Climate change is affecting natural resources in California, with water being one of the most important in the state. Water source is critical for municipalities, agriculture, industry, and habitat/environmental purposes. Will future supply meet future demand? How will the economic value of water change over this century?
In 2014, residents of Horsham Township, near Philadelphia, learned that their water had been contaminated with potentially toxic chemicals linked to an array of health problems, including learning delays in children and cancer. Those residents include Frank and Lisa Penna, who allege in a lawsuit that their water was among the contaminated supplies.
Facing opposition from six states that rely on the Colorado River for water for their cities and farms, Utah asked the federal government to delay a fast-track approval process for building an underground pipeline that would transport billions of gallons of water to the southwest part of the state.
California officials pressed Congress yesterday to step up federal efforts to address the rapidly growing public health crisis at the Salton Sea. Located near the Mexico border, the sea is California’s largest lake, covering more than 300 square miles. But the Salton is rapidly drying up due to reduced agricultural runoff, drought, heat and a 2003 water transfer that let San Diego take its water.
It’s been nearly two decades since a controversial deal transferred huge amounts of Colorado River water out of the Imperial Valley and away from the Salton Sea, but still no long-term solution has been found to cover thousands of acres of toxic dust exposed at California’s largest lake.
Hurricanes have the Saffir-Simpson Scale (Category 5), tornadoes have the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF-3) but now the West Coast has a storm scale of our own with a recent introduction of a new rating system for atmospheric rivers — the causes of a vast majority of our annual autumn and winter flooding damage.
A Central California water board is poised to do something rare in American agriculture: It is trying to establish enforcement mechanisms — not just toothless regulations — to limit the use of farm fertilizers that contribute to dangerous levels of groundwater pollution. If the effort is successful, within a few decades it will have reversed or at least stopped adding to the pollution of groundwater beneath the Salinas and Santa Maria valleys.
After a wildfire ripped through central California last month, residents in the Riverside Grove neighborhood in the Santa Cruz Mountains discovered another danger: contaminated water coursing through their pipes.
Benzene, a chemical tied to cancer, leukemia and anemia, was detected in the town’s drinking water after 7 miles of plastic water piping was torched in the CZU Lightning Complex Fire south of San Francisco. Plastic pipes are used for their flexibility in earthquake-prone California. Today, about 450 homes there remain under a “do not drink” advisory.
California is one of the least vulnerable states to drought even as it faces record wildfires, according to a first-ever state ranking funded by NOAA. The “Drought Vulnerability Index” finds that Oklahoma is the most susceptible to extreme dryness followed by two other states — Montana and Iowa — with a “very high” drought vulnerability.
The plan to fix subsidence in the Friant-Kern Canal and restore water deliveries to farmers in southern Tulare County and Kern County got over a major hump last week. On Sept. 18, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the Friant-Kern Canal, released final environmental documents for its plan to repair a 33-mile stretch of canal between Lindsay and McFarland. The final environmental impact report represents a significant milestone in beginning work to restore flows to the lower third of the 153-mile long canal running along the Valley’s east side.
