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More Rain Needed To Reduce Fire Danger, Stave Off Future Drought
More than a month and a half into this year’s rainy season and significant precipitation was finally falling on Tuesday in Northern California. The state could use it in more ways than one.
Why Understanding Snowpack Could Help the Overworked Colorado River
Forty million people, 5.5 million acres of farmland and the livelihood of residents in major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Las Vegas depend on the Colorado River, described as the workhorse of the West and under assault by drought.
The U.S. Geological Survey is in the beginning stages of learning more about this river via an expanded and more sophisticated monitoring system that aims to study details about the snowpack that feeds the river basin, droughts and flooding, and how streamflow supports groundwater, or vice versa.
We May Have a Colder Winter, but Experts Say the Climate is Still Warming
This winter may seem colder than previous warmer winters Californians have experienced in recent history, because a moderate to strong La Niña is forming over the pacific.
But La Niña, an annual weather pattern off of the Pacific Ocean that often dictates California’s drier conditions in the winter, doesn’t buck global warming trends, according to Michelle Mead, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Mead says since California is this long skinny state, La Niña’s impact will differ depending on where you live, just like the storm moving across Northern California this week.
Dry Heat, Wet Feet: Record Temperatures and King Tides Collide in Southern California
Towering high tides hitting the Southern California coast were met with record-high temperatures Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
The astronomical tides, known as king tides, occur when the moon is closest to Earth and are often the highest tides of the year, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Combined with high surf, king tides can bring tidal overflows, minor beach erosion and an increased risk of drowning.
The Key to Thwarting Non-Revenue Water? Understanding It
Non-revenue water loss is among the biggest challenges facing the water industry and the world. Nearly one-third of all water, amounting to $39 billion annually, is lost before it ever reaches a customer, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan. Water scarcity will proliferate with the aging water infrastructure, rapid urbanization and worsening disaster seasons throughout the world.
Bodies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are doing their part to make strides toward improved infrastructure. Earlier this year, the agency announced the availability of $2.7 billion in funding to support infrastructure projects that help protect surface and drinking water. However, with AWWA’s estimated cost of more than $1 trillion to manage water infrastructure over the next 25 years, the responsibility must fall to the industry to understand these challenges and prepare a strategy to understand and respond to them.
Bezos Earth Fund Gives Salk $30 Million for Climate Change Mitigation Project
Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative will receive $30 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to advance efforts to increase the ability of crop plants, such as corn and soybeans, to capture and store atmospheric carbon via their roots in the soil. This work will explore carbon-sequestration mechanisms in six of the world’s most prevalent crop species with the goal of increasing the plants’ carbon-storage capacity.
Benefits Bubble Up: Wastewater Treatment
What makes Bear Republic Brewing Company special is just how conscious its chief operating officer and master brewer is of water’s impact on the business and its local community.
Bear Republic was established in Sonoma County, California, in 1995 by the Norgrove family, and opened its first brew pub in January of 1997 in Healdsburg, California. In November of that year, Peter Kruger was hired to the company, launching his career path to his current position as Bear Republic Brewing Company master brewer and chief operating officer.
At the time he was hired, Kruger said the wastewater from the beer making process was sent through the sewer system to the municipal wastewater treatment plant.
World Water Week 2021 Goes Digital
The world’s leading annual event on water, World Water Week, has decided to go fully digital in 2021 to ensure that this important conference can take place despite the ongoing pandemic. The Week will be held 23-27 August 2021 under the theme Building Resilience Faster.
World Water Week typically attracts 4,000 people from more than 135 countries to Stockholm, where the conference has been held since 1991. Next year, however, the organizers at Stockholm International Water Institute have decided to hold the entire event online.
Region’s Water Quality Celebrated by Switchfoot Musician Jon Foreman
As part of its campaign to promote the quality of local water supplies, the San County Diego Water Authority and its 24 member agencies have partnered with Encinitas resident and Grammy-award winning musician Jon Foreman of Switchfoot to create a series of videos highlighting how tap water across the region meets or exceeds stringent state and federal standards.
The new videos are part of the Water Authority’s regional Trust the Tap outreach and education platform, which was launched in early 2020 to assure the public about the safety of water during the coronavirus pandemic.
