A new EPA policy addressing pollution that moves through groundwater was intended to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act but may serve to further complicate matters, at least in the near term.
Trump appointees released the memo last week, declaring that any pollutants that travel through groundwater before reaching a surface waterway are beyond the purview of the bedrock environmental law.
Oregon has aggressive clean transportation goals to go along with its renewable portfolio standard, but the state’s utilities will need to do some work in order to meet them. According to GEO, electric vehicles in Oregon are growing about 35% annually tHE which puts the state on pace to reach “just over 40,000 registered by 2020.” That means reaching 50,000 EVs in the next couple of years will require developing fast charging corridors along busy routes, developing “charge-ready” buildings and homes, and leaning heavily on utility partnerships, the group says.
By rejecting the twin tunnels proposal, Gov. Gavin Newsom has sent an important message that new thinking is required to address California’s complex water issues. The Delta Counties Coalition is committed to supporting a more thoughtful process. The Delta Counties Coalition represents more than 4 million residents whose livelihoods and way of life are grounded in a healthy Delta economy. The coalition serves to protect the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas from unwarranted intrusion that could destroy the precious Delta ecosystem and hurt our region’s economy.
California’s climate change efforts can be spotted all over the Bay Area in the growing number of electric cars and solar panels. But now, California is enlisting people from a more conservative part of the state even if they don’t think climate change is much of a concern. California’s farmers are receiving millions of dollars to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, something the state says is crucial for meeting its ambitious climate goals.
In the wake of the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history, the residents of Paradise are slowly returning and rebuilding. But even though one Paradise resident’s home survived the wildfire, her family’s saga of returning to a normal life is far from over. While the structure of resident Kyla Awalt’s home is still intact, she said it has no access to running water a widespread problem in the area after the historic fire but her insurance company has ruled that the water issue isn’t covered by her home insurance policy.
In California, the amount of water exiting aquifers under the state’s most productive farming region far surpasses the amount of water trickling back in. That rampant overdraft has caused land across much of the region to sink like a squeezed out sponge, permanently depleting groundwater storage capacity and damaging infrastructure. The trend—and a 2014 mandate for sustainable groundwater management in the state—has ignited interest in replenishing aquifers in California’s Central Valley through managed flooding of the ground above them. But until now there has been no reliable way to know where this type of remedy will be most effective.
While all other Central Valley Project contractors’ allocations were previously increased to 100% of their contract totals in recent months, the Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that agricultural districts South-of-Delta will receive only 65% percent of their historic water allocation. South-of-the-delta cities like Avenal that get water from the Central Valley Project were increased to 90 percent of their contract supply, up from an 80 percent allocation announced in March.
Last year, the Camp Fire tore across California, devouring forests and incinerating entire neighborhoods. Residents fled the flames, returning to find empty streets where their neighborhoods had been. It came only a year after the Tubbs Fire set records as it destroyed thousands of homes outside Santa Rosa. Now that these cities are starting to rebuild, they are discovering that the damage goes even deeper than that. Soaring temperatures from the wildfires melted the PVC water pipes buried underground, causing the plastic to leech chemicals into the water and leaving the cities facing a complicated and expensive repair.
California’s legacy of oil drilling should be just that, many environmentalists argue relegated to the history books. They are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to ban new oil and gas drilling in California and completely phase out fossil fuel extraction in one of the nation’s top petroleum-producing and gasoline consuming states.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is taking unprecedented steps to combat President Donald Trump’s efforts to ship more water to his agricultural allies in the San Joaquin Valley. Saying Trump’s water plans are scientifically indefensible and would violate the state’s Endangered Species Act, the state Department of Water Resources on Friday began drawing up new regulations governing how water is pumped from the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta to the southern half of the state.
