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Mojave Water Agency Celebrates New Near Net-Neutral Hydroelectric, Clean Energy System

/in , /by /California Water News Daily

Mojave Water Agency (MWA) cut the ribbon on a $4.3 million, clean-energy system last week after yeas of planning. The new hydroelectric project will take advantage of water from the California Aqueduct to the district’s groundwater basin in the Victor Valley by converting existing pressure into electrical energy. The process will provide a near net-neutral status in its energy consumption — a byproduct that will save MWA millions of dollars over the next 30 years and provide numerous environmental benefits.

 

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State Panel Backs Extending Life Of Gas-Burning Generator At Huntington Beach Power Plant

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times by Julia Sclafani

A gas-burning generator at a Huntington Beach power plant could keep firing until as late as 2023, following a state commission’s recent vote.

The AES facility was scheduled to close by the end of next year, but the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously last week to extend its operating life for up to three additional years.

Pushing back the plant’s retirement would delay remediation of the site, as well as prolong the practice of “once-through” cooling — a process that uses seawater to cool the coastal energy transformers, which can kill fish and other marine life.

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Climate Whiplash: Wild Swings in Extreme Weather Are on the Rise

/in , , /by /Yale Environment 360by Jim Robbins

From 2011 to 2016, California experienced five years of extreme drought, during which numerous high temperature records were broken. These hot, dry years were followed by the extremely wet winter of 2016 -2017, when, from October to March, an average of 31 inches of rain fell across the state, the second highest winter rainfall on record.

All that rain meant a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation, which, as hot and dry conditions returned, likely contributed to a combustible mix of fuels that played a role in the severe fires that have swept California in the past two years.

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Opinion: The EPA Says We Need to Reuse Wastewater

/in , , /by /Scientific Americanby G. Tracy Mehan, III

On September 10, 2019, at the 34th Annual WateReuse Symposium in San Diego, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a draft National Water Reuse Action Plan for public comment—containing 46 proposed actions, to be accomplished by a mix of federal, state, private, local and private stakeholders, in order to promote 10 strategic objectives. For many in the water sector, this was a welcome recognition—a validation, if you will, of a new movement and set of practices and technologies that will impact drinking water, energy, agriculture and industry throughout the nation.

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Wind and Solar Can Save the Planet — Can They Save Our Water Supply, Too?

/in , /by /Gristby Emily Pontecorvo

Solar panels and wind turbines are lifelines to any non-apocalyptic version of the future. They’ll help us keep the lights on, the air breathable, and the planet inhabitable. But while the climate and health benefits of wind and solar are well known, they have another, underappreciated feature that could come in handy in our inevitably warmer, drier future: They don’t rely on water.

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Online Extra: Q-and-A on Sustainable Groundwater Management

/in , /by /AgAlert

Ag Alert: What types of solutions are being built into the plans to bring a basin into sustainability?Ravazzini: As of this date, DWR has not received any plans for review. What DWR is looking for upon submission of the plan is that a GSA (groundwater sustainability agency) has developed a path toward sustainability. How GSAs achieve that goal will differ from basin to basin. One of the state government’s roles is to support these local solutions.

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New Law Requires California Dams to Have Emergency Plans — But Do They?

/in , , /by /KCRA by David Manoucheri

In the heart of Cameron Park sits a neighborhood of homes with some of the widest streets in the county. The homes all have garages with doors wide enough to let a full airplane park inside. That is what the neighborhood is known for: The streets double as runways and the residents all fly. Jim Bray and his wife moved into their house in March. The couple built a single prop plane together — one he uses to commute to the Bay area. “I fly to Palo Alto three days a week and work from home a couple days a week,” Bray said from the driveway of his home. “So, this is perfect for me.”

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Groundwater: Deadline Nears for Completion of Local Plans

/in , /by /AgAlertby Christine Souza

With roughly two and a half months remaining before a state-mandated deadline, local agencies overseeing critically overdrafted groundwater basins are working to finalize sustainability plans as required by a 2014 state law. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, requires local groundwater sustainability agencies in critically overdrafted basins to submit their plans by next Jan. 31. The plans must describe how local agencies will achieve groundwater sustainability by 2040, and should include measurable objectives and milestones in five-year increments.

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Bay Area Rainfall: When Is It Coming And When Should We Start To Worry?

/in , , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)by Paul Rogers

Normally between Oct. 1 and mid-November, if historical averages are any guide, the Bay Area has received nearly 2 inches of rain, and Los Angeles and Fresno each have received about an inch.

But so far this year? None.

To be sure, there was one-hundredth of an inch recorded in San Jose and San Francisco — about the thickness of a few sheets of paper — over the past six weeks. But nearly every city from Sacramento to Silicon Valley to San Diego is showing lots of zeros in the rainfall column for the first two months of California’s winter rainy season.

 

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At Least 1,680 Dams Across The US Pose Potential Risk

/in , , /by /AP Newsby David A. Lieb, Michael Casey, and Michelle Minkoff

On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house.

Just a little over a quarter-mile upstream, the 92-year-old Spencer Dam was straining to contain the swollen, ice-covered Niobrara River after an unusually intense snow and rainstorm. The workers had tried but failed to force open the dam’s frozen wooden spillway gates. So, fearing the worst, they fled in their truck, stopping to warn Angel before driving away without him.

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