California’s drought is impacting more than how you water your lawn, but also the way your food is grown on hundreds of thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley.
Growing rice is a multi-billion dollar industry that supports 25,00 jobs.
Arizona is gearing up for the first-ever “Tier 1” shortage on the Colorado River in 2022, which will trigger significant cuts to the state’s annual allocation from its most important water resource. As daunting as it sounds, the vast majority of citizens and businesses will not be affected, state water leaders said during a Colorado River Preparedness briefing last week.
San Diego County’s Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer recommended spending $7.03 billion in fiscal year 2021-22 for the running of the county government Thursday, a 7.3% increase from this year.
The Biden administration on Thursday outlined in a new report how it aims to achieve its goal of conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a landmark water protection bill Wednesday to ensure clean water in nearly 800 Arizona streams, lakes and rivers that are critical for everyday use.
The legislation will preserve water quality, list protected Arizona waters and develop management practices that will protect the waterways.
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year, and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the blaze. That water flows to homes, contaminating the plumbing, too.
More than a month after announcing it was suspending water deliveries to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered equally bad news to farmers north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Their water supplies, tabbed at 5 percent of their contracted amount, were not available for delivery via the Central Valley Project due to limited supply.
At the monthly Mendocino City Community Services District meeting the board declared a Stage 4 drought. It also discussed the potential ramifications to the community as the surrounding areas and the state suffer through the second year of drought. It is common during dry years for residents within the district to refill their water tanks with water that is hauled in and purchased from the surrounding communities.
San Diego County supervisors Wednesday unanimously approved policies focused on environmental sustainability, and offered residents and businesses new tools to expand the natural habitat.
Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer teamed up with board Chairman Nathan Fletcher and Vice Chairwoman Nora Vargas to propose reorganizing county departments around sustainability, including a formal plan, and creating a native plant policy to preserve regional biodiversity.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency last month in Sonoma and Mendocino counties because of severe drop-offs in the winter rains that once had been counted on to fill reservoirs in the Russian River watershed, north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Like most other California reservoirs, those human-made lakes were built in the 20th century, an unusually wet period when compared with more than a thousand years of climate records reconstructed from studies of ancient tree rings and geological evidence.
