The most severe drought in living memory did a number on California’s blue oaks. A new study by UC Berkeley researchers shows how even centuries-old trees struggled when landscape water disappeared between 2012 and 2015. Some showed stress by producing miniature leaves, some by shedding leaves, and some simply died.
The Sierra Nevada is getting soaked this year, and Lake Tahoe is one of the biggest beneficiaries.The sixth-largest lake in the United States, which straddles California and Nevada, reached its natural rim after weekend storms dumped 12.5 billion gallons of water into the lake. A trickle is now flowing through the dam and into the Truckee River. This is a huge milestone for a body of water that has flirted with record-low levels amid an ongoing drought.
Weeks away from getting a new chief who is fracking-friendly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally released its final report on the threat posed to our drinking water by fracking. A 2015 draft report released by the EPA was supposed to answer the question of whether deep drilling and fracking for natural gas and oil posed a threat to our drinking water.
A recently released study on winter-run chinook salmon adds a new wrinkle to efforts to conserve the fish, which have had a larger influence on statewide water policy during California’s drought. As water supplies dwindled during the drought, state and federal officials found it increasingly difficult to protect the endangered salmon’s eggs and recent hatches, which need colder water to survive in the Sacramento River. Water agencies from Redding to Southern California saw their supplies reduced as federal and state officials tried to manage water temperatures in the river to benefit the salmon.
California took a big (and much-needed) leap forward in 2014 when it passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Even though sustainability won’t be mandated until 2040 or 2042, depending on the groundwater basin, the process of implementing the legislation is well underway.
From the end of June 2017, each groundwater basin is required to form at least one groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) – the governing entity that will then be tasked with putting together the plan for achieving sustainability.
A double-barreled storm will soak California with rain and flash flooding while areas farther north are hit with more snow and ice into Friday. While the storm will bring beneficial moisture to the region, it will also cause travel disruptions to heavily-populated areas along the Pacific coast. Travel was halted along part of Highway 20 in Oregon on Wednesday afternoon after multiple avalanches made the mountain road impassable. No injuries were reported and crews quickly worked to clear the snow.
One of the strongest rainstorms of the season is set to gush over the Bay Area on Thursday just as unusually high tides and blustery winds hit, making for what forecasters expect to be a day of mayhem.
City work crews were gearing up for the super soaker that’s forecast to dump up to 2 inches throughout the day in San Francisco and in the East Bay, and twice that amount in parts of the North and South Bay. Commuters all over the Bay Area should expect hellish driving conditions during the morning and afternoon, when the most intense rain sweeps through.
As she stood at the edge of the Embarcadero on Tuesday, the bay waters surging high but rarely spilling toward her feet, Lori Lambertson stated the obvious.
Water regulators plan to allow a lake in Northern California to fill to the brim this winter for the first time since using chemicals to kill off non-native fish.
The Sacramento Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2hli5sQ ) that the Department of Water Resources lowered Lake Davis in the 1990s to prevent storms from washing predatory northern pike into the waterways below the dam, where they could kill native fish.
As what’s expected to be the biggest storm of the season batters Northern California on Thursday, rivers throughout the region are expected to swell.
Creeks and streams in the Bay Area will likely rise only a few feet and won’t come close to flooding, but some flows on the North Coast and in the Sierra Nevada are predicted to reach moderate flood stage. As of Wednesday afternoon, the California-Nevada River Forecast Center predicted the Sacramento River at Fort Ord and the Truckee River in the town of Truckee may reach flood stage in the next 48 hours.
