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Judge Orders Westlands To Stop Work On Shasta Dam Raise

/in , /by / Redding Record Searchlightby Damon Arthur

A judge has ordered a Fresno-based water district to stop working on plans to raise the height of Shasta Dam.

The Westlands Water District, which provides irrigation water to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, was working on a report assessing the environmental impacts of raising the height of the dam.

But a judge ruled that Westlands’ work violated a state law that prohibited local and state agencies from participating in any projects that would have an adverse impact on the McCloud River.

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$50 Billion Worth Of Bay Area Homes At Risk Of Rising Seas By 2050, Says Report

/in , /by /The Mercury Newsby Karen D'souza

ens of thousands of Bay Area homes worth about $50 billion are at grave risk of chronic coastal flooding by 2050, according to a new analysis by Zillow and Climate Central.

By 2100, the crisis deepens. As the ice caps continue to melt in the wake of global warming, experts project that 81,152 Bay Area homes with a current value of more than $96 billion, may be swamped. If greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked and seas continue to rise as expected, a wide swath of Bay Area real estate will be endangered. Coveted beach houses may well turn into disasters.

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Alaska’s Sweltering Summer Is ‘Basically Off The Charts’

/in , , /by /The Washington Post by Matthew Cappucci , Juliet Eilperin , Andrew Freedman and Brady Dennis

Steve Perrins didn’t see the lightning, but he couldn’t miss the smoke that followed.

It was around dinnertime on July 23 at Alaska’s oldest hunting lodge, nestled in the wilderness more than 100 miles northwest of Anchorage. What began as a quiet evening at the Rainy Pass Lodge soon turned frantic as Alaska’s latest wildfire spread fast.

The Alaska National Guard soon evacuated 26 people and two dogs by helicopter from the lodge, which serves as a checkpoint for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

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California 1st State To Require Notification Of Toxic ‘Forever’ Chemicals in Water

/in , , /by /Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Janet Wilson

California on Wednesday became the first state in the nation to require water suppliers who monitor a broad class of toxic “forever chemicals” to notify customers if they’re present in drinking water. That could include sites from Los Angeles International Airport to military bases across the desert to refineries and other industry in low income neighborhoods.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 756, authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, late Wednesday with no fanfare.

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Scientists Cook Up New Recipes For Taking Salt Out Of Seawater

/in , , /by /PHYS.org (Los Angeles)

As populations boom and chronic droughts persist, coastal cities like Carlsbad in Southern California have increasingly turned to ocean desalination to supplement a dwindling fresh water supply. Now scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) investigating how to make desalination less expensive have hit on promising design rules for making so-called “thermally responsive” ionic liquids to separate water from salt. Ionic liquids are a liquid salt that binds to water, making them useful in forward osmosis to separate contaminants from water.

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Cal Am Seeks Three-Year Rate Increase Starting In 2021

/in , /by /Monterey Heraldby Jim Johnson

California American Water is seeking to raise its Monterey area average customers’ bills by nearly 18 percent over a three-year period from 2021-2023. In its latest general rate case filing with the California Public Utilities Commission on July 1, Cal Am is seeking to raise water rates in its Monterey main district to increase revenue by about $8.4 million to cover new capital investment, increased labor expense, higher operations and administrative costs, and increased depreciation. Under the proposal, the “average” Cal Am customer would see their monthly rates increase from about $89.40 to $105.42 over the three-year period.

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Bringing Climate Projections Down To Size For Water Managers

/in , /by /Earth and Space Science News (Washington D.C.)by Kimberley M. S. Cartier

Models of what global climate will look like in 10, 50, and 100 years get more sophisticated every year. But what will climate change mean for water resources in regional communities? A group of researchers is building tools to help scientists and regional water managers answer that question. “We’ve been developing new models and new techniques…to refine our understanding of the uncertainty in projections going forward—for hydrology, for snowpack, for important water resources, for flood extremes,” said Andy Wood, a hydrometeorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. Wood is the principal investigator of the project. “We’re creating a large set of projections that go forward and tell us about future water security,” he said.

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California May Be First To Force Water Suppliers To Notify Customers Of Myriad Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’

/in , , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Janet Wilson

The clock is ticking. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Wednesday to decide on a bill that would make California the first state in the nation to require water suppliers who monitor a broad class of toxic “forever chemicals” to notify customers if they’re present in drinking water. “A decision will come tomorrow,” a spokesman for Newsom said Tuesday. He declined to say what it would be. The PFAS chemicals, which have been widely used in everything from firefighting foam to Teflon pans, Scotchgard products and even some dental floss, have been linked in some research to cancers, developmental problems and thyroid and liver disease. They’re known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment or in human bodies.

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Study: El Niño Has Outsize Economic Effect On California

/in , , /by /The Washington Postby Mike Branom

Considering it’s been long known that El Niño conditions often bring about flooding precipitation to California, a ripe field for study would be a thorough examination of the damage wreaked. And who knows catastrophic damage better than insurers? Their specialized knowledge prompted a pair of San Diego researchers to compare 40 years of insurance data against climate and water data to quantify the effect of El Niño on flood damage in the western United States. The findings of Tom Corringham and Daniel Cayan, both of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, confirm the connections between extreme weather events and El Niño, which is the periodic warming of equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean.

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Storms To Raise Risk Of Isolated flooding Over Interior West As North American Monsoon Continues

/in , /by /AccuWeatherby Alex Sosnoski

Portions of the interior western United States will be at risk for localized flash flooding and isolated severe thunderstorms this week. Just about every state west of the Great Plains and east of the Pacific coast will be at risk for thunderstorms in the pattern. However, some of the most dangerous storms may target the desert areas. As July ends and August begins, a surge of humid air from Mexico is forecast to bring a significant uptick in the amount of shower and thunderstorm activity over the deserts and mountains. The weather pattern is no stranger to the region during the summer and is considered to be routine during the North American monsoon season that extends from June to September.

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