For the first time in nearly two decades, the federal government tapped Glen Canyon Dam for extra power generating capacity this weekend, triggering emergency water releases as heat waves persisted across the West.
As temperatures hit records in California, power providers turned to sources in Nevada, Utah and Arizona to cope with the surge in demand across its electrical grid.
Millions of Californians could lose power in coming days, the state’s grid operator warned Monday, as it continues to struggle with inadequate electricity supplies as many people have been forced indoors to ride out a crippling heat wave during the coronavirus pandemic.
Widespread blackouts to reduce pressure on the electric grid were averted Monday night after regulators warned earlier in the day that they would not have enough power to meet demand in the midst of a heat wave.
While PG&E and SCE are required to shut power off in some areas, California Water Service also advises residents to limit their water usage during these outages.
According to California Water Service, they are doing everything they can to make sure water services are not interrupted.
Has the San Joaquin Valley reached its Chinatown moment? For farmers who rely on water from the Kings River, the answer winds up as some shade of “yes.” But the players are different. This isn’t the Owens Valley and William Mulholland doesn’t work for the City of Los Angeles. Uneasy about a slowly-marching plan to siphon Valley water for Southern California, farmers and some water managers are worrying about the growing shadow of one of the region’s largest land owners.
A group of researchers have demonstrated that, from seven methods commonly used to test for viruses in untreated wastewater, an adsorption-extraction technique can most efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. This gives us another tool to detect the presence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dredging is common in navigable waterways, but the project underway at the Napa Sanitation District property in southern Napa County is a little bit different.
The dredging is taking place in a vast sewage treatment pond. And the material being removed is biosolids, which is another way of saying sewage sludge.
It may not be the biblical end of times, but the searing heat and humidity, rain, thunder and lightning thrashing California could be the beginning of the end of the region’s dry Mediterranean climate and a prelude of more surprises to come, scientists said Monday.
Electric prices in the West soared to record highs as California consumers prepared for more outages on Monday after the grid operator ordered utilities to cut power over the weekend to reduce system strain during a brutal heat wave.
The California Independent System Operator is bracing for rolling outages through Wednesday, after a record-breaking heatwave in the Western U.S. strained energy supplies and necessitated power shut-offs that affected hundreds of thousands of customers over the weekend.
