You are now in California and the U.S. Home Headline Media Coverage category.

Opinion: Governor Newsom Must Clarify His Delta Tunnel Plan

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently released his Water Resilience Plan, a platform of 142 proposals gathered from state agencies to manage and improve California’s  water future.

The big ticket items are two infrastructure projects: the Delta conveyance tunnel and Sites Reservoir, alongside the Sacramento River.

Planning on Playing in Local Waterways? Avoid the Blue-Green Algae Blooms

Public health officials are urging boaters, swimmers and recreational water users to be on the lookout for hazardous blue-green algae blooms as warm temperatures persist.

San Joaquin County Environmental Health Department officials said in a news release Monday that staff have posted advisory signs at local marinas warning people to stay out of the water where toxic algae is present.

To Manage Wildfire, California Looks to What Tribes Have Known All Along

On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned.

Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa. Several wore bright yellow shirts made of flame-resistant fabric. For the next two days, the group would be carefully lighting fires in the surrounding hills.

California Assembly Kills Friant-Kern Canal Funding Bill

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.

California Fires: State Feds Agree to Thin Millions of Acres of Forests

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

Officials Urge Water Conservation, Caution in Face of Raging Wildfires

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.”

California’s Delta Tunnel Project Inches Forward – and Just Got a $15.9 Billion Price Tag

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.

Poor Planning Left California Short of Electricity in a Heat Wave

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.

WRDA 2020 May Have to Wait Until Lame Duck

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 May be Gone, but its ‘Ghost’ May Bring More Thunderstorms to Fire-Ravaged California

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.