Not if, but when. That’s the future of water desalination plants in Arizona, according to the head of the state’s water department. They are controversial and expensive, but Arizona’s current leadership views desalinated water – or “desal” – as key to the state’s long-term water plans. Arizona sits atop an estimated 600 million acre-feet of brackish water.
Not if, but when. That’s the future of water desalination plants in Arizona, according to the head of the state’s water department. They are controversial and expensive, but Arizona’s current leadership views desalinated water – or “desal” – as key to the state’s long-term water plans. Arizona sits atop an estimated 600 million acre-feet of brackish water. “Desalination is in our future,” said Thomas Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. In late 2016, the state formed a committee to study the feasibility of desalination for a region with rising population and droughts exacerbated by climate change.
Just how bad was California’s last drought? For most of Southern California, it was either the worst or second worst since the century Columbus landed in the New World, the Ottoman empire was started and Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. In other words, it was one of the worst since the 1400s, according to a study released Monday by the California Department of Water Resources. Compiled by examining trees in the southern half of the state, the study put the five-year drought in some historical perspective.
In my last post, I mentioned that upcoming storms would (finally!) start to chip away at the huge seasonal precipitation deficit that has accumulated this year throughout California–but that this storm series would be far from a “Miracle March.” So far, that expectation has largely been borne out: fairly prodigious multi-foot snow accumulations did occur throughout the Sierra Nevada, and the overall amount of water stored in the statewide snowpack doubled nearly overnight.
Two storms are projected to dump up to 100 inches — that’s more than eight feet — of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains Tuesday through Saturday, according to new projections from the National Weather Service. Sacramento is expected to get two to three inches of rain by Saturday, including a half-inch to an inch-and-a-half and 20-30 MPH winds by Wednesday. The heaviest rainfall is forecast for Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon through Friday morning.
Santa Barbara County authorities ordered mandatory evacuations Monday for residents below fire-ravaged mountains ahead of a “fast-approaching” storm that could cause flooding and mudflows. “Those hills are filled with silt, with rocks, with boulders, there’s plenty more up there that could come down,” Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Monday, adding that conditions may be more precarious than in January, before deadly mudslides swept through Montecito. “Don’t be fooled into thinking that this can’t happen again.”
California and Arizona both have laws meant to ensure new housing developments have enough water. In California, major new developments with more than 500 units must prove they have access to enough water for at least 20 years. Most water agencies, including the San Diego County Water Authority, have water already set aside for population growth, so this is usually a pretty simple thing to do.
It won’t wipe out San Diego’s rain deficit. But a potentially juicy storm is likely to drop 1 inch of rain along the coast and 1.5 inches in the region’s valleys and foothills later this week, and possibly a few inches of snow on mountain peaks. The National Weather Service says the system — like the one that hit on Saturday — could tap moisture from the sub-tropics as it passes through Southern California.
California’s water conservation habits, refined and improved over five years of drought, are quickly evaporating. For the seventh time in the last eight months, the amount of water saved by urban Californians has declined, according to new data from the State Water Resources Control Board. In other words, lawn sprinklers are back on, showers are getting longer and overall, California’s water use, after five years of conserving, is now back to where it was before the drought began.
One of the easiest decisions for California voters on the June 5 ballot should be Proposition 68. Vote yes on the $4.1 billion bond plan to fund parks and water projects throughout the state. The ballot measure is the first statewide parks and water bond to appear before voters since 2006, when the $5.4 billion Proposition 84 was approved by 54 percent of voters. Prop 68 would authorize $2.83 billion for parks projects that would fund everything from building Bay Area hiking trails to upgrading California’s 110 state parks.
