More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, but only 0.5% it is actually accessible to us. Removing salt from ocean water, known as desalination, can create drinkable water during a time of extreme drought and soaring demand. So what’s the problem?
As California enters a third dry year, the Bay Area’s biggest water agency, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, may soon push forward with strict caps on customer water use, and fines for those who exceed the limit.
The agency, like most water suppliers in the region, has been relying only on modest outdoor watering restrictions, and voluntary conservation, to reduce consumption. But with lackluster savings and a continuing water shortage, the district’s governing board is scheduled to decide next week whether more aggressive rules are necessary.
In a California forest torched by wildfire last summer, researcher Anne Nolin examines a handful of the season’s remaining snow, now darkened by black specks from the burned trees above.
Spring heat waves had already melted much of the year’s limited snowfall across California and parts of the West when Nolin visited in early April. But she and her colleague are studying another factor that might’ve made the snow vanish faster in the central Sierra Nevada — the scorched trees, which no longer provide much shade and are shedding flecks of carbon.
The Colorado River’s 1,450-mile run begins amid the snowy pinnacles of the Rocky Mountains and ends in the subtropical waters of the Gulf of California. Over the millions of years the river has been running this course, it has gradually carved through the Southwest’s crimson limestone and shale to create a succession of unimaginably vast canyons: Ruby, Cataract, Marble, and Grand. The writer Marc Reisner described the Colorado as the “American Nile.” The Hualapai call it Hakataya, “the backbone.”
California is heading into its third year of drought after record dry stretches.
One of the biggest losses the state saw in the 2022 water year was the lack of rain and snow during the typically wet January to March time frame. Historically, December through March are the wettest months for the state. The past three years have come up short for precipitation leading to water restrictions and bigger conservation efforts.
Sprawled like a gigantic swimming pool atop a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is an asphalt-and-clay pond holding enough water to produce electricity for 1.6 million households.
It’s part of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, which uses simple technology: Water is piped from a lower reservoir — the lake, in this case — to an upper one, then released downhill through supersized turbines.
Supporters call these systems “the world’s largest batteries” because they hold vast amounts of potential energy for use when needed for the power grid.
The hydropower industry considers pumped storage the best answer to a question hovering over the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy to address climate change: where to get power when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
(Editor’s Note: The San Diego County Water Authority and the City of San Diego are partnering on the proposed San Vicente Energy Storage Facility project. More information: www.sdcwa.org/projects/san-vicente-pumping-facilities/)
During Gov. Gavin Newsom’s visit to Butte County on Tuesday, Newsom said he will ask the legislature for $750 million to help with drought conditions.
At the Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville, which shut down last year due to record low lake levels, Newsom spoke about how the state needs a different approach to water conservation.
Newsom already invested $5.2 billion in the past three years for water security for all Californians.
Federal scientists have created a new tool for forecasting marine heat waves, and they say one is currently forming in the North Pacific Ocean not far from the California coast.
The marine heat wave currently predicted to linger into fall is not expected to have the impact of “the blob” — the name for a period of high seawater temperatures that persisted along the West Coast from 2014 to 2016. But scientists say their new prediction models will help forecast similar extreme ocean warming events that are expected to increase in duration and intensity with climate change.
The megadrought gripping the Western United States is widening.
Fifty-seven percent of the country and 100% of Nevada is in some level of drought, and nowhere is it as obvious as along the Colorado River.
In the Southwestern U.S., the massive Lake Mead Reservoir near Las Vegas is not as massive as it used to be. The water level has dropped to near-record-low levels.
