Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday declared a state of emergency and requested federal aid for parts of California hard hit by winter storms. The emergency declaration applies to 53 of California’s 58 counties, including all in the Bay Area. The order mobilizes the state’s Office of Emergency Services to the affected areas and directs the Department of Transportation to seek federal relief for damaged roads and highways.
This picture from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows how much land in California’s Central Valley is sinking, due primarily to the drawing of groundwater during periods of drought. Heavy rains have fallen on many parts of the state this winter, but the image above is a reminder of the lingering effects of drought, even in wetter times. As the legend at the bottom of the picture suggests, the yellowest areas are those with the greatest degree of subsidence (the term for sinking land) and the bluest areas are those with the least.
Fueled by a parade of “Pineapple Express” storms, California is in the midst of its wettest water year in 122 years of record-keeping, according to federal scientists. Between October 2016 and February 2017, California averaged 27.81 inches of precipitation, the highest average since such records began being kept in 1895, according to data released Wednesday by the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The dramatic spillway failure at Oroville Dam sparked a national conversation around the status of dams throughout the West. But dams are just one small part of the “gray” infrastructure designed to control flows, hem in rivers and transport water around the state. California’s flood and water-management system needs an overhaul to address everything from eroding levees to parched Central Valley aquifers and collapsing ecosystems.
Oroville Dam’s heavily damaged main spillway is expected to resume releasing water a little more than a week from now as levels continue to rise in the reservoir. The state Department of Water Resources announced Wednesday that the battered concrete spillway is likely to begin water releases around March 17. At that point, the level in Lake Oroville is expected to have risen to 865 feet. That’s well below the point at which water would go over the adjacent emergency spillway, but several feet above the comfort level established by DWR acting director Bill Croyle.
The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee passed a proposed $3.5 billion water and parks bond measure Tuesday, with members calling for an assurance that if approved by California voters in 2018, the funds would be equitably distributed throughout the state. The bond, Senate Bill 5 by Sen. Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, includes $500 million for flood protection investments that were just added after the recent floods to address the state’s urgent needs.
A federal appeals court sided with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians on Tuesday in a landmark water case, upholding a ruling that the tribe has federally established rights to groundwater in the Coachella Valley. The decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to set an important precedent for tribes across the country. The three-judge panel upheld a 2015 ruling in which a judge backed the Agua Caliente tribe’s claim that it holds a federally granted “reserved right” to groundwater beneath its reservation in Palm Springs and surrounding areas.
For the first time in the nearly six years of significant drought in California, a slew of intense winter storms have overfilled reservoirs, flooded roadways, and returned a sense of possibility to the parched regions of the state. Who could blame any Californian for taking an extra-long shower or two when it’s suddenly so abundant? But on Tuesday morning, NASA’s water scientist Jay Famiglietti wrote in a widely shared Los Angeles Times op-ed that even if the drought is technically declared over (which isn’t exactly the case), California will always be short of water.
The recent election may have changed the dynamic in Washington, but the facts on the ground in the California desert remain the same: The Cadiz water mining project poses a grave threat to the California desert and should not be approved. Covering about 35,000 acres of prime desert land, the project sits in the heart of the new Mojave Trails National Monument, described by President Obama as an area that “exemplifies the remarkable ecology of the Mojave Desert, where the hearty insistence of life is scratched out from unrelenting heat and dryness.”
