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A Housing Developer and a Powerful Water Utility, are Caught in a Fight: How much Water is There?

/in , , /by /The Nevada Independentby Daniel Rothberg

Five wells punch the scorching Nevada desert.

Water in this area is locked underneath the ground. It flows silently and invisibly as part of an aquifer stretching roughly 50,000 square-miles. Much of this water collected here thousands of years ago when lakes covered most of Nevada. Now wells are summoning it for human use. The problem is there’s not enough to go around.

At the center of this tension are the five wells.

A housing developer, Coyote Springs Investment, owns four wells, planted to one day pump water for a sprawling new community in the desert, filling the highway stretch about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The remaining well belongs to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

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Opinion: Water Board Must Establish a State Water Budget that California Can Afford

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Chris Shutes

Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt writes that a “Grand Bargain” in California water is needed to end the “political culture of deferral” and allow major water projects to advance. On the contrary, what’s needed is an adult regulator that will make hard choices that water users refuse to make.

For at least five years, the state and various water users have postponed balancing the state’s water budget by promising a grand bargain.  This promised new grand bargain is not the solution to the aptly named “culture of deferral.”  The grand bargain is the current center of deferral.

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Trump WOTUS Rewrite Could Backfire, Lawmakers Warned

/in , , /by /E&E Newsby Hannah Northey

A top water regulator from New Mexico yesterday warned senators that hardrock mines, wastewater facilities and other industrial entities could face stricter environmental oversight as the Trump administration’s Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule takes effect.

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Meet the Man Who Told Trump Climate Change is Real

/in , , /by /E&E Newsby Anne C. Mulkern

Wade Crowfoot, a California Cabinet secretary, didn’t plan on confronting President Trump on extreme heat and wildfires. Then Trump dismissed climate change.

“It’ll just start getting cooler, you just watch,” Trump said during a Monday meeting with California officials who were briefing him on the state’s catastrophic wildfires.

Crowfoot, in a response that went viral, responded: “I wish science agreed with you.”

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Opinion: Climate Change is Affecting Wildfires. But Newsom and Legislators Still Need to do More

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby George Skelton

Message to Democrats: Just because President Trump says it, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.

Yes, our president habitually fantasizes, distorts and lies. But to borrow an old cliché, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

One important example: Trump’s widely ridiculed comment that California needs to “rake the floor” of its forests better.

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Risk of Colorado River Shortage is on the Rise, Could Hit Within 5 Years, Officials say

/in , , /by /Arizona Republicby Ian James

The risks of water shortages continue to grow along the Colorado River, which supplies about 40 million people from Wyoming to Arizona.

Federal water managers released projections Tuesday showing higher odds of shortages occurring within the next five years.

The Colorado River is in the 21st year of a severe drought that’s being compounded by hotter temperatures influenced by climate change, and the river’s flows have increasingly been insufficient to meet all the demands of cities and farms across the region.

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Opinion: Five Solutions to California’s Climate Crisis Gov. Newsom Should Implement … Right Now

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Dan Jacobson

Like most Californians, I have not seen blue skies for weeks. The dirty air I’m breathing hurts my lungs and stings my eyes. My kids are confined to the indoors to protect their growing lungs, though I’m concerned that even our air indoors contains dangerous pollutants.

While fire crews work to stop more loss of life and officials work to update plans for the next fire season, California must face the toughest challenge of all: How do we slow and ultimately stop the changes in our climate that are making wildfires in California even more dangerous and deadly?

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Panel Demands Answers on PFAS Cleanups, Alternatives

/in , , /by /E&E Newsby Bev Banks

House lawmakers pressed top defense officials yesterday for more information on research and cleanup of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. “I represent a community that has a number of PFAS contamination sites,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said during a hearing of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.

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Climate Change Likely to Keep Hammering Colorado River’s Biggest Reservoirs, Model Shows

/in , , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colo.)by Luke Runyon

The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs are expected to keep struggling over the next five years due to climate change, according to the federal agency that oversees them.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s new modeling projections, which include this year’s record-breaking heat and dryness in some parts of the southwestern watershed, show an increasing likelihood of an official shortage declaration before 2026.

If dry conditions like the Colorado River Basin has seen since 2000 persist, the agency’s model shows an almost 80% chance of seeing an official shortage declaration by 2025. The chance of seeing the reservoir drop to a critically low level is about 20% in that same time period.

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In a Dry State, Farmers Use Oil Wastewater to Irrigate Their Fields, but is it Safe?

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Abby Weiss

For decades, farmers in California’s Kern County have turned to wastewater from oil production to help irrigate their crops during extended dry spells. The wastewater provides an alternative to groundwater, which has become increasingly scarce as farmers have pumped more than they could replenish.

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