get this question almost every time I write about groundwater. Readers say we should be doing a lot more to slow – or even cut off – the construction of new homes and farms.
That’s not likely to happen any time soon. But smart people are diving into the weeds of how we use this finite resource to fuel growth, and that makes me cautiously optimistic.
San Francisco is challenging the EPA over conditions imposed in a permit that allows the city to send discharge from its combined sewer system into the Pacific Ocean, according to a petition for review in the Ninth Circuit. The city’s filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit comes after the Environmental Protection Agency refused to review three conditions in the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit. The EPA approved the permit in December 2019.
The Kern County Farm Bureau issued a “call to action” this week asking local growers and ranchers to participate in a series of upcoming meetings that will influence the role California’s agricultural lands will be expected to play, or continue to play, in fighting climate change. Besides asking members to speak up at a series of online meetings the state is hosting this month, the bureau is collecting data it hopes will illustrate local ag producers’ “climate-conscious nature” with an eye toward ensuring private industry will continue managing its property “on a voluntary basis,” bureau President John C. Moore III said by email.
Miranda Grow loves the challenge of working with her hands. She’d had experience in carpentry and construction, and fulfilled a career dream when she was accepted as a mechanic apprentice at a large water district, relishing the behind-the-scenes work to deliver clean water to faucets and shower heads across Southern California.
