The State Water Resources Control Board has executed an agreement to provide approximately $5 million in grant funds for testing and remediation of lead in drinking water at licensed Child Care Centers in California.
Work to restore a damaged 9-foot diameter water pipeline in Moreno Valley continued Monday, May 4, and outdoor watering restrictions will be lifted for Western Municipal Water District customers starting Tuesday.
A new poll recently released by the Value of Water Campaign shows that 84% of American voters want state and federal leaders to invest in water infrastructure. The near-unanimous support amid the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that voters value water and want elected officials to prioritize investing in infrastructure — specifically, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
For the fifth year in a row, the Value of Water Campaign poll surveyed over 1,000 American voters for the annual Value of Water Index. The poll asked voters how the nation should solve infrastructural issues and which priorities it should meet. Support for water infrastructure investment cuts across demographic, political and geographic divisions.
Expanding and intensifying drought in Northern California portends an early start to the wildfire season, and the National Interagency Fire Center is predicting above-normal potential for large wildfires by midsummer.
Mountain snowpack has been below average across the High Sierra, southern Cascades and the Great Basin, and the agency warns that these areas need to be monitored closely as fuels continue to dry out. The agency also cites a warm, dry pattern in Oregon and central and eastern Washington, and assigns all of these areas a higher-than-average likelihood of wildfires in July.
A coalition of 17 Democratic-leaning states sued the Trump administration on Friday for rolling back Obama-era protections for waterways, arguing the move ignores science on the interconnectivity of water.
President Trump’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule limits federal protections for a number of smaller waterways, which many scientists say risks pesticides and pollution reaching larger ones.
“This rule opens the door to new, and worse industry pollution that endangers our wildlife, it dirties our drinking water and increases the risk of harmful contamination of our nation’s waterways. In short, it risks the health and safety of Americans around the nation,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said in a call with reporters announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and asks to vacate the rule entirely.
Ryan Indart says he may have to kill off some of the sheep at his east Clovis ranch this fall. With restaurants shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic, he has no market for his animals. When a new flock arrives in October, he won’t have enough space in his pasture if his current flock is still there.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday a $3.6 million program to help farms and food banks stay afloat, coupled with a philanthropy pledge of $15 million. That promise came on the heels of a much larger federal aid package of $19 billion for farmers and ranchers across the country.
Farmers across the San Joaquin Valley echoed Indart’s concern.
California Environmental groups on April 29 challenged in court the state Dept. of Water Resources decision not to include a proposed 40-mile tunnel in its most recent environmental assessment needed to reauthorize long-term operation of the State Water Project—a 700-mile system of dams and aqueducts that moves water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to areas in the south.
The last Sierra Nevada snowpack measurement of the season on Thursday confirmed what California officials have feared for months: The state has suffered through a dry winter.
The state Department of Water Resources announced that the snow was just 1.5 inches deep at its traditional measuring spot at Phillips Station, a vast field off Highway 50 near Echo Summit. The “snow water equivalent” was just a half an inch, or just 3 percent of average for this time of year.
The Phillips measurement was an outlier. A broader measurement taken by 130 electronic sensors throughout the Sierra revealed an average snow water equivalent of 8.4 inches, or 37 percent of average for this time of year.
California water agencies yesterday sued the state over endangered species protections they claim threaten their ability to provide water to more than 25 million residents and thousands of acres of farmland.
The lawsuit is an extraordinary step, underscoring that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) now has multiple crises on his plate: the coronavirus pandemic and a rapidly devolving water war.
At issue is water shipped from California’s water hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta east of San Francisco, south via the State Water Project, a massive system of dams, canals and aqueducts.
California recently issued a new permit for the project under the state’s endangered species law.
The water agencies that get their water from the project — which include the country’s largest water provider — are challenging it in court, saying the terms of the permit would increase their costs by $22 million annually.
A coalition of 16 states led by California and New York sued the Trump administration Friday over a law that eliminated Obama-era protections for wetlands and streams across the United States.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, accuses President Trump and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of illegally exposing waterways to pollution and development by rolling back a key provision of the Clean Water Act.
