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OPINION: A Listening California Should Consult The Real Experts On Water

/in , , /by /The Sun by Wayne Western, JR.

The Natural Resources Agency, California EPA, and California Department of Food and Agriculture want the public’s input on how best to manage and deal with an uncertain water supply in the future.

It seems every new administration in Sacramento must deal with water issues in California that never seem to get fixed.

Under the last administration, water rationing, increasing flows to the ocean, higher rates to customers, multi-billion dollar bonds, increased regulations, and a declaration of the human right to water obviously didn’t do the trick.

 

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The Dam Truth: The 91,000 Dams In the US Earned A “D” For Safety

/in , /by /Mother Jones ( San Francisco )by Jacques Leslie

It is a telling illustration of the precarious state of United States dams that the near-collapse in February 2017 of Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, occurred in California, considered one of the nation’s leading states in dam safety management.

The Oroville incident forced the evacuation of nearly 190,000 people and cost the state $1.1 billion in repairs. It took its place as a seminal event in the history of US dam safety, ranking just below the failures in the 1970s of two dams—Teton Dam in Idaho and Kelly Barnes in Georgia—that killed 14 and 39 people, respectively, and ushered in the modern dam safety era.

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Massive SF Recycling Project To Save 30 million Gallons Of Drinking Water Per Year

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Dominic Fracassa

Fifty feet below the platform of the Powell Street BART Station sits the starting point for one of the largest water recycling projects in San Francisco — one that’s transforming dirty groundwater into clean steam heat for hundreds of downtown buildings. In the process, it’s saving tens of millions of gallons of drinking water annually.

For decades, BART officials treated the naturally percolating groundwater that pools beneath the BART stop as a nuisance and a potential flooding risk. After seeping into an underground cistern, millions of gallons of water a month was pumped into the city’s sewer system.

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As Southwest Water Managers Grapple With Climate Change, Can A ‘Grand Bargain’ Work?

/in , , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colo.)by Luke Runyon and Bret Jaspers

Climate change, growing urban populations and fragile rural economies are top of mind. Some within the basin see a window of opportunity to argue for big, bold actions to find balance in the watershed. Others say the best path forward is to take small, incremental steps toward lofty goals, a method Colorado River managers say has worked well for them for decades.

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OPINION: California’s Struggle For Water Certainty Continues

/in , /by /Ag Alert/California Farm Bureau Federationby Justin Fredrickson

A series of interconnected decisions this summer could affect water availability for years to come. As Farm Bureau has reported through the years, several fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and its tributaries are protected as either “threatened” or “endangered” under both federal and state endangered species laws. As a result, projects and activities that could potentially affect these species require a permit. For many years, federal “biological opinions” for delta smelt and winter run chinook salmon have dictated restrictions on operations of the pumps, reservoirs and canals of the federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project—major water works that “move the rain” from Shasta clear to San Diego.

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The Crisis Lurking In Californians’ Taps: How 1,000 Water Systems May Be At Risk

/in , , /by /The New York Timesby Jose A. Del Real

It was bath time and Rosalba Moralez heard a cry. She rushed to the bathroom and found her 7-year-old daughter, Alexxa, being doused with brown, putrid water. “We kept running the tub, we turned on the sink, we flushed the toilet. All the water was coming out dirty,” Ms. Moralez said. For more than a year, discolored water has regularly gushed from faucets in the family’s bathroom and kitchen, as in hundreds of other households here in Willowbrook, Calif., an unincorporated community near Compton in South Los Angeles.

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The USDA Didn’t Publish Its Plan To Help Farmers Adapt To Climate Change. Here’s Where They Need It The Most.

/in , , /by /Mother Jones (San Francisco)by Tom Philpott

The Trump administration’s department of agriculture has apparently settled on its strategy for preparing the food system for an uncertain future: ignore climate change.  This wasn’t always the agency’s tactic. Back in 2017, as Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich recently reported, the USDA was set to release a big plan on how to “help the agriculture industry understand and adapt to climate change.” But “top officials chose not to release the report, and told staff it should be kept for internal use only,” Bottemiller Evich wrote. Weeks before, Bottemiller Evich reported about how the USDA’s top decision makers have systematically “refused to publicize” its own scientists’ research on the impact of climate change on farming.

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Green Water Could Help California’s Farming Woes

/in , /by /Physics World

More effective use of green water – rainfall stored in soil – could mitigate irrigation demand for some of California’s most important perennial crops. So say US researchers who simulated 13 years’ growth of alfalfa, grapes, almonds, pistachios and walnuts under different irrigation strategies.

Though the Midwest might be America’s breadbasket, in value terms the nation’s agricultural output is dominated by California, which has become a globally significant producer of fruit and nuts.

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State Appeals FEMA Spillways Reimbursement

/in , /by /Oroville Mercury - Register by Chico Er

The California Department of Water Resources was notified today that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services submitted DWR’s Oroville spillways reimbursement appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Back in March, FEMA notified DWR that it does not consider some spillway reconstruction work to be eligible for reimbursement based on information DWR had previously submitted at the end of 2018. DWR appealed the initial reimbursement determination and provided FEMA with follow up information and updated cost estimates to support DWR’s appeal, according to a DWR press release.

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Kamala Harris Proposes Bill To Invest In Safe Drinking Water

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Juana Summers

Sen. Kamala Harris is introducing legislation designed to ensure all Americans, particularly those in at-risk communities, have access to safe, affordable drinking water, the latest response to burgeoning water crises across the country. The California Democrat and presidential candidate’s “Water Justice Act” would invest nearly $220 billion in clean and safe drinking water programs, with priority given to high-risk communities and schools. As part of that, Harris’ plan would declare a drinking water infrastructure emergency, devoting $50 billion toward communities and schools where water is contaminated to test for contaminants and to remediate toxic infrastructure.

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