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Opinion: Two Decrees Affect California Water Wars

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Dan Walters

The powerful interests who vie for shares of the state’s ever-changing water supply — dubbed “water buffaloes” — are adept at fending off political and legal assaults by their rivals and the outcomes of their clashes are often stalemates.

That’s why it was surprising in June to see two game-changing decrees out of Washington, one from the new Biden administration and another from the Supreme Court, affecting two of the state’s most prominent water interests, Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District and the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District.

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Drought: The End of California’s Groundwater Free-For-All

/in , , /by /The Mercury Newsby Lisa M. Krieger

The water spigots on California farms will soon be twisted tighter.

As the state faces a growing threat from drought, an increasing number of water agencies are planning to require flow meters on agricultural wells, part of a landmark effort to measure and constrain pumping that used to be free and unlimited. It’s a controversial step aimed at protecting water supplies that could change cultivation practices in the Golden State’s thirsty fields.

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Opinion: No, L.A. is Not a Desert. But We are Getting There

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times by The Times Editorial Board

One of the standard tropes we hear from outsiders about Los Angeles is that it is located in a desert — a dry biome that cannot sustain our millions of people without importing water from somewhere (and someone) else.

And the standard retort from folks like us on the Los Angeles Times editorial board is that, no, it’s explicitly not a desert. To get to the desert, we have to leave town. The difference in climate, flora and terrain between L.A. and, say, Palm Springs or Las Vegas is profound. Deserts get less than 10 inches of rain a year. Las Vegas gets just over four. Los Angeles gets nearly 15.

We’re not a desert. We have a Mediterranean climate, like, say, the South of France. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

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Tribe Becomes Key Water Player with Drought Aid to Arizona

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Felicia Fonseca

For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado River’s natural flooding patterns to farm. Later, it hand-dug ditches and canals to route water to fields.

Now, gravity sends the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding the fields.

Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help weather a historic drought in the American West. The reservoir serves as a barometer for how much water Arizona and other states will get under plans to protect the river serving 40 million people.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes and another tribe in Arizona played an outsized role in the drought contingency plans that had the state voluntarily give up water. As Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the future of water.

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‘Nobody’s Winning’ as Drought Upends Life in US West Basin

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Gillian Flaccus

Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.

DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.

As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long (407-kilometer) river that flows from the lake to the Pacific watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water.

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Scripps Researchers Call for More Collaboration to Combat Local Effects of Climate Change

/in , , /by /Times of San Diegoby City News Service

A team of experts recommended increased effort, coordination and engagement by San Diego agencies and researchers to build climate resilience with attention to disadvantaged communities.

Those areas are particularly susceptible to climate change impacts, according to a report released Thursday.

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Stunning Drone Photos Show Severity of Drought at Lake Shasta

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times / Associated Press by Photos: Brian Van Der Brug

Droughts are common in California, but this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them.

The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.

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Water is Disappearing in the West – and Not Just During the Summer

/in , , /by /CNN by Hannah Gard

Skiers and snowboarders pray for snow so they can shred the slopes. Climatologists and hydrologists have an entirely different and more critical reason to cross their fingers for the “white gold.”

The West’s historic drought has many impacts, including water shortages, more severe wildfire seasons and unprecedented heat waves, to name a few. Intense droughts are a result of many factors, one of which scientists have recently began to analyze with more scrutiny: snow drought.
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Drier Springs Bring Hotter Summers in the Withering Southwest

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Judy Fahys

A question has bothered climatologist Park Williams during the decade he’s been probing drought in the Southwest. Like other climate scientists, he knew from research papers and worldwide storm patterns that a warming atmosphere is thirstier and sops up more moisture from oceans and the land.

“But, in the Southwest, we’ve seen the exact opposite happening,” said Williams, an associate professor in the University of California, Los Angeles’ geography department.

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Fresh Out of Stealth Mode, San Diego Startup FutureProof Pinpoints Financial Risk of Climate Change

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Mike Freeman

FutureProof, a San Diego fintech startup that taps artificial intelligence to project the dollars and cents financial risk of climate change, has come out of stealth mode with a $3 million round of seed funding.

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