The state legislature has approved a proposal from Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, aimed at helping the state manage its water.
“Stream gages provide important information in this era of droughts and flooding, driven in part by climate change,” Dodd said. “This bill is an important step toward managing our water for the long run. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
After months of back and forth with Chevron over a series of uncontrolled crude petroleum releases in a Kern County oil field, state regulators are demanding new information about its operations in the spill area.
California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, or DOGGR, issued a formal directive to the San Ramon-based company Tuesday, requiring the firm to provide a wealth of technical data on its petroleum extraction practices in the Cymric oil field.
An ominous warm patch similar to the notorious “blob ” that wreaked havoc along the California coast five years ago has been detected along the West Coast, raising fears among scientists that the fragile ocean ecosystem may be facing another calamity.
A large marine heat wave has warmed the northern Pacific Ocean and is threatening to disrupt sea life from Alaska to Southern California, marine biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The water fountains have either been turned off, wrapped in plastic, or fitted with a device to prevent students from using them. Much of the food preparation has moved off campus, and a water jug sits in the kitchen sink, replacing the faucet. The bathrooms are covered with signs that warn students in bold, red letters: “DO NOT DRINK FROM THE SINK.”
Senate Bill 1 by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins would require that California ignore new scientific findings on natural resources and water issued after January 19, 2017, the day before the Trump took office. That’s not an exaggeration. The date is actually listed in the bill 21 different times.
We cannot advance the fight for environmental quality by declaring that all science stopped on a specific date. If it’s dumb for the President to close his eyes to science, it’s dumber for us to follow him down that rabbit hole.
But SB 1 is not just dumb, it’s dangerous
California is close to adopting strict Obama-era federal environmental and worker safety rules that the Trump administration is dismantling. But as the legislative session draws to a close, the proposal faces fierce opposition from the state’s largest water agencies.
To shield California from Trump administration policies, lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow state agencies to lock in protections under the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Fair Labor Standards Act and other bulwark environmental and labor laws that were in place before President Trump took office in January 2017.
Wildfires in California leave behind acres of scorched land that make snowpack formation easier and more water runoff downstream from the Sierra Nevada to basins in the Central Valley, increasing the amount of water stored underground.
That’s the finding from researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who discovered that blazes in some parts of the state could result in more water availability.
The city of Ukiah made its first delivery of recycled water through its extensive Purple Pipe system this week, putting about 2 million gallons of water reclaimed from local sinks, showers and toilets into an irrigation pond just south of the Ukiah Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Renewable energy capacity quadrupled worldwide over the past 10 years, with an estimated $2.6 trillion invested in its growth, a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme shows. But the speed of that growth still falls far short of what researchers say is needed to keep global warming in check.
An idea to pipe water from Paradise to Chico took its first step Wednesday, when the Paradise Irrigation District board signed off on a feasibility study for the proposal.
The plan might seem far-fetched at first glance, but it would solve a couple of problems. In the short-term, PID needs someone to buy its water in order to stay solvent, as most of its customers were burned out by the Camp Fire last November. In the long-term, California Water Service’s Chico Division needs an additional source of water to ease its complete dependence on wells.
