A press release last week about the release of 97,000 pages of final environmental documents for the Delta tunnels says construction will begin “as soon as 2018.” We’ve heard projections like that before. In January 2009, the Schwarzenegger administration said construction on a peripheral canal — the predecessor to the tunnels — would start in 2011. Nearly eight years later, here we are still talking.
Bay Area residents will experience a drop in temperatures this weekend, as a flow of air from Canada moves south into Northern California. Temperatures are expected to dip into the 30s on New Years morning, but areas closer to the water—such as San Francisco—will stay slightly warmer. Meteorologists predict morning temperatures of 45 degrees on Jan. 1. Cold weather will continue into Monday and Tuesday in San Francisco, where daily highs may not reach 50 degrees.
This year has been a big one for water. California is still mired in drought, although less of the state is suffering than in previous years and each winter rainstorm brings a fresh bit of optimism. A large reserve of groundwater was found deep under the drought-stricken Central Valley, recycled water continues to gain in popularity, flooding to help fish and farmers is panning out and 2016 will likely wrap up as the hottest year on record. Below are seven other significant milestones that impacted California water and will help shape the year ahead.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack — the source of roughly a third of California’s water supply — remains nearly 30 percent below average for this time of the year despite the state recently witnessing its heaviest rainfall in decades. In an update released Tuesday, California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) said that the snowpack currently has a water content of 10.5 inches, just 72 percent of the Dec. 27 average. “It’s too soon to know whether this winter’s wet season will deliver enough rain and snow to move California closer to the end of the state’s five-year drought,” the DWR said.
It’s too soon to declare an end to California’s five-year drought despite the heaviest rain in three decades falling early in the wet season, officials said. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides roughly one-third of California’s water supply, measures at 72 percent of normal for water content, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources’ electronic monitors.
The California Department of Water Resources will conduct its first media-oriented manual snow survey of Water Year 2017 at 11 a.m. on Jan. 3 at Phillips Station, just off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road approximately 90 miles east of Sacramento. Electronic readings of the Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack on Tuesday peg its statewide water content at 10.5 inches, 72 percent of the December 27 average. The Phillips snow course, which has been measured each winter since 1941, is one of dozens that will be traversed during a 10-day period around Jan.
Over the objections of California Sen. Barbara Boxer, this month the U.S. Senate passed a new water infrastructure bill that will open the tap of federal money for projects that increase California’s water supply. It’s a good start, but it won’t be enough to solve the Golden State’s water woes. Critics have focused on the bill’s impact on Northern California salmon, the Delta smelt and other endangered species fisheries — impacts that the bill’s supporters strongly reject.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack remains almost 30 percent below average for this time of year despite a boost from the weekend storm, state water officials reported Tuesday, as agencies begin snow surveys by hand throughout the mountain range. Electronic measurements show the snowpack’s statewide water content at 10.5 inches, which is 72 percent of normal for Tuesday. Staff at the California Department of Water Resources and other state, federal or private agencies will snowshoe or walk to about 20 key monitoring stations throughout the Sierra over a 10-day period starting this week for the first manual snow survey of the 2016-17 winter.
Thanks to a series of rain storms, water is once again flowing from a dam into Lake Elsinore after years of drying up.
Peggy Cockerill made her morning walk around the lake and noticed something she’d never seen before – the flow of water back into Lake Elsinore. “I’m hoping it’s coming back,” she said. “I have been visiting my daughter here for over three years and this is the first time I’ve seen water.” It’s the first time water has flowed into the lake since 2011.
The largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas lies at California’s heart. It’s a place of constant change, affected by daily tides, sea-level rise, water diversions that serve 25 million residents and a growing population closing in around it. Yet most of those people have no idea the Delta is the subject of one of the largest habitat restoration projects ever proposed in the U.S. Known as Eco Restore, it is a companion to another proposal called California WaterFix, which calls for reforming water diversions by building two giant tunnels.
