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OPINION: Block Trump Plan to Pump Delta Water South to the Central Valley

/in /by /The Mercury News‎ (San Jose)

Few things are more important to the future of the Bay Area and Northern California than the quality of our water supply. And here comes the latest threat. At the behest of the Central Valley’s billionaire agribusiness operators, the Trump administration on Dec. 29 proposed pumping more water south from the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta despite the potentially devastating long-term impact on the water Silicon Valley and the East Bay count on.

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First Big Winter Storm Reaches California. Here’s What it Means for the Water Year

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee

California finally got its first real taste of winter weather Monday as a substantial rainstorm swept through the state, causing numerous traffic accidents and bringing warnings of flooding and mudslides in areas burned by wildfires. The National Weather Service said much of the Sacramento Valley could receive up to 2 inches of rain by the time the storm winds down late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Although the storm started out fairly warm, bringing mostly rain, parts of the Sierra Nevada could expect as much as 30 inches of snow.

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2017 Was Costliest Year Ever In U.S. for Weather, Climate Disasters

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicle

Last year’s devastating floods and fires in California combined with hurricanes and other natural disasters to wreak unprecedented financial damage on the United States, the federal government reported Monday. The nation endured 16 weather and climate events that inflicted $1 billion or more apiece in damage in 2017, tying 2011 for the most 10-digit calamities in a year and setting an annual total-cost record of $306 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The natural disasters resulted in 362 deaths.

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A Dense Blob Has Kept California Weather Dry. Here’s How It Works

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow

Think of it as a dense blob of air. When it parks itself over the Pacific Ocean, it can act like a wall – and prevent rain and snow from reaching Northern California. When meteorologists say a “high pressure system” or a “ridiculously resilient ridge” is keeping the West unseasonably dry, this is what they mean.

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Hopes for Delta Smelt Rebound Dashed by Record-Low Survey

/in /by /East Bay Times (San Jose)

A tiny fish caught in California’s tug of war over water has become harder to find than ever, a state survey found, despite a very wet winter last year that had raised hopes for a bounce back after five years of drought. Environmentalists say the record-low fall survey for the Delta smelt bolsters the case for protecting salmon and other wild fish with sharper limits on water exported from the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and many cities in California

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Soaking Storm May End Southern California Wildfire Season Next Week

/in /by /AccuWeather

The first significant storm of the winter season may bring drenching rain and heavy mountain snow to the southwestern United States, including Southern California, next week. The weather pattern began to change across the region during the first few days of 2018 as a small amount of moisture began to flow in from the Pacific Ocean and into California.

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Final Verdict on Oroville Dam: ‘Long-Term Systemic Failure’ at the State

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee

Citing a “long-term systemic failure” at the California Department of Water Resources, independent forensic investigators released their final report Friday on the nearly-catastrophic emergency last February at Oroville Dam. In a 584-page report on the disaster at America’s tallest dam, the investigative team blamed a “complex interaction of relatively common physical, human, organizational and industry factors” for the failure of the dam’s main flood-control spillway Feb. 7. The giant crater that erupted in the concrete chute set off a slow-motion emergency that culminated five days later with the evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents.

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Human Error Played A Role In Oroville Dam Spillway Failure, Report Finds

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Ralph Vartabedian

Complacency, bureaucracy and an inadequate safety culture led to the failure last year of the Oroville Dam spillway, according to an independent investigation report released Friday. The findings point to human error by a number of organizations but say that the dam’s owner, the California Department of Water Resources, was “significantly overconfident and complacent about the integrity of its State Water Project civil infrastructure, including dams.”

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OPINION: The Delta Smelt Heads For Extinction, Marking A Half-Century Of Failed California Water Policy

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Michael Hiltzik

You might wish you had as much power to affect the environment and the economy as the delta smelt. Enemies have blamed the tiny freshwater fish for putting farmers out of business across California’s breadbasket, forcing the fallowing of vast acres of arable land, creating double-digit unemployment in agricultural counties, even clouding the judgment of scientists and judges.

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Final Verdict On Oroville Dam: ‘Long-Term Systemic Failure’

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

Citing a “long-term systemic failure” at the California Department of Water Resources, independent forensic investigators released their final report Friday on the nearly-catastrophic emergency last February at Oroville Dam. In a 584-page dissection of the disaster at America’s tallest dam, the investigative team said Oroville Dam was designed and built with flaws from the beginning, which were exacerbated by inadequate repairs in the years that followed.

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