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Dam Spillway Faces 1st Use Since Imperiling California Towns

/in , /by /The Associated Press

Water will rush down the rebuilt spillway at the nation’s tallest dam for the first time since it crumbled two years ago and drove hundreds of thousands of California residents from their homes over fears of catastrophic flooding. The state Department of Water Resources said it anticipated releasing water down the spillway as early as Tuesday due to storms feeding the enormous reservoir behind Oroville Dam in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

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California Wants To Aim Lasers At Snowpack To Better Predict Runoff

/in , /by /CBS Sacramento by Steve Large

Lawmakers are considering spending $150 million to fund new high-tech measurements of the snowpack using lasers. A pilot program with NASA has been in place for several years and results show lasers record snowpack measurements with near perfect accuracy. Up until now, California has measured the snowpack manually, with experts physically sinking a metal pole into the snow at various monitoring locations. Snow survey expert Frank Gehrke has been doing the manual measurements for thirty years and says the manual approach has resulted in measurements that are up to 60 percent incorrect.

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Colorado’s Epic Snowfall Helps Ease Drought Conditions, But State Not Out Of The Woods

/in , /by /The Denver Post by Jackson Barnett

With Colorado’s statewide snowpack totals nearing 150 percent of average, he and his crew of guides are eagerly awaiting the spring melt. Customers have noticed, too. Marquis already has seen a spike in summer bookings for his whitewater rafting trips. “As a business owner, I am very excited,” he said. Colorado has suffered from drought that has parched much of the state, hitting the Four Corners area especially hard, since late 2017.

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California’s Monster Snow Year … ‘It’s Been A Wild Ride’

/in , /by /KQED by Craig Miller

It’s been a big year for snow in the Sierra Nevada range. This is the time of year—April 1—when the snowpack is typically at its peak and on Tuesday, when surveyors do their monthly manual survey, they’re likely to find a snowpack at about 160 percent of the average. Mammoth Mountain, which soars to 11,000 feet in the central Sierra, has had 50 feet of snow pile onto its sweeping inclines. The nearby Mammoth ski resort tweeted that it had broken its snowfall record for February—and it was only two weeks into the month.

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Oroville Dam Spillway To Be Used Tuesday. The State Says It’s Ready

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

Oroville Dam’s massive flood-control spillway will be deployed Tuesday for the first time since it was rebuilt for $1.1 billion after a near-catastrophe forced the evacuation of 188,000 people in 2017. In a brief statement Sunday, the California Department of Water Resources’ deputy director Joel Ledesma said the agency has “restored full functionality to the Oroville main spillway and is operating the reservoir to ensure public safety of those downstream. The Oroville main spillway was designed and constructed using 21st century engineering practices and under the oversight and guidance from state and federal regulators and independent experts.”

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Legislators Cut Funds For Colorado Water, Drought Plans

/in , /by /The Gazette (Colorado Springs)by Jerd Smith

Colorado lawmakers, citing lower revenue forecasts and competing needs, have dramatically reduced proposed funding for the Colorado Water Plan and Colorado River drought work, providing roughly one-third of what Gov. Jared Polis had requested in his budget for this year.

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Cal City OKs Groundwater Plan

/in , /by /The Antelope Valley Press (Palmdale, Calif.)by Allison Gatlin

The City Council ap­proved a regional plan for managing the area’s ground­water resources, which brings a measure of local control and to qualify for state funds for water-re­lated projects. The Fremont Basin In­te­grated Regional Water Plan has been in the works for at least four years, fill­ing in a hole in water plans in the area, as the sur­rounding groundwater basins already have plans in place.California City is one of three pri­mary stake­hold­ers in the document, with the An­telope Val­ley-East Kern Water Agency and the Mojave Public Utility District.

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California Governor’s Plan To Create New Drinking Water Tax Faces Resistance

/in , , /by /CNBC (Los Angeles)by Jeff Daniels

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, wants to create a tax on water customers to fund a safe drinking water program in disadvantaged communities. But a rival proposal by a lawmaker from his own party seeks to tap into the state’s record budget surplus instead. One million Californians live without clean water for drinking or bathing, according to Newsom. He recently called attention to hundreds of water systems in the state that are out of compliance with primary drinking water quality standards because of contamination by lead, arsenic or uranium.

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U.S. Sues California Over River Flow Standards

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Bettina Boxall

The federal government Thursday added to the pile of lawsuits challenging new state requirements to boost river flows in order to help struggling fish populations. The U.S. Department of the Interior, which manages California’s largest irrigation supply project, argues that the flow standards will interfere with its operation of the New Melones Dam and reservoir on the Stanislaus River. The federal complaint, filed in both state and federal court, is the 11th lawsuit launched against the State Water Resources Control Board since it voted in December to require greater flows in the Stanislaus and two other tributaries of the San Joaquin River.

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California’s Water Infrastructure To Be Tested This Spring As Massive Winter Snowpack Melts Away

/in , , /by /SF Gate (San Francisco)by Mike Branom

As waterlogged storms repeatedly pounded California this winter, social media was filled with variations on a distinct photo theme. The subject was a freshly-plowed road, wedged in between towering white walls of snow measuring 10, 20 feet tall. As long as vehicles had safe passage, a wintry trench would be fine – that snow had to go somewhere, after all. But with an early-spring heatwave in the forecast, it’s time to start thinking about what a massive amount of snowmelt will mean for the state – that water has to go somewhere, after all.

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