Earlier in May, Brenda Burman, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation within the Department of the Interior, urged water managers in the Colorado River Basin to adopt Drought Contingency Plans (DCPs) in light of the very dry year we have experienced in 2018, and some new projections, which paint a discouraging future for the Colorado River Basin.
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected on Friday to send President Trump a detailed legal proposal to dramatically scale back an Obama-era regulation on water pollution, according to a senior E.P.A. official familiar with the plan. It is widely expected to be one of his agency’s most significant regulatory rollback efforts.
Climate troublemaker El Niño is forecast for this coming fall and winter, the Climate Prediction Center announced Thursday. The agency said there’s a 65 percent chance it will form by the winter, prompting it to issue an El Niño watch. In the U.S., a strong El Niño can result in a stormy winter along the West Coast, a wet winter across the South and a warmer-than-average winter in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains.
Supporters of a bill that would raise monthly water bills for many residents rallied in Sacramento Wednesday. The money raised from the bill would pay for systems to clean water in areas, supporters say, suffer from unsafe drinking water. Central Coast Sen. Bill Monning introduced the bill last year. It would increase residential water bills by 95 cents a month and is projected to raise $100 million. Low income earners would be exempt.
The state Department of Water Resources has beefed up its response to the independent forensic report on what caused the Oroville Dam spillway failure last year. The report, released on Jan. 5, described how insufficient maintenance and repairs and faulty original design allowed water to seep through the spillway’s cracks and joints. It also blamed “long-term systemic failure” on the part of DWR, regulators and the dam safety industry at large.
Even in times of drought, California’s natural and human-made arteries run with the nation’s cleanest, most accessible water. So fundamental is the stuff to the state’s identity and to its residents’ daily lives that California law recognizes a human right to “safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.”
Between 60 and 90 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen in the ice sheets of Antarctica, a continent roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined. If all that ice melted, it would be enough to raise the world’s sea levels by roughly 200 feet. While that won’t happen overnight, Antarctica is indeed melting, and a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that the melting is speeding up.
A coalition of environmental groups has sued the California Delta Stewardship Council (CDSC) over what they say are violations of law affecting Delta environment restoration. The suit was filed May 25 in Sacramento Superior Court, where headquarters for the council are located. The plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the River, Center for Food Safety, Sierra Club California, Planning and Conservation League and Restore the Delta.
A federal spending bill containing a provision that could spell disaster for opponents of the California WaterFix project passed an important hurdle when it was approved by the House Committee on Appropriations last week. The Fiscal Year 2019 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, introduced by Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42), includes a rider identified as Section 437. If approved, the rider on page 141 of a 142-page document will exempt the California WaterFix project from state and federal judicial review.
Last week’s column about California’s new water rationing apparently upset some of the Golden State’s swamp. This columnist pointed out that a new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown set new “standards” of water usage. Here’s what their water-rationing bill (now law) says, in language everyone can understand: “The bill, until January 1, 2025, would establish 55 gallons per capita daily as the standard for indoor residential water use. … The bill would impose civil liability for a violation of an order or regulation issued pursuant to these provisions, as specified.”
