The global dam industry claims hydropower can build climate resilience, and harmlessly wean us from fossil fuels. But as events in the past 12 months have shown, nothing could be further from the truth. A press release, issued on October 31, read: “Itaipu is a UN Climate Change Partner at the COP23 Climate Conference.” For those who don’t know, the Latin American firm was behind Itaipu Dam, one of the largest megadams in Latin America.
Droughts and floods are both a part of life in California as 2017 has so clearly demonstrated: It took one of the wettest winters on record to pull the state from the depths of a five-year drought. The state has invested funds in bulking up drought and flood protection in the past, but recent events highlighted the necessity of rejuvenating those efforts. As a result, Gov. Jerry Brown recently approved a new general obligation bond measure that would fund projects focused on those problems.
It’s often said you can’t make something out of nothing. Cody Friesen may have come as close to succeeding as anyone. To show me his technological sleight of hand, Friesen invites me to a hillside house in Berkeley, California on a sunny afternoon. There, in a shaded courtyard, we each sample a cup of water that flows from a drinking fountain. The water is cool and delicious – and it was made out of thin air. Literally.
It’s time for California to rethink how it manages water for the environment. Despite four decades of effort, many of the state’s freshwater-dependent native species are in decline. Controversy over water for the environment remains high. The latest drought left lasting impacts on already-stressed species and their ecosystems and highlighted the need for a change of course.
After our recent drought, the importance of providing sustainable water supplies for California’s cities and farms – both now and over the long term – is clearer than ever. And long-term water planning has to include a commitment to manage groundwater aquifers carefully, recharging them whenever possible and pumping from them only when necessary. Modesto must protect its groundwater supplies. It’s the only way for farmers and city dwellers alike to maintain their economy, their heritage and their very way of life for future generations.
I got up at 5:15 a.m. on Saturday morning with the idea of driving 100 miles to watch the sun rise over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. I wanted to show my 84-year-old mom the beauty of one of California’s best-kept secrets. Maybe see some of the Delta’s magnificent sandhill cranes capable of flying up to 400 miles in a single day. But my real goal was to get a clearer perspective on the merit of building a single, 35-mile tunnel to provide a more reliable supply of water for generations of thirsty Californians.
The first atmospheric river-fueled storm of the season is expected to make landfall in California on Wednesday afternoon, when it will dump inches of rain in the Bay Area, disgorge up to a foot of snow over the Sierra Nevada and likely trigger flash floods in fire-scorched wine country. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning from 4 p.m. Wednesday to 3 a.m. Thursday for those areas of Sonoma and Napa counties that were scorched by a multiple wildfires in October.
The current three- to seven-day forecasts Americans have come to rely on for planning everything from weekend picnics to hurricane evacuations rely heavily on constant updates from satellites that orbit Earth’s poles measuring temperature, moisture and a host of other variables that define the planet’s ever-changing weather. Early Tuesday, NASA plans to launch the first of four state-of-the-art polar orbiters for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a $1.6 billion weather satellite that will monitor the entire planet as it rotates below, feeding computer models the data they need to make increasingly accurate predictions.
A roaring “pineapple express” is expected to blast the Sierra Wednesday and Thursday, marking the biggest storm of the season so far. The warm, moisture-rich storm is fueled by an “atmospheric river” originating in the South Pacific and predicted to bring up to a foot and above of snow at elevations as low as 7,500 feet.
