Using water efficiently is a way of life and an important responsibility in a beautiful, Mediterranean climate like San Diego County. WaterSmart landscaping is all about rethinking the way limited water resources are applied and making smart choices to reduce outdoor water use.
Soil is essential to a healthy landscape and efficient water use. Learn about your soil’s characteristics and how to care for it. The results include easier maintenance, a healthier environment, and a more beautiful landscape despite drought conditions.
Here are some simple tests to help you evaluate your soil.
A permit approved Thursday by the California Coastal Commission will allow the Carlsbad desalination plant to modify its seawater intakes and discharge structures to better protect marine life and create a “stand-alone” system.
When Gilbert Quintana, a farmer in the Mexicali Valley, learned he would soon lose 15% of his water supply, he did what he’s done before in a pinch: buy water from other growers in northern Mexico.
But Quintana worries that such workarounds won’t always be possible. The water used to irrigate his 2,000 acres of (800 hectares) of Brussel sprouts, green onions, and lettuce comes from the over-tapped Colorado River, which a megadrought in the American West due in part to climate change is rapidly depleting.
(AP EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a collaborative series on the Colorado River as the 100th anniversary of the historic Colorado River Compact approaches. The Associated Press, The Colorado Sun, The Albuquerque Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Arizona Daily Star and The Nevada Independent are working together to explore the pressures on the river in 2022.)
Mount Shasta, the widely recognizable face of California’s far north, has lost almost all its defining snow cover for a second straight year.
Another summer of scorching temperatures, punctuated by the recent heat wave, has melted most of the mountain’s lofty white crown, typically a year-round symbol of the north state’s enduring wilds.
As soon as the U.S. Department of the Interior last month announced that Nevada would lose 8% of its water allotment from the Colorado River next year amid the continuing drought, officials with the Southern Nevada Water Authority started fielding questions from concerned residents.
Southwest of Sacramento, the branching arms of waterways reach into a patchwork of farm fields and pastures. Canals and wetlands fringed with reeds meet a sunbaked expanse of dry meadows.
These lands on the northwestern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have now been targeted for restoration following the widespread destruction of estuary marsh habitats that began over a century ago.
Water is a mirage in California. We tend to see what we want to see. In my case, the biggest illusion was Auburn Dam.
If you were a resident of Placer County in the 1960s to 1980s you viewed it as almost as a birthright that the American River be dammed in the canyon below Auburn.
Ocean and atmospheric conditions tell us that La Niña—the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern—currently reigns in the tropical Pacific. It’s looking very likely that the long-predicted third consecutive La Niña winter will happen, with a 91% chance of La Niña through September–November and an 80% chance through the early winter (November–January).
Californians sweated it out amid a record-breaking heat wave entering its 10th day Friday that has helped fuel deadly wildfires and pushed energy supplies to the brink of daily power outages.
