As Americans stockpile disinfecting wipes and paper towels to clean their homes more often to reduce the risk of coronavirus, California’s state water regulators on Tuesday urged them to keep one thing in mind: Don’t flush them down the toilet.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently released its National Water Reuse Action Plan to promote more water reuse in the U.S. William M. Alley, director of science and technology for the National Ground Water Association, says the plan focuses on low-hanging fruit and states and associations will likely remain the leaders and innovators in water reuse.
The week started with extreme snow in the Sierra Nevada, where a powerful high altitude storm system brought more than 60 inches of snow to California’s highest peaks. Winds over 100 mph battered the Sierra Ridge as fee of snow piled high, sparking avalanche concerns and forcing the closure of Interstate 80. Visibility at time plummeted to near zero.
Across the nation, the scenario repeats. Atlantic sturgeon, once a hallmark of the eastern seaboard, can reach only about half of their historic spawning grounds. Some 40 percent of the 800 or so varieties of freshwater fish in the US, and more than two-thirds of native mussels, are rare or endangered, in part because man-made barriers have altered their ecosystems. Reservoirs disrupt currents, altering water’s velocity and temperature. That can harm its quality and interrupt the reproductive cycles of aquatic creatures. Stanching a river stops the distribution of sediment and the formation of logjams, two things critical to creating healthy habitat. It also eliminates floodplains and natural meanders, both of which prevent the banks from overflowing.
Snow has finally diminished a bit after California’s Sierra Nevada picked up several feet of snow, part of a “Miracle March” weather pattern helping to replenish vital, water-providing snowpack after a record-dry February.
Heavy snow began in the Sierra last Saturday and continued through Monday night leading to major travel headaches.
Monday night, a section of Interstate 80 westbound near the California-Nevada state line was closed due to multiple spinouts.
One storm does not make a “Miracle March” but what an impact the last few days have had on the Sierra snowpack.
Continuous snow at Lake Tahoe since Saturday morning has added 13% to the snowpack, according to Jeff Anderson, water supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nevada.
“To gain back that amount this time of year is really hard,” Anderson told the Tribune.
The economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic could cause widespread disruptions in the energy sector, tightening demand, jeopardizing supply chains, diverting regulatory attention and negating previous growth forecasts for solar and storage deployment, according to financial analysts and industry experts.
The novel coronavirus outbreak will be a “significant global crisis, triggering an economic slowdown” — which will likely affect the broader clean energy transition, including renewables, energy storage, and electric vehicles, analysts at BloombergNEF said in a report published last week.
San Jose Water customers will have uninterrupted service and water shutoffs for nonpayment will be suspended while the Bay Area undergoes shelter-in-place orders to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, the utility company announced Monday.
The company’s customer service office at 110 West Taylor St. will be closed beginning Monday, but residents can get support online at . Non-essential service appointments will be canceled, the company said.
Major electric, water, gas and internet utilities said Monday they are well prepared to maintain service in Arizona even as people shift to home-based work and school in the weeks ahead, including many of the utilities’ own employees.
An employee at Silicon Valley’s largest water district has tested positive for coronavirus, and at least eight other employees, including CEO Norma Camacho, entered self-quarantine because of it.
The employee at the Santa Clara Valley Water District — a public agency that provides drinking water and flood protection to 2 million residents from Stanford University to San Jose to Gilroy — works in the communications department.
The employee, who began showing symptoms on March 1 and left work March 2, remains hospitalized. The employee is not involved with the treatment or delivery of drinking water, and that service continues uninterrupted, officials at the district, also known as Valley Water, said Monday.
“As Valley Water continues to monitor the outbreak of COVID-19, we want to reassure our community that this virus is not impacting the safety of your drinking water, or our ability to supply water in Santa Clara County, ” CEO Norma Camacho said in a statement.
