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.
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.
Southern California’s Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, has seen its share of ups and downs since it was accidentally created in 1905 by Colorado River floodwaters. Now, already badly polluted by chemicals from agricultural irrigation runoff, which provides the lake’s inflow, the surrounding shoreline is in danger of becoming a toxic blight.
A winter storm is forecast to strike next week in Southern California that could bring up to 4 inches of rain and result in mudslides or flooding in some wildfire-scarred areas. Crews were scrambling this week to clean out debris in catch basins and prepare for heavy rains forecast to fall in burn areas Tuesday into Wednesday. The absence of vegetation and roots in burned-out hillsides and canyons makes them more susceptible to mudslides and even landslides, officials said.
The Trump administration, teeing up a fight with California regulators, is trying to pump more water through the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the southern half of the state despite fresh evidence of the estuary’s shrinking fish population. A proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to “maximize water deliveries” represents the administration’s first concrete effort to make good on a promise Donald Trump made while campaigning for the presidency in Fresno, where he vowed to deliver more water to San Joaquin Valley farmers and derided protections for endangered fish species.
States throughout the West have rushed to legalize marijuana over the last four years. The biggest by far is California, where recreational use of the drug became legal on January 1. The states are clamoring for the tax revenue in these new markets, but they seem less concerned with how they may affect water resources. Even now, no state regulators can answer a basic question about marijuana cultivation: How much water will this new industry consume? Yet state and local governments are permitting tens of thousands of indoor and outdoor marijuana farms without such answers.
Californians thirsting for relief from a parched, nearly rainless start to the state’s wet season are finally getting some relief this week. The single meteorological factor contributing to one of the driest final three months of the year on record in California has been a stubborn area of high pressure aloft. Nicknamed the “ridiculously resilient ridge” during the heart of the state’s exceptional drought earlier in the decade, this atmospheric roadblock has steered the Pacific storm track well north of California much of the fall and early winter so far.
Unfiltered and untreated water from a natural spring might sound like an elixir, but health experts warn that drinking so-called “raw water” could end with a trip to the doctor, or worse. “Raw water” or unsterilized water bottled directly from a natural spring, is becoming a sought-after item in California and parts of the U.S., according to the New York Times. The water, which can sell for around $40 for a 2.5-gallon glass jug, is often free of the any water filtration processes that some “raw water” advocates argue strips natural water of probiotics.
When the chief of California’s snow measurements conducts his manual surveys, he usually does it in style, skimming the snow in cross-country skis as reporters plod behind him in snowshoes. No need this time. The vast meadow around Phillips, a remote spot near Echo Summit, was mostly grass and dirt Wednesday, with pitifully small patches of snow. Frank Gehrke, the Department of Water Resources employee who runs the survey, wore simple winter boots as he walked the 200-yard course off Highway 50 to complete the first official snow survey of the season.
The California Water Commission got a look in December at all 11 projects vying for water storage bond money, including Sites Reservoir. Proponents of Sites, an off-stream reservoir proposed for a valley west of Maxwell, are seeking $1.7 billion from Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion bond measure approved by voters in November 2014. Proposition 1 included $2.7 billion for water storage projects, but the 11 proposals would cost $5.7 billion.
