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Imperial County Seeks Help From State for Salton Sea Emergency

/in , /by /KYMAby Ericka Conant

The Imperial County is asking for Governor Newsom’s help as Salton Sea Conditions continue to worsen, affecting the health of county residents. On October 22, 2019, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the Proclamation of Local Emergency for Air Pollution at the Salton Sea, addressing extreme conditions that affect the safety of county residents. The letter breaks down the steady downhill of the Salton Sea’s conditions, beginning in the 1980’s when the body of water still receiving steady inflows.

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Farmers Urged to Think Big and Small to Survive Groundwater Cutbacks

/in , /by /Bakersfield.comby John Cox

The thinking started small and then grew much bigger at a gathering Tuesday in Bakersfield that was intended to provide a “survival toolkit” for farmers and water managers facing drastic restrictions on Central Valley groundwater pumping. Irrigation and other technical specialists opened the meeting by promoting ways to maximize the region’s existing water resources. Discussions ranged from individual investments in desalination to gathering water-use data as a way for farmers to defend against government accusations of over-pumping.

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Extreme Storm Could Overwhelm Southern California Dam and Flood Thousands

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Louis Sahagun

HESPERIA, Calif. — Federal engineers have found that a dam protecting the high desert communities of Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley and Barstow falls short of national safety standards and could erode and collapse in an extreme flood, inundating thousands of people. Officials for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday that they had raised the risk factor for the Mojave River Dam from “low” to “high urgency action” because of “performance concerns” discovered at the 48-year-old structure, which joins a growing inventory of California dams showing signs of severe stress.

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Odds Of Reaching 100% Of Normal Water Year Precipitation

/in , , /by /Center For Western Weather and Water Extremesby Dr. M.D. Dettinger

Drought status is often represented by maps of how much precipitation has fallen in the year to date, or how that amount differs from normal amounts of precipitation to date. Up-to-date examples of such maps are presented below:

A somewhat different viewpoint on the development of drought considers how much precipitation has fallen (or not) and how much is likely to fall in coming months, based on climatology. The following are maps of this and previous years’ drought development that explicitly takes both of these aspects into account.

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New Mexico Delegation Takes Aim At US West’s Water Scarcity

/in , , /by /AP News

As things begin to dry out again in New Mexico, members of the arid state’s congressional delegation are looking for ways to combat water scarcity here and across the American West.

U.S. Sen. Tom Udall is blaming climate change for growing water scarcity. The New Mexico Democrat worries that snowpack in the region is getting smaller and unable to adequately feed the Rio Grande and the rest of the state’s groundwater supplies.

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Does A Rain-Free October Signal A Return to Drought In California?

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times by Paul Duginski

“There are 200 different definitions of drought,” said climatologist Bill Patzert. “If you’re a firefighter with no rain in the month of October, and there are strong Diablo and Santa Ana winds, it’s a drought.”

Southern California got no rain during October, and it was desiccated by super-dry Santa Ana winds.

The jet stream that fed cold air into the Great Basin last week, fueling strong Diablo and Santa Ana winds in California, could have been delivering the first rain storms of the season from the Gulf of Alaska if it had been positioned about 500 miles to the west.

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Opinion: A Fresh Look At The Future Of Hydropower Requires That We See Clearly Its Past and Present

/in , , /by /The Hill (Washington D.C.)by WM. Robert Irvin

As society grapples with climate change and the challenge of decarbonizing the national energy grid, proponents increasingly hold up hydropower as an indispensable part of the solution, touting it as “clean, green energy.” They decry what they see as the unfair federal and state tax and regulatory advantages of wind and solar. In a recent editorial arguing for “a fresh look,” the National Hydropower Association declared that hydropower “isn’t being discussed as a clean energy solution by the environmental community” despite that it is dependable, renewable and “protects and preserves our natural ecosystems.”

In fact, American Rivers and many others in the environmental community acknowledge hydropower’s potential role in a decarbonized energy future, but a fresh look at that potential requires a clear view of hydropower’s past and present.

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Drought Here To Stay But Action Can Ease The Pain

/in , /by /The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia)

Drought is defined by the Bureau of Meteorology as “acute water shortage” (“How bad’s the drought and what’s causing it?”, November 4). It is certainly not going away, and in all likelihood will become more prevalent. Politicians from all sides are realising that a modified Bradfield scheme (diverting monsoonal waters west of the dividing range in Cape York) is the only way to restore the Murray and Australia’s agriculture. Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson are advocating it.

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Flood Risk Heightened for California Dam

/in , , /by /AP News

A California dam could fail during an extreme storm and send water flooding into Mojave Desert communities that are home to about 300,000 people, authorities said Friday.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it has changed its risk characterization of the Mojave River Dam from low to high urgency of action. The Corps says it estimates that only 16,000 people in those communities would be affected by flooding.

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The World Is Getting Wetter, Yet Water May Become Less Available for North America and Eurasia

/in , /by /PHYS.orgby Dartmouth College

With climate change, plants of the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a Dartmouth-led study in Nature Geoscience. The research suggests a drier future despite anticipated precipitation increases for places like the United States and Europe, populous regions already facing water stresses.

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