Two lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s authorization of plans to increase water pumping from the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds will be moved from the Northern District of California to the Eastern District of California, a federal judge ruled.
Highlighting the threat that coronavirus poses to basic public health systems around California and the nation, a worker at San Jose’s wastewater treatment plant — a facility that treats the sewage from 1.5 million people in San Jose and seven other cities — has tested positive for COVID-19.
Water suppliers across the region — from local cities to community service districts — are suspending shutoffs for nonpayment in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting widespread business closures.
Floods and other dangerous weather extremes are only getting more intense and more frequent as our climate warms. Historically, we’ve always been able to predict these extremes by looking at how often they occurred in the past. But a new study published Wednesday in Science Advances reveals just how many of those forecasts actually fall short. In just a decade, the findings suggest, the climate has shifted so drastically that the frequency of past extreme events is no longer a reliable predictor.
More rain and mountain snow will move through the West, including communities in worsening drought, in the early part of the week ahead. This wet pattern began when an area of low pressure moved into the California coast on Sunday. It brought more than an inch of rain to much of the Los Angeles area.
The islands of the western Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are sinking as the rich peat soil that attracted generations of farmers dries out and decays. As the peat decomposes, it releases tons of carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere. As the islands sink, the levees that protect them are at increasing risk of failure, which could imperil California’s vital water conveyance system.
Sewage systems and toilets are backing up as consumers clean their homes with disinfectant wipes and turn to paper towels, napkins and baby wipes to cope with the lack of toilet paper.
After an absence of major storms for much of the winter, the ‘March Miracle,’ in terms of wet weather, seems likely to continue next week in California.
The storm that brought drenching rain and yards of snow to the Sierra Nevada early this week was still lingering as of Wednesday night but will diminish over the next couple of days.
A lull in storms is forecast late this week to this weekend, but a new series of storms is destined to impact much of the West next week with more rain and mountain snow from Monday to Wednesday.
Bemoaning the government’s clandestine process of approving widely unregulated PFAS chemicals, environmentalists brought a federal complaint Wednesday to make the chemical program transparent.
Short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS are a class of chemicals ubiquitous in commercial products and disturbingly linked to cancer, infertility, pregnancy complications and other toxic effects.
California mountains are blanketed in snow and much of the state has had plenty of rain in a remarkable March turnabout from the extremely dry first two months of the year.
The most recent statewide storm started during the weekend and, despite diminishing, snow snowfall and showers were still occurring here and there.
In the Sierra Nevada, Homewood Mountain Resort on the west shore of Lake Tahoe reported late Tuesday a storm total of 114 inches (289.5 centimeters) of snow at its summit and 74 inches (188 centimeters) at the base.
