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For decades, millions of gallons of treated sewage water has been pumped into the ground to fight sea-level rise. While this process sounds harmful, it’s actually quite the opposite, according to experts. It is crucial in keeping salt water out of aquifers and keeping groundwater replenished. To date, nearly 490 billion gallons of recycled water have been recharged into the Central and West Coast Basin aquifers. That is one of many water recharge projects occurring all over the world.

 

Water regulators in Sacramento on Wednesday will decide on a recommendation to extend the drought rules, uncertain if rain and snow will continue through spring. Republican State Sen. Jim Nielsen of Gerber, who leads a swelling coalition of law makers and local water districts statewide, says it’s time for Gov. Jerry Brown to end the drought emergency, or lose the public’s trust. Californians heeded the call during the historic drought, taking shorter showers and ripping out their lawns during the five-year drought, but the weather has dramatically changed, which everybody can see, Nielsen says in a letter to the governor.

A major storm packing a triple threat Tuesday dumped more than a foot of new snow in the Sierra Nevada, unleashed heavy rain that triggered flooding and mudslides in the valleys around Reno and Carson City, and pushed potentially damaging winds across much of western Nevada.

The National Weather Service issued avalanche, flooding and high wind warnings up and down the eastern front of the mountains.

Classes were delayed two hours at some schools around Lake Tahoe, where more than a foot of snow was reported at ski resorts.

Take one look out at the Mokelumne River today and you might see the flows are fast and high out on the water. All of the recent rains have created an abundance of water in Northern California, but there’s nowhere to store it all. The Delta Counties Coalition, represented by San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties, is now arguing that if the state continues to focus on the $15 billion Twin Tunnels project, it will keep missing opportunities to invest in more cost-efficient and sustainable solutions like surface and groundwater storage.

 

A dry El Niño year followed by a wet start to what is expected to be a dry year in Southern California has raised questions about California’s climate. California is a state of extremes when it comes to precipitation, which has alternated between drought and excessive rain throughout recorded history. Los Angeles, for example, has an average of 15 inches of rain a year, even though the city rarely nears that amount. In the past 30 years, Los Angeles has gone from extremely dry years to well above average years of rain, which results in the 15-inch average overall.