To survive the next drought and meet the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability law, California is going to have to put more water back in the ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
A public meeting to decide what fixes might be applied to change the fate of the dying Salton Sea — and how much taxpayer money should be spent on the effort — will be held Tuesday morning in North Shore, hosted by a committee chaired by Riverside County Supervisor Manuel Perez.
“I’m glad we’re having this meeting in North Shore, which is where our efforts are centered on in providing a safe and stable Salton Sea, protecting public health and the environment and creating economic, tourism and recreation opportunities,” Perez said.
The EPA will unveil the first updates to its regulations on lead in drinking water in nearly three decades at an Oct. 10 event in Green Bay, Wis., according to a person invited to attend the event.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler is scheduled to attend the event, along with David Ross, the agency’s top water official, and Cathy Stepp, the head of its Midwestern regional office.
The agency’s lead regulations, officially known as the Lead and Copper Rule, went into effect in 1991 and haven’t been substantially updated since then.
Not only did the lights go out for tens of thousands of Californians on Wednesday, but some of them were bracing for the loss of their taps and toilets, too.
Utilities across the state were warning residents that PG&E’s planned power outages could limit their ability to deliver water and carry off sewage, especially if the shut-off were to continue for days.
NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science is awarding more than $1.5M in fiscal year 2019, of an anticipated total of $4.4M over the next three years, to more than 30 academic, government and non-governmental organizations for research into how natural, man-made and restored coastal habitats could reduce the effects of sea level rise, flooding and storms.
VACAVILLE (CBS13) — Some Northern California residents who will experience power outages Wednesday are also being asked to conserve water. The city of Vacaville and El Dorado County announced Tuesday that the PG&E Public Safety Power Outage may also affect water service to neighborhoods.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s biggest utility shut off electricity to more than a million people Wednesday for what could be days on end, in the most sweeping effort in state history to prevent wildfires caused by windblown power lines. The move came after two years of catastrophic fires sent Pacific Gas & Electric into bankruptcy and forced it to take more aggressive steps to prevent blazes.
Cities, counties and regional water districts throughout the Sacramento Valley and Bay Area are urging users to cut down on water use during Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s public safety power shutoff, which has blacked out hundreds of thousands of customers since the early morning hours of Wednesday.
Fairfield authorities are urging residents to conserve water use after the city experienced a treatment plant issue that it is attributing to the PG&E shutoff.
Next month, the Northern California community of Paradise and will commemorate a somber anniversary: On Nov. 8, 2018, the town burned to the ground. Nearly 11,000 properties were erased in the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in state history, which took 85 lives.
Now, as California braces for peak fire season, the most extensive post-fire cleanup it has ever taken on is nearly complete. Crews have hauled off more than 3.6 million tons of debris — twice what was removed from the World Trade Center site after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City.
California’s Central Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the United States—it yields a third of the produce grown in the country and is the world’s largest supplier of canned tomatoes. But a seven-year drought has threatened the viability of the valley’s farmland, and many rural communities have suffered greatly as a result.
Joris Debeij’s short documentary When a Town Runs Dry offers a window into the front lines of the water crisis. In the film, which is based on Diana Marcum’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting, we hear from several residents of Stratford, a farming community in which much of the land was decimated by the drought.
