You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Appeals Court Upholds Water Release Intended to Help Salmon

/in /by /U.S. News (Washington, D.C.)

A federal appeals court has upheld a decision by federal officials to release water from a Northern California dam to prevent a possible salmon die-off. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had the authority to release the additional water from Lewiston Dam in 2013 to help migrating winter-run salmon in the lower Klamath River. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court rejected a lawsuit by Westlands Water District, a major water supplier to Central Valley farmers.

Full Story

How Food Companies Can Help Drive Agricultural Water Conservation

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Kirsten James

Last week I was a guest on an “inspection” trip of the Colorado River Aqueduct, the engineering marvel that delivers up to 1 billion gallons (3.8 billion liters) of water daily to Southern California from the Colorado River hundreds of miles to the east. Organized by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California, these inspections are a relic of an old piece of administrative code. Today they’ve become a well-choreographed public relations effort – right down to the framed MWD mission statement on the walls of the bedrooms provided to guests.

Full Story

Water Districts Recharging Aquifer

/in /by /California AG Todayby Patrick Cavanaugh

With the reservoir and all water district canals brimming, there is a great effort to move water into underground aquifer recharge ponds, said David Nixon, general manager of the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District in Kern County. “Absolutely, we tried to get every acre foot of water in this district we possibly can,” he said. “With that water at this time of year, before it’s needed by agriculture, it’s all about water storage and rebuilding that underground aquifer. “We have about 1500 acres of recharge ponds that we can use to refill the underground aquifer,” Nixon said.

Full Story

Anderson Reservoir Continues To Spill, Nearby Residents Warned About Flooding Risk

/in /by /NBC San Diegoby Rick Boone

For the second day in a row, a torrent of water on Sunday flowed over the Anderson Reservoir spillway, marking a phenomenon that hadn’t happened for 11 years until this weekend. The Morgan Hill reservoir hovered around 101.4 percent of its maximum capacity as of Sunday afternoon, but that number could rise as an impending storm barrels toward the Bay Area.

 

Full Story

Lake Oroville Reaches Goal; 11 Sickened At Shelter

/in /by /Record Searchlight (Redding)

California Department of Water Resources officials reached their goal of getting water levels in Lake Oroville 50 feet below the dam crest Monday.The reservoir reached 50 feet below capacity as of 6 a.m. Monday. The 850-foot mark is important because it gives ground crews more flexibility for water flowing into the lake during this week’s storms, DWR officials said. “It allows us to lower our outflows from the dam, so we can start working on the diversion pool,” said Chris Orrock, a DWR spokesman.

Full Story

California Dam Crisis Could Have Been Averted

/in /by /Scientific American (Armonk, NY)by Jane Braxton Little

By now we have all seen the spectacular images of volumes of water crashing down the Oroville Dam spillway in California and blasting upward into the air as they hit an enormous crater in the spillway floor, flooding down the adjacent hillside, threatening people in towns below. Those images reveal a big mistake: failure to update infrastructure to defend against climate change.

Full Story

BLOG: Learning from Oroville: Water Board Proposes Climate Change Resolution

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Juliet Christian-Smith

Earlier this week, while areas downstream of Oroville Dam were still under an evacuation order, California’s State Water Resources Control Board released a draft resolution for a comprehensive response to climate change. It resolves that the agency will embed climate science into all its existing work, both to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. In doing so, the state water board demonstrates how public agencies can respond more proactively to the challenges that global warming is bringing our way.

Full Story

California Is Getting Too Much Of A Good Thing

/in /by /Fox 9 (Eden Prairie, Minn.)by Cody Matz

In a region that has seen so much drought over the last decade, the prospect of moisture would be a welcome one.  But right now, not so much.  The state of California has seen more moisture in the last few weeks than it typically gets in a year and this could actually turn into their wettest “wet season” on record.  Several more inches of rain looks likely for northern and central parts of the state with the highest elevations getting several more feet of snow.

Full Story

California Braces For More Rain. How Bad Can It Get?

/in /by /The New York Timesby Erin McCann

It’s raining in California. Again. A storm system hitting north and central California on Monday and Tuesday will deliver two to three inches of rain to the Central Valley, and up to 10 inches of rain to the mountains, said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. The service has issued a flood warning through Wednesday across most of the Sacramento River Valley and the surrounding areas.

Full Story

Continued Erosion Of Oroville Dam’s Main Spillway Part Of ‘Normal Process,’ State Officials Say

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Adam Ashton

Oroville Dam’s badly damaged main spillway is still deteriorating from an onslaught of fast-paced water, but state officials insist that it is “stable” as they make repairs. State officials expected the concrete main spillway to erode last week when they opened its gates, betting that it was a safer option than the dam’s little-used emergency spillway.

 

Full Story