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With Large Sierra Snowpack, DWR Could Soon Release Water Over The Oroville Dam Spillway

/in , , /by /Oroville Mercury - Registerby Brody Fernandez

Recent rains and snow pack could force California’s Department of Water Resources to release Oroville Dam’s main spillway as early as next week. Currently, the 2019 snowpack for California is now the fifth largest on record dating back to 1950, according to DWR officials. As of Monday, the snowpack is slightly larger than the amount in 2017 when the state received more rain. However, the winter of 2018-19 has been uncharacteristically colder, resulting in a greater snowpack.

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OPINION: State Bill Would Rebuild Friant-Kern Canal, A Key Valley Waterway That Needs Fixing

/in , /by /The Fresno Beeby Esmeralda Soria

The San Joaquin Valley is ground zero for issues of water quality and supply. While there are countless studies that have highlighted these water challenges, there have been few investments made to begin to address the problem. We must do more. Our families and I are no strangers to this crisis. We depend on agricultural jobs, but at the same time rely on bottled water because our ground-water wells are contaminated. Today, more than 2,400 families are being impacted by dry wells and over a million Valley residents are exposed to toxic water.

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California’s Water Crisis Has Put Farmers In A Race To The Bottom

/in , /by /Gristby By Nathanael Johnson

While California was gripped by drought in 2014, Mark Arax began to notice something he couldn’t explain. Instead of shrinking for lack of water, some big farms were growing even bigger, expanding to hillsides, saltbush desert, and other lands where farmers usually feared to tread. They were planting thirsty almond trees as fast as they could. Arax, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, watched as journalists from the East Coast parachuted in to tell the story of California’s fruit basket turning into another Dust Bowl. And they found versions of that story to tell: Some farms were drying up, especially the smaller ones.

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Skiing In July, Dangerous Rivers, Full Reservoirs: What Sierra’s Huge Snowpack Means For Summer

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

More rain is coming to the Sierra Nevada, adding to a bountiful spring that’s left the snowpack at twice its historical average for this time of year. The mountains are holding more snow than they were two years ago, when Northern California was coming off a historically wet winter that officially ended the drought. But the heavy spring runoff is frustrating some hikers, campers and rafters. And it’s left farmers in part of the Central Valley frustrated that they aren’t getting full allocations of irrigation water despite one of the wettest winters in years.

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California Sees Biggest June Snowpack In Nearly A Decade Thanks To Spring Storms

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Hannah Fry

During a weekend that’s widely known as the unofficial start of summer in California, visitors who trekked to Lake Tahoe for Memorial Day were met with a flurry of snowflakes that turned the landscape into a winter wonderland in May. The storm responsible for the late-season snow in the Sierra Nevada town was one in a series of chilly spring systems that kept temperatures low following a marathon wet winter that filled reservoirs and streams and brought once-dry waterfalls back to life in the region.

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OPINION: ‘Moving The Rain,’ Creating California

/in , /by /CALmatters (Sacramento)by Mark Arax

I explained how that invention necessitated the invention of the grandest water-moving system in the history of man. It was a system magnificently built, and it allowed us to erect two if not three world-class cities and the most intensive farming region in the world. But the system was now cracking, and it surely would not see us into a future of more houses, and more nuts, and the havocs of climate change teaming up with the havocs of our own nature: drought and flood, wildfire and mudslides.

 

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Marin Water Officials Heartened By Regional Supply Deal

/in , /by /Marin Independent Journal by Will Houston

Marin County water district officials expressed encouragement after an early agreement was reached that seeks to end longstanding conflicts of a major regional water supply 100 miles to the north. The agreement centers around the relicensing of the Potter Valley Project hydropower plant in Mendocino County, which holds a supply of water that affects fish, farmers and communities stretching from Marin to Humboldt counties. Sonoma Water, one of the main suppliers to Marin’s two water districts, draws water supplied by the power plant’s reservoirs.

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California Snowpack 202% Of Average For This Time Of Year

/in , , /by /AP News

The amount of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada is even larger than the 2017 snowpack that pulled the state out of a five-year drought, California water officials said. As of Thursday, the snowpack measured 202% of average after a barrage of storms throughout winter and spring, according to the Department of Water Resources. The wet weather has slowed but not stopped, with thunderstorms prompting flash flood warnings Sunday in the central and southern parts of the state. At this time last year, the snowpack measured 6% of average — making this year 33 times bigger than 2018, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

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Bill To Help Eagle Mountain Hydroelectric Storage Project Outside Joshua Tree Derailed

/in , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Evan Wyloge

Despite the efforts of a handful of Riverside County lawmakers, a controversial bill that would pave the way for a massive hydroelectric energy storage project on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park has been shelved for now, leaving the Eagle Mountain project still without a clear path forward.  The project would use abandoned iron mining pits to store billions of gallons of groundwater, pumped from the Chuckwalla Valley aquifer. Once operational, the facility would use abundant daytime solar power to pump water from a lower retention area to a higher elevation.

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Feds Dodge Claims Of Violating California Water Law

/in , , /by /Courthouse News Service (Pasadena, Calif.)by Nicholas Iovino

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Friday successfully dodged claims its management of a California dam violates state law and threatens the survival of endangered steelhead trout, but the legal battle is far from over. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen rejected a move by conservationists to add the United States as a “necessary party” to a state court action involving disputed rights to water from the Twitchell Dam and Reservoir in San Luis Obispo County.

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