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Dams Could Protect Ranchers From Climate Change’s Drought…But Could They Also Contribute To It?

/in , , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colo.)by Melodie Edwards

It’s late May in Wyoming. It snowed last night, and more snow is predicted. That’s why it’s good that Big Piney Rancher Chad Espenscheid is behind the wheel of the truck. The roads are sloppy and Middle Piney Creek is running high. “Speaking of water,” he says, laughing. “Yeah, seems like it’s starting to flood,” I observe. “Yeah, it’s just wet.” That wetness is nerve-wracking for ranchers like Espenscheid. “It’s been a cold, long winter,” he says. “The cows and calves are really needing some sunshine about now. We got quite a bit of sickness going on around the valley.”

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NASA Explores Our Changing Freshwater World

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

Water is so commonplace that we often take it for granted. But too much—or too little of it—makes headlines. Catastrophic flooding in the U.S. Midwest this spring has caused billions of dollars in damage and wreaked havoc with crops, after rain tipped off a mass melting of snow. Seven years of California drought so debilitating that it led to water rationing came to a close after a wet and snowy winter capped off several years of slow rebound and replenished the vital mountain snowpack.

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Public Opinion Split On Cat Canyon Aquifer Exemption

/in , /by /Santa Maria Sunby Zac Ezzone

Hundreds of people filled the Santa Maria Veterans Memorial Building on June 5 to voice their opinion on a proposed aquifer exemption that would expand the area in Cat Canyon where oil companies can build injection wells. Some environmental activists and students pushed back on the proposal during the hearing, while some local ranchers and labor unions encouraged the California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) to move the exemption forward. DOGGR and other state agencies are considering recommending that the Environmental Protection Agency approve the expansion.

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California And Water: Half Environmental Nightmare, Half Remarkable Success Story

/in , , /by /The New York Timesby Gary Krist

When delegates to the second International Irrigation Congress convened in Los Angeles in October 1893, pessimism about their mission was not supposed to be on the agenda. The gathering, after all, was meant to encourage reclamation of arid lands throughout the American West, using irrigation to transform an immense wasteland into an agriculturally productive cornucopia. Thus the reaction when John Wesley Powell rose and delivered his now-famous caveat about the limits of development in the region. “Gentlemen,” he told the delegates in the Grand Opera House, “there is not sufficient water to supply these lands.” The gentlemen responded by booing the esteemed explorer off the stage.

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OPINION: What Is Sustainable Groundwater Management?

/in , , /by /Coastal View (Carpinteria, Calif.)by Erin Maker

Someone recently asked me about the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and how it will affect our community. I didn’t have an immediate answer for that, since I am still learning about it. But it seemed like a good opportunity to dive into the world of groundwater management and review the history that has led us to the SGMA. I would still refer technical questions of sustainable groundwater management to the very knowledgeable folks over at the Carpinteria Valley Water District.

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Huge Water Rate Hike Approved By East Bay MUD

/in , /by /Patch (New York)

East Bay Municipal Utility District directors voted 5-1 on Tuesday to approve a water rate increase totaling nearly 13 percent over the next two years. The board’s vote means that the water agency’s 1.4 million customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties will face a 6.5 percent rate hike on July 1 and another 6.25 percent hike on July 1, 2020. The rate hikes follow an increase of nearly 20 percent over the past two years.

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New Plan To Safeguard Russian River Targets Contamination From Human And Animal Waste

/in , /by /The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.)by Mary Callahan

An on-again, off-again effort by state regulators to better protect the Russian River and its tributaries against failing septic systems, livestock waste and other potential sources of bacterial contamination is in its final stages, with hopes that an action plan for the entire watershed will be approved this August and go into effect next year. The move, controversial and closely watched in years past, could impose stricter regulations and mandatory septic system upgrades on thousands of landowners with properties near the river or its connected waterways.

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California’s Clean Drinking Water Problem

/in , , /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)

In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first State of the State address, he urged every Californian to muster the political will to address a problem he called “a moral disgrace and … a medical emergency.” He was talking about California’s water. An estimated 1 million people across the state have unhealthy water pouring from their taps, with regions like the San Joaquin Valley especially impacted. Governor Newsom’s so-called “water tax” would have taxed residential water customers and certain agricultural industries to fund solutions to this problem for low-income communities. That plan didn’t make it through budget negotiations. The same budget talks produced a different solution: to spend $130 million a year from California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund on the water infrastructure problem.

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High Heat Quickly Melting Away California’s Snowpack

/in , , /by /CBS 13 (Sacramento)by Rachel Wulff

That excessive heat warning into the foothills is doing a number on the impressive snowpack in the Sierra. With temperatures in the 80s, what took weeks to melt is now taking days. “We found a little bit of snow and we were excited because it was a novelty. But then we realized it was everywhere, said Josh Jameison. Jameison and his girlfriend Megan didn’t expect to see so much snow as they set off for a hike. “The snow is a lot higher than previous years because I am usually out here on the first, and it’s still pretty bad,” she said. But snow on Loch Leven Trail during their midday hike didn’t last long.

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On Stressed Colorado River, States Test How Many More Diversions Watershed Can Bear

/in , /by /Arizona Public Mediaby Luke Runyon

The Colorado River is short on water. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at a slate of proposed water projects in the river’s Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The river and its tributaries provide water for 40 million people in the Southwest. For about the last 20 years, demand for water has outstripped the supply, causing its largest reservoirs to decline. In the Bureau of Reclamation’s 2012 Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, you can pinpoint when the lines crossed somewhere around the year 2002. It’s a well-documented and widely accepted imbalance.

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