Gavin Newsom came to Modesto on Monday night to shake hands and meet important people.
Most, if not all, wanted to know one thing: Newsom’s position on water. Specifically, the water flowing down the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers. Water the state is trying to take from us.
“I’m going to personally apologize for anything that’s been conveyed to the taxpayers of the city that has given the impression that there’s an issue of credibility and trust with the city and or the Public Utilities Department,” Johnnie Perkins said Monday, hours into his first day of work as the city’s Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Infrastructure and Public Works. Perkins was responding to questions surrounding the findings of a joint NBC 7 Responds and Voice of San Diego investigation released last week, showing the city did not take action when informed of a glitch with one of its new smart water meter vendors.
In 2015, the world watched as a video of 96 million “shade balls” getting dumped into the Los Angeles Reservoir went viral. The purpose of the balls: to improve water quality and save water. But a new study raises an interesting question: Could saving water in the Los Angeles Reservoir come at the cost of consuming water in other parts of world? At the time, Californians faced a record-setting drought, and conserving water was on everyone’s minds. Mandatory water restrictions led to brown lawns and shorter showers.
For years, there has been a movement in California to restore floodplains, by moving levees back from rivers and planting trees, shrubs and grasses in the low-lying land between. The goal has been to go back in time, to bring back some of the habitat for birds, animals and fish that existed before the state was developed. But in addition to recreating the past, floodplain restoration is increasingly seen as a way of coping with the future — one of human-induced climate change.
California’s chronic water problems were once again national news when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation establishing a code of water-use restrictions that would be more fitting for an undeveloped nation. As usual, policymakers chose the austerity of coercive public policy over the voluntary, cooperative agreements that markets use to efficiently and fairly allocate goods and services. Aside from a few small enterprises, there are no comprehensive water markets in the state. More than 90 percent of the water that flows through California is under the control of a centralized government entity.
Gov. Brown declared the five-year drought ended in 2017. However, water conservation never stopped being important. Hotter weather for longer periods and less precipitation have created conditions calling for unprecedented lifestyle changes. Water levels are dropping above-ground and underground, and rain and snow pack are diminishing in frequency and depth. As temperatures increase, the elevations of snow pack increase. Mountains get smaller at the pinnacle, so there is less surface area for snow pack. Higher temperatures mean less snow and, theoretically, more rain, but has received little of either in recent years.
Completed during Harry Truman’s presidency, the Friant-Kern Canal has been a workhorse in California’s elaborate man-made water-delivery network. It’s a low-tech concrete marvel that operates purely on gravity, capable of efficiently piping billions of gallons of water to cities and farms on a 152-mile journey along the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley. Until now. The Friant-Kern has been crippled by a phenomenon known as subsidence. The canal is sinking as the Valley floor beneath it slowly caves in, brought down by years of groundwater extraction by the region’s farmers.
Stormwater used to be viewed as a liability – it was shuttled into storm drains as fast as possible to prevent flooding – and then dumped into the ocean, rivers or streams. But increasingly, stormwater is now being viewed as an asset – a way to help augment water supplies and adapt to a changing climate. A new report on stormwater capture issued by the Pacific Institute – the Oakland, California-based water think tank – looks at regulatory and funding challenges as well as creative solutions and collaborations.
Residents in San Diego County now can receive $2.75 per square foot for replacing turf with sustainable landscaping features as part of a new Landscape Transformation Program launched this week across Southern California. The new program includes a partnership by the San Diego County Water Authority and the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to boost the per-square-foot incentive amount available in the water authority’s service area and streamline the application process.
Meteorologists and oceanographers still love to talk about the 2015-16 El Niño that wasn’t. It was the weather event that was meant to deliver California from the horrible drought that had afflicted the state for four years. Emergency officials braced for widespread flooding usually associated with El Niño as Eastern Pacific Ocean temperatures jumped nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the months leading up to that winter, just as they had during the great El Niños of the past. It was supposed to be, as one researcher predicted, the “Godzilla” El Niño.
