In April 2015, California Gov. Jerry Brown called on the people of the most populous state to reduce their water use by 25 percent in response to a punishing four-year drought. It was an audacious goal, and Californians came close to meeting it. Between June 2015 and April 2016, when restrictions were in effect, residents reduced the amount of water they used by 24.5 percent.
For California governor Jerry Brown and his administration, 2017 was a water year to remember, and one that would figure into the drafting of the state’s 2018-19 budget, which was released early this month. The $190 billion proposed spending plan names California’s drought and the “extreme natural events of 2017” as determining factors in how the cash was divvied up.
After a blockbuster snowpack winter for 2016-2017, California is once again in a snow drought and these National Park Service webcams, comparing this week to the same week in 2017, show the shocking difference.Last winter, the snow at the Yosemite “High Sierra” webcam, shown above and located at about 8,000 feet in Northern California, nearly covered the camera. This year, there is barely snow on Half Dome peak shown on the webcam.
David Guy is president of the Northern California Water Association (NCWA), an organization committed to ensuring that water supplies are available for the Sacramento Valley — both for today’s users and for future generations. “The Sacramento Valley is a rich mosaic of farmlands, cities, rural communities, refuges, managed wetlands and meandering rivers,” David said. “Every drought we experience reveals numerous pressures on the water supplies that support this vibrant region. We have to be motivated and forward-thinking to advance the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the Sacramento Valley by enhancing and preserving its water rights, supplies and water quality.”
An investigation into last winter’s near catastrophe at Oroville Dam uncovered a litany of problems with how the dam was built and maintained, but one of them stands out: Even as workers built the dam, they were raising alarms about the eroded, crumbling rock on which they were directed to lay concrete for the 3,000-foot-long main flood control spillway.
California’s sweeping effort to regulate groundwater extraction is still in its infancy. But many community groups are already concerned that too little is being done to involve low-income and disadvantaged residents in managing aquifers dominated by agriculture.
Controversy is swelling over the February 2017 spillway collapse at the Oroville Dam in Northern California, after local officials last week filed a scathing lawsuit alleging corruption at the state’s main water agency and lawmakers called for FERC to delay the facility’s relicensing. “Decades of mismanagement and intentional lack of maintenance” by the California Department of Water Resources led to the federally declared disaster, according to allegations in the Jan. 17 lawsuit filed by the City of Oroville against the department.
Trends of warmer winter temperature in the Sierra Nevada are predicted to reduce local snowpack — western Nevada County’s most important source of water. In the future, precipitation increasingly will fall as rain instead of snow, scientists forecast. The impact of that shift on local water supply is dramatic. Nevada Irrigation District’s system for collecting water for local use — like other systems along the Sierra Nevada — was built on the assumption that wintertime precipitation would come as snow and stay in the mountains until the spring melt.
A winter storm swept into Northern California on Friday and dumped nearly a foot of much-needed snow in higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada. More snow was expected in the region before the system moved out. Moderate to occasionally heavy snow was forecast through afternoon, when the storm was expected to shift course to the central portion of the state, said National Weather Service forecaster Craig Shoemaker.
There’s a term for what’s going on right now in the Sierra Nevada and the mountains that feed the Colorado River. It’s called a “snow drought,” and Nevada climate scientists warn that Westerners had better get used to the phenomenon. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/science-and-technology/nevada-researchers-warn-of-more-snow-droughts-even-in-wet-years/Periods of below-average snowpack have become increasingly common in some Western mountain ranges, and more frequent snow droughts are likely as global temperatures continue to rise, according to Benjamin Hatchett, a postdoctoral fellow in meteorology and climatology at the Desert Research Institute in Reno.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
