CAISO has warned state regulators that there could be a 4.7 GW capacity shortfall in 2022, in the early evening hours of the annual peak demand events of September. The grid operator has suggested alteration of water cooling laws, as well as increased procurement of resources.
Toxic, blue-green algae blooms that poisoned dogs across the country this summer with deadly results have California water officials on alert for the dangerous bacteria.
The bacteria are blamed for the deaths of three dogs after a swim in a Wilmington, N.C., pond that contained the algae beds, reported Raleigh-Durham television station WTVD-TV on Monday. The North Carolina dogs began having seizures at home and were dead within hours, according to the report. Another three dogs in Austin, Texas perished after swimming in a lake there earlier this month, city officials said.
On April 1 each year, researchers ski and snowshoe out into the high mountains of the western United States to jab stakes into the bright, crystalline snow, checking the thickness of the blanket. But in 2012, many researchers could barely travel on snow to their test sites—and when they got there, there was almost no snow to measure.
2013 was almost as bad. 2014, the same. And in 2015, on the April 1 assessment, many sites across the Sierra Nevada mountains were bald and snowless—the worst snow drought, scientists found, in at least the last 500 years.
Much of the planet sweltered in unprecedented heat in July, as temperatures soared to new heights in the hottest month ever recorded. The record warmth also shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows.
The average global temperature in July was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, making it the hottest July in the 140-year record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The previous hottest month on record was July 2016.
Rep. Josh Harder of Turlock put on waders and traipsed through the water in search of swamp rats recently.
The goal: Publicizing a bill that he and three other California Democrats have introduced targeting nutria, an invasive species from South America creating havoc with irrigation canals and levees.
“It sounds ridiculous, but these swamp rats are actually a major problem for our water infrastructure,” Harder said in a news release. “My bill would revive a program that helped successfully get rid of the pests in Maryland and bring millions of dollars in federal help to the Central Valley.”
Experts have touted water recycling as the most sustainable method of conserving water.
According to Patricia Sinicropi who is Executive Director of the Water Reuse Association in the USA, water recycling technologies are becoming more sophisticated with every passing day, making it easy for it to be scaled out.
“The most important benefit of recycled water is that it’s a reliable and sustainable source. It’s not an imported source of water. You can control it. You know what is in it at all times,” she said.
Cape Town, South Africa – At the height of the drought (April 2018) in this amazing city, residents were restricted to 50 liters (13 gallons) of water per person, per day, and that allowed Cape Town and the Western Cape province to avert an unprecedented catastrophe, Day Zero, the day this city of four-million residents could have run out of water.
The threat made conservation the new normal, resulting in practices like hotel showers with minute timers, closed water taps in public places, and informational slogans/campaigns throughout the city.
A drone soared over a blazing hot cornfield in northeastern Colorado on a recent morning, snapping images with an infrared camera to help researchers decide how much water they would give the crops the next day.
After a brief, snaking flight above the field, the drone landed and the researchers removed a handful of memory cards. Back at their computers, they analyzed the images for signs the corn was stressed from a lack of water.
Dozens of hikers set out for the summit of Piestewa Peak on a July evening, their flashlights dancing in the dark. “You feeling O.K.?” Trevor Plautz, a park ranger, asked two women, one of whom had stumbled and was breathing hard. “You have enough water?” Both soon turned back, moving slowly down unlit rocky switchbacks. An owl chittered. “You definitely feel the heat, but the nights are better,” Mr. Plautz said. “A lot of people hike right now instead of during the day because it is a lot cooler.” Phoenix, which had 128 days at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit last year, is one of the hottest and fastest-warming cities in the United States.
The implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) has presented some challenges, however it appears the overall process is progressing smoothly overall. Supervising Engineering Geologist with the Department of Water Resources (Department), Steven Springhorn noted that the stakeholders have been diligent in adhering to the timeline established by the regulation. “In general, the status of SGMA is going well,” said Springhorn. “That was really shown by the first major milestone, the GSA formation deadline. Roughly 99 percent of the area that had to be covered, was covered. So that just built a lot of momentum.”
