More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.
More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe.
California Gov. Jerry Brown asked President Trump on Friday to declare a major disaster in the state because of damage from a month of storms as more rain hit the south. Brown’s letter said a powerful series of January storms brought “relentless” rain and high winds that caused flooding, mudslides, evacuations, erosion, power outages and at least eight deaths. Northern California was hardest hit. Brown said the storm system was so severe and widespread that state and local governments need federal assistance to continue dealing with the problems it created.
For the first time since Oroville Dam was completed in 1968, water from its storm-swollen reservoir overtopped the emergency spillway Saturday, sending sheets of water down a forested hillside and adding to the murk and debris churning in the Feather River below. State officials said they did not expect the flows to cause flooding in Oroville or other communities downstream, but the emergency releases underscored the perilous situation confronting the operators of California’s second-largest reservoir for the rest of this extraordinarily rainy winter.
While most wish the rain would go away after a soggy, flood-filled weather season, there are pluses — namely huge gains in water to help with the pesky drought that has been hanging around for half the decade. One of the most impressive gains of the season happened late last year, when NOAA found that Lake Tahoe added 8,690,131,707 gallons of fresh water between Dec. 9 and 11. If you’re trying to picture just how much water that is, here’s a handy fact: it’s the same amount as filling 13,158 Olympic-sized swimming pools, Forbes reported.
Officials in California prepared to implement a never-used emergency plan to release millions of cubic feet of water building up behind the Oroville Dam after a gaping hole formed in its spillway. Bill Croyle, deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the dam itself remains in no danger of breaching, however due to unprecedented amounts of storm water flowing into the reservoir after torrential rain in the region, the water level is now 14 feet away from rising over the dam.
Combining $3 million each from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) have made possible a $6 million pilot grant program for joint applications involving funding for both agricultural water suppliers and agricultural operations. The grant funding provided in this joint program is intended to address multiple goals including: 1) water use efficiency, conservation and reduction, 2) greenhouse gas emission reductions, 3) groundwater protection, and 4) sustainability of agricultural operations and food production.
U.S. weather forecasters said Thursday the cool flip side to the climate phenomenon El Niño has faded away. The La Niña episode lasted only four months and was among the weakest and shortest on record, coming on the heels of one of the strongest El Niños, said Mike Halpert of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. La Niña, a cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, often lasts a year or more, longer than El Niños. La Niña conditions were first detected in October and disappeared in January.
Cindy Messer, a former deputy director of the Delta Stewardship Council, has been appointed chief deputy director at the California Department of Water Resource where she has served as assistant chief deputy director since 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office announced Tuesday. Messer, of Sacramento, was deputy director of the Planning, Performance and Technology Division at the Delta Stewardship Council from 2012 to 2016 and assistant executive officer at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy from 2010 to 2012.
Water advocacy leaders in California are calling for the state government to permanently invest in water infrastructure–noting that over 300 California communities are affected by unsafe drinking water. Among the chemicals found in the drinking water of these communities are uranium, nitrates, and arsenic. Jennifer Clary from Clean Water Action said during a statewide conference call this week that agricultural communities on the Central Coast specifically are breeding ground for nitrates. “In Monterey County, about 40 percent of the private wells that have been tested over the last two years have exceeded the nitrate standards,” Clary said.
