The nation’s coasts were hit with increased tidal flooding over the past year, part of a costly and perilous trend that will only worsen as sea levels continue to rise, federal scientists warned Wednesday.
High tides are flooding basements, streets and septic systems up and down U.S. coastlines more often as sea levels rise—and the future looks even more soggy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said July 10.
Water utilities across the country struggle with aging infrastructure that results in water loss from leaks. The cost to rehabilitate or replace pipe often is greater than the cost of repairing leaks. Utilities tend to wait for customer-generated work orders before acting. This typically occurs when a leak surfaces after a long-standing period of water loss and possible infrastructure damage has occurred.
It is a telling illustration of the precarious state of United States dams that the near-collapse in February 2017 of Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, occurred in California, considered one of the nation’s leading states in dam safety management.
It could also mean limited use of toilets and taps, an inconvenience that water and sewer districts across the state are scrambling to address before a blackout comes and nature calls.
The biggest freshwater rivers on Earth don’t flow along the planet’s surface. Instead, they surge and whip through the atmosphere thousands of feet above our heads, carrying 2½ times the amount of water that gushes through the Amazon River at any given time. They’re called atmospheric rivers, or, more aptly, rivers in the sky. These rivers are capable of burying Sacramento under 30 feet of water.
President Trump on Monday held himself out as a leader in the fight to protect America’s air and water, despite two years of policies that have weakened environmental regulations.
A California water district developed a groundwater trading project that could help farmers in the area with state restrictions for over pumping groundwater aquifers.
The California Senate on Monday sent legislation to Gov Gavin Newsom’s desk that will spend $130 million a year over the next decade to improve drinking water for about a million people.
We haven’t published many ten-part editorials in the Daily Post over the past 15 years. But we also don’t come across many political issues — local, state, or national — as complicated or as perplexing as the declining lake levels in the two largest reservoirs situated on the Colorado River: Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
