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One of the nation’s most successful partnerships between farm and urban water agencies has lately run into serious turbulence, potentially threatening an important Colorado River water-sharing deal. Twelve years ago, the Palo Verde Irrigation District in Blythe, California, signed an agreement with the powerful Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It allowed the latter to pay Palo Verde farmers to fallow up to 35 percent of their acreage in times of water scarcity, and take delivery of the unused irrigation water, via canal, to serve its urban customers in the Los Angeles area, some 200 miles away.

California could one day be uninhabitable. Fire. Heat. Floods. Infestation. Disease. Suffering. Scientists have for years warned about the ravaging consequences of a warming planet. Decamping for the 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, California academics and political leaders were mulling how to better deploy the distressing projections to give unwary citizens a better understanding of what’s at stake and compel them to see the wisdom of embracing sustainability.

A proposed desalination facility producing 5 million gallons of drinkable water a day would satisfy the needs of all South Coast Water District customers, district General Manager Andy Brunhart said this week, though he added the agency would not rely completely on that source to serve ratepayers. The 5-acre Doheny Ocean Desalination Project would be built on 30 acres of district-owned property near San Juan Creek in Dana Point. “We would never want to be 100% desalinated water,” Brunhart said Thursday. “We always want to take some [imported] water so pumps do not rust and decay.”

Weather forecasting has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go before it will be a reliable tool for making water management decisions. That was the message delivered by various expert speakers during a half-day workshop titled “Can We Really Predict the Weather? The Latest in Forecasting.” The workshop, co-sponsored by the California Department of Water Resources and ACWA on Thursday, Nov. 9, featured presentations from local water district representatives, DWR and NASA. DWR Director Grant Davis and ACWA Deputy Executive Director for External Affairs Jennifer Persike kicked off the workshop with opening remarks.

Wildfires burned millions of acres of land across the western United States over the past several months, leaving many areas at risk of flooding and mudslides during winter. As of Nov. 6, wildfires have burned over 8.8 million acres across the United States, more than 2 million acres above normal, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.  Some of the most devastating fires scorched Northern California in early October, leaving behind large burn scars, or areas of scorched earth with little vegetation remaining.