Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency in order to help California respond to the fires burning across the state amid an extreme heat wave that brought more warnings about power outages on Tuesday.
Climate change hit home in Colorado this week, exacerbating multiple environmental calamities: wildfires burning across 135,423 acres, stream flows shrinking to where state officials urged limits on fishing, drought wilting crops, and record temperatures baking heat-absorbing cities.
This is what scientists, for decades, have been warning would happen.
California avoided another round of rolling blackouts Tuesday as power conservation efforts helped stave off an energy shortage while excessive heat continued to plague the state.
White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams was driving home from vacation on Aug. 10 when he glanced up and saw the plumes billowing out of Glenwood Canyon and knew a historic wildfire was coming.
It wasn’t just that the flames licking up the craggy canyon walls were threatening homes, a railroad, a major highway and a power plant. It’s that the now 25,000-acre-and-growing Grizzly Creek Fire was burning in the municipal water supply of Glenwood Springs and in the headwaters of the Colorado River watershed, which eventually slakes more than 40 million downstream users.
Residents of Fairmead, California worry they are on the brink of losing water service, as the town’s only community well shows signs it may fail before a new one can be built.
After years of planning, the Madera County Board of Supervisors on Aug. 11 approved an engineering contract to design and manage upgrades to the system, including a new well to serve more than 500 people connected to the community water system.
Under California law, everyone in the state has a right to clean and affordable drinking water. But many disadvantaged communities still rely on contaminated water – either from private wells or public water sources. “Our groundwater in the Central Valley in California has been highly polluted … and it’s running through old and dilapidated infrastructure getting to people’s taps,” says Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center, an environmental justice organization.
California could see repeated rolling blackouts in the coming months in the face of extreme heat waves that have pushed power supplies to the edge.
Residents throughout the Golden State endured power shut-offs last weekend when demand surged and electricity supplies ran short. The California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s grid, predicted it could happen again through tomorrow as a dangerous heat wave continues.
Odds increasingly favor a La Niña weather pattern taking hold by fall, upping the chances for a cold and wet Northwest winter, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center says.
The center pegged at 60% the chances of a La Niña prevailing in November, December and January. A month ago, the center put the chances at 53%.
California’s power grid operator delivered a blistering rebuke Monday to the state’s Public Utilities Commission, blaming the agency for rotating power outages — the first since the 2001 energy crisis — and warning of bigger blackouts to come.
Millions of families in America risk losing running water over unpaid bills as moratoriums on shutoffs expire across the country, despite record levels of unemployment and mounting fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic.
Running water had been guaranteed to about two-thirds of Americans as hundreds of utilities suspended disconnections amid warnings from public health experts that good hygiene, particularly hand-washing, was crucial to curtailing the spread of the virus.
