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Protecting The Watershed

/in , /by /News-Review (Sacramento)by Meredith J. Cooper

Everyone has heard it a million times by now: The Camp Fire was the most destructive fire in California’s history. But that’s only taking into consideration man-made structures. What about the natural landscape—and, in particular, our waterways? To echo the mantra of 2017’s Standing Rock protest, “Water is life.” That was what brought many people out to Chico State’s University Farm Tuesday (June 4) for the daylong Camp Fire Water Resources Monitoring and Research Symposium. Organized by the University of California Cooperative Extension, it included presentations from researchers who have been studying fire’s impact on ecosystems, in particular ground and surface water.

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In Quest for Bigger Batteries, California Mulls Century-Old Idea

/in , , /by /Bloomberg by David R Baker Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority
Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

As the sun sets on California’s solar farms, a backup energy source deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains springs to life. The huge system of reservoirs and turbines can store energy during the day and then crank out electricity for 900,000 homes, using just water and gravity.

As the state tries to make wind and solar work around the clock, officials want to build more like it. It won’t be easy: such projects take years to develop, are expensive and face stiff opposition.he push by California and other states to revive the century-old technology — called “pumped-hydro storage” — underscores the limitations of modern batteries.

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OPINION: Toxic Drinking Water Is A Public Health Crisis. Here’s A Path To Urgent Action

/in , , /by /Sacramento Beeby Lezlie Sterling and Ryan Sabalow

Water is a basic necessity of life, but over one million Californians lack access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water, says Gov. Gavin Newsom. Six million Californians receive their water from operators who have been fined for violating the state’s clean water laws in recent years, according to a 2018 investigation by McClatchy. “In many communities, people drink, shower, cook and wash dishes with water containing excessive amounts of pollutants, including arsenic, nitrates and uranium,” according to a Sacramento Bee story by Dale Kasler, Phillip Reese and Ryan Sabalow. Many of those affected by the lack of safe water live in poorer and more rural areas, and a big portion of those communities are here in the Central Valley.

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Conservation Has Saved 4.8 Million Acre Feet Of Water Since 2003

/in , , /by /Imperial Valley Press (El Centro, Calif.)by Michael Maresh

Since 2003, Imperial Irrigation District has conserved almost 4.8 million acre feet of water, mostly through water transfers and agreements. A 1988 agreement between IID and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California near Los Angles has amounted to 1.56 million of that amount since 2003 at the Imperial Dam.

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These California Environmental Bills Made It To The Next Round

/in , , /by /KQED (San Francisco)by Kevin Stark

For California bills and their sponsors, Friday was pass-or-die time in the Legislature. It’s an annual rite of spring: If on a certain date proposed bills don’t pass out of their house of origin, be it the Assembly or the Senate, they die for the year. This year, the Legislature considered a slate of new environmental policies. A bill that prohibits California from authorizing new oil and gas infrastructure on state public lands, AB 342, moved on to the Senate.  A bill that would require smog checks for semitrucks, SB 210, moved on to the Assembly.

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5 U.S. Cities That Potentially Could Run Out Of Water

/in , , /by /Asset Stewardshipby Ron Brackett

About 1,000 people arrive in Texas every day. The state’s population is expected to double by 2050 to more than 50 million people, according to the Associated Press. With drought a continual threat, water is a big worry in the Lone Star State. “The state is growing so fast that we’re constantly playing catch-up when it comes to building resilient water supplies,” Robert Mace, executive director of The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, told AP. “The question is: When the bad times come will there be enough water for everybody?”

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In Los Angeles ‘Water Colony’, Tribes Fear A Parched Future

/in , , /by /Reuters by Laurie Goering

When the first white settlers arrived in California’s remote eastern Owens Valley, the name given to its indigenous tribes was Paiute, or “land of flowing water” in the local language. But for more than a century, the water in the valley has flowed in just one direction: toward Los Angeles, nearly 300 miles (480 km) away. In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) quietly bought up broad swathes of ranchland and its associated water rights in the once-lush valley, fringed by snow-capped peaks.

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Putting A Tempest into A Teapot: Can California Better Use Winter Storms To Refill Its Aquifers?

/in , /by /Stanford Universityby Felicity Barringer

This bipolar weather will have profound implications for the state’s $50 billion agriculture industry and the elaborate network of reservoirs, canals, and aqueducts that store and distribute water. A system built for irrigation and flood protection must adapt to accommodate more conservation. “The effects of climate change are necessitating wholesale changes in how water is managed in California,” the state Department of Water Resources wrote in a June, 2018 white paper.During droughts, farmers and municipalities pumped groundwater to augment sparse surface supplies. After nearly a century of heavy use, many aquifers are badly depleted.

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OPINION: Vilsack: Partnerships Needed To Promote Sustainable Practices

/in , /by /Capital Pressby Carol Ryan Dumas

Testimony at a recent Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on solutions to climate change focused on what farmers and ranchers are already doing to lighten their impact on the environment and improve sustainability. They also stressed that solutions must be economically feasible, and that these are difficult times for producers to invest in new conservation practices. But Tom Vilsack, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council and former U.S. secretary of agriculture, took the conversation to another level, pointing out the opportunities that lie in sustainable practices.

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OPINION: Some 360,000 Californians Can’t Drink The Water. And Still No Fix For This Disgrace

/in , /by /The Sacramento Bee

In the world’s fifth largest economy, in the richest state in the richest nation, some 360,000 Californians have water that is unsafe to drink. That’s the equivalent of about three and a half Flint, Michigans, and it’s an outrage. Worse, it’s a fixable outrage, and the fix is being blocked by vested interests. This stalemate has gone on for more than a year now at the stateCapitol while vulnerable families, many of them in the Central Valley, have lived as if this is a Third World country. Yet state leaders have let a solution slip through their fingers – again

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