California regulators approved new rules last month to enable water suppliers to treat wastewater and redistribute it as drinking water. The state says that the new standards, which took years to craft, are the most advanced in the nation for treating wastewater and will add millions of gallons of additional drinking water to state supplies.
A heating planet and expanding commercial agriculture are putting increasing pressure on America’s vital aquifers — underground reservoirs that supply water to an estimated 145 million Americans, as well as supporting much of the nation’s food supply.
The push towards a green, battery-powered future comes with a major tradeoff. Student reporters from the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University discovered that increased mining for lithium inside the United States will stress freshwater aquifers. Caitlin Thompson has their investigation.
Hydrologists measure large amounts of water in acre-feet – an acre of water one-foot deep, or 326,000 gallons. In an average year, 200 million acre-feet of water falls on California as rain or snow. The vast majority of it sinks into the ground or evaporates, but about a third of it finds its way into rivers. Half of that will eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean.
It’s hard to think of a California company that carries more toxic baggage than Cadiz Inc. The Los Angeles firm has been trying for more than 20 years to advance a plan to siphon water from under the Mojave Desert and pump it to users throughout Southern California.
Metropolitan Water District representative Cynthia Kurtz reported that the agency has 3.4 million acre-feet of water in storage, enough to meet the future demand of its customers regardless of the weather.
In a sign of the ongoing threats to its precious groundwater stores, half a dozen regions in California rank among the world’s most rapidly declining aquifers, according to research published today.
A month after California’s water regulator gave its seal of approval to a controversial water infrastructure project that could replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the plan is coming under renewed legal fire.
California’s largest reservoir has raised its dam gates as water continues to swell following heavy rainfall in the state. A deluge of rainfall in the western U.S. has seen Shasta Lake rise by nearly 10 feet in the last week alone.
An ongoing, historic drought in California has compelled California state legislators to rethink the state’s long-standing treatment of water rights. While the recent heavy snowpack and wet spring and summer have alleviated the extreme drought conditions for now, the changing climate leaves California susceptible to future long and extreme droughts.
