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Santa Barbara County Moves Up A Notch In Drought Designation

After five years of increasing drought, the level of Santa Barbara County’s thirst on Monday finally climbed from “severe drought” to “moderate drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which began keeping track of the statewide situation in December 2011. Santa Barbara County didn’t fall into drought until the eighth week of 2012 when it hit the monitor’s chart at “abnormally dry” before climbing through two additional levels until about September 2013, when along with San Luis Obispo and parts of Kern counties it became the first area in the state to reach “extreme drought.”

California Farmers Give Mixed Reactions To Recent Rainfall

After record winter rainfall helped alleviate California’s drought, the relentless storms have left some farmers frustrated with the rain’s negative effects on their profit margins. Immanuel Solis, a longtime flower cultivator and merchant from Watsonville, noted that business at the local farmer’s markets has been slow. “[Customers] do not want to bring plants to their homes or gardens because of the rain” he said.

 

Climate Change Complicates The Whole Dam Debate

With California now on track to have the rainiest year in its history—on the heels of its worst drought in 500 years—the state has become a daily reminder that extreme weather events are on the rise. And the recent near-collapse of the spillway at California’s massive Oroville Dam put an exclamation point on the potentially catastrophic risks. More than 4,000 dams in the U.S. are now rated unsafe because of structural or other deficiencies. Bringing the entire system of 90,000 dams up to current standards would cost about $79 billion, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

Scientists Map Seawater Threat To California Central Coast Aquifers

Researchers from Stanford and the University of Calgary have transformed pulses of electrical current sent 1,000 feet underground into a picture of where seawater has infiltrated freshwater aquifers along the Monterey Bay coastline. The findings, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Hydrology but are available online now, help explain factors controlling this phenomenon, called saltwater intrusion, and could help improve the groundwater models that local water managers use to make decisions about pumping groundwater to meet drinking or farming needs.

OPINION: Taxpayers Deserve Transparency On Oroville Expenses

It is a simple question really: How much is the massive repair project below Lake Oroville costing each day. Simple or not, it has been appallingly difficult to get it answered. Representatives of our newspaper group have been asking how much the crisis at the dam is costing and, oh yes, who’s picking up the tab? The reporters have asked how many state employees are working, how many contractors are employed and what it costs for all the equipment.

Is There Too Much Water Behind Oroville Dam? Critics Say Army Corps Standards Unsafe

Long before a fractured spillway plunged Oroville Dam into the gravest crisis in its 48-year history, officials at a handful of downstream government agencies devised a plan they believed would make the dam safer: Store less water there. Sutter County, Yuba City and a regional levee-maintenance agency brought their recommendation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2006, when FERC was considering the state’s application to relicense Oroville Dam.

Finally, Severe Drought Gets the Boot From All of LA, Ventura, Santa Barbara Counties

Conditions have improved in a small swath of Southern California that was one of the last areas of severe drought still standing during a wet winter for the record books. Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties are no longer under severe drought, according to this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report. Recent rainfall improved the outlook for groundwater in the region, accounting for the improvement, the Monitor report said.

 

San Luis Reservoir Full For First Time In Six Years

Last summer it was a jarring symbol of California’s historic five-year drought. San Luis Reservoir — the vast lake along Highway 152 between Gilroy and Los Banos, the state’s fifth-largest reservoir and a key link in the water supply for millions of people and thousands of acres of Central Valley farmland — was just 10 percent full. A parched expanse of cracked mud, littered with old beer bottles and millions of tiny clam shells, San Luis was at its lowest level in 27 years.

Photos Taken Weeks Before Oroville Dam Spillway Broke Show Something Wrong

Something was wrong with the Oroville Dam spillway weeks before the Department of Water Resources noticed a hole in the concrete. Two photos taken by photographers from this newspaper show discoloration and possible damage to the concrete of the spillway at the spot where a gaping hole opened Feb. 7. Those pictures were taken Jan. 13 and Jan. 27. When asked for a response to the photos, California Natural Resources Agency deputy secretary for communication Nancy Vogel wrote in an email to this newspaper, “Oroville dam was frequently inspected by multiple state and federal agencies.

River Flow Debate Has Turned On How Best To Help Fish

Thousands of salmon have begun their lives not in sparkling mountain streams but in plastic trays stacked 16 high in a building. The Merced River Hatchery, near Snelling, has assisted Mother Nature since 1970. It removes eggs from adults that have returned after a few years in the Pacific Ocean, then rears the young until they are ready for their own journey to the sea. Upgrading the hatchery is part of a plan the Merced Irrigation District devised in response to a state proposal to sharply increase releases from Lake McClure.