A bill that would have provided the necessary funds to fix the sagging Friant-Kern Canal was killed by the state legislature on Thursday.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado introduced SB 559 to the legislature in February 2019, but the Assembly Appropriations Committee stuck it in the suspense file since August of last year, delaying its consideration to the 2020 legislative session.
The two dozen major fires burning across Northern California were sparked by more than 12,000 lightning strikes, a freak weather occurrence that turned what had been a relatively mild fire season into a devastating catastrophe
With the North Bay’s LNU Complex Fire topping 124,000 acres Wednesday and new state evacuation orders emerging every few hours, local and state officials urged Bay Area residents to take a variety of precautions. The city of Healdsburg said Wednesday evening that all of its roughly 12,000 residents should be prepared to evacuate their homes “soon.”
When Gov. Gavin Newsom downsized the Delta tunnels water project last year, the idea was to save money and try to appease at least some of the project’s critics. Yet the project remains controversial — and still figures to be costly. After months of relative quiet, Newsom’s administration released a preliminary cost estimate for the scaled-back project Friday: $15.9 billion for a single tunnel running beneath the estuary just south of Sacramento.
Everybody had known for days that a heat wave was about to wallop California. Yet a dashboard maintained by the organization that manages the state’s electric grid showed that scores of power plants were down or producing below peak strength, a stunning failure of planning, poor record keeping and sheer bad luck.
A new Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, has made headway in Congress, most recently with House passage of a bill authorizing about $9 billion for Army Corps of Engineers flood and storm protection, environmental restoration and other projects.
Hurricane Genevieve fizzled after hammering Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, but its remnant moisture and spin may boost thunderstorms in the Desert Southwest and fire-ravaged California through Monday.
Genevieve rapidly intensified to a Category 4 hurricane Tuesday, then grazed Mexico’s southern Baja California Peninsula as a weaker hurricane with flooding rain, high winds and high surf.
After that, as most hurricanes in this part of the eastern Pacific do when they move farther northwest over cooler water and more stable air, Genevieve fizzled rapidly into a remnant low west of the Baja Peninsula.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom downsized the Delta tunnels water project last year, the idea was to save money and try to appease at least some of the project’s critics.
Yet the project remains controversial — and still figures to be costly.
After months of relative quiet, Newsom’s administration released a preliminary cost estimate for the scaled-back project Friday: $15.9 billion for a single tunnel running beneath the estuary just south of Sacramento.
Long-term fixes for the ever-shrinking Salton Sea remain stalled as California Natural Resources Agency officials on Wednesday revealed they have been unable to find an analyst to study proposed solutions to a nearly two decades-old problem.
Eleven different plans, submitted in 2018, suggested methods of importing water from the Sea of Cortez or the Pacific Ocean to decrease salinity and reverse water losses at the Salton Sea, which have exposed a toxic playa laced with pesticides and other pollutants. Although some researchers who study the lake write off the plans as financial and logistical pipe dreams, CNRA still needs to study them as part of the process to determine a long-term solution.
There are no current risks to the Oroville Dam as the Potters Fire burns close by, according to the Department of Water Resources.
In a statement to KRCR, DWR says that they are working with CAL FIRE and local responders to protect critical infrastructure, like the high voltage transmission lines that provide generation to the California electrical grid. They add that their operations continue with essential staff on site.
