Over the past 12 years, the country’s biggest urban water agency has paid farmers about $190 million not to grow crops on thousands of acres near the Colorado River in the Palo Verde Valley. The water has gone to Los Angeles and other cities across Southern California, and in return, the farmers who’ve left some of their lands unplanted have been able to count on additional income.
No one knows whether winter will bring pounding storms like those seen last season, but California water officials say Oroville Dam is ready for whatever comes. The nation’s tallest dam became one of the fastest construction projects in modern state history after the dam’s spillway partially collapsed in February amid heavy rain and caused the evacuation of thousands. Hundreds of workers have been laboring around the clock for five months to rebuild the chute before wet winter weather returns.
The unexpectedly long life of a pair of pioneering satellites that deepened scientific understanding of society’s influence on water and land is over. NASA and its project partners decided to end the GRACE satellite mission this week after the eighth of 20 battery cells on GRACE-2 failed. GRACE-1 was still working, but the mission, which measures fractional changes in Earth’s gravity based on the position of the satellites relative to each other, requires both to move in tandem. Losing one means losing all.
Once again, state legislators have done what is popular instead of what is necessary — and that’s one big reason California’s infrastructure is in such sorry shape. That reminder was driven home this week in a discussion about levees and flood protection. Flood experts gathered in Sacramento on Monday to mark the beginning of flood preparedness week. In a press conference, the president of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board pleaded for the state to make the investment in flood protection. Bill Edgar says the state spends $30 million a year in repairs and maintenance, but that the state needs to spend $130 million a year.
What does it take to get Californians to save water during a massive drought? Apparently, a lot of ink and newsprint helps. Extensive news coverage of the state’s historic drought prompted residents to conserve water, new research out of Stanford University suggests. The more that major newspapers wrote about the drought, the more people in the Bay Area cut back on their personal water use, according to a report this week in the journal Science Advances.
The South Coast Water District will hold a board workshop Tuesday in Laguna Beach to discuss the proposed Doheny Ocean Desalination Project. District staff will update board members about desalination studies, placement of slant wells, hydrology, alternative power supplies and cost estimates. South Coast, which serves customers in South Laguna, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, proposes a 5-acre facility on 30 acres of district-owned property near San Juan Creek.
Humanity has sought to make the Earth’s oceans potable for thousands of years. The Norse tale of Utgarda-Loki tells of Odin being tricked into drinking from a horn connected to the sea, while Exodus 15:22–26 of the Bible likely describes Moses desalinating the water of Marah: When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”
The tiny backcountry water district that billed one of its ratepayers the cost of the agency’s private attorney has installed two new board members. Steve Kincaid and Brian Lightbody were the only applicants for two Wynola Water District board vacancies announced earlier this year, said Tim Taschler, the former volunteer office manager who was elected to the panel in 2016.
A new option has entered the discussion of Delta water supplies: one cross-Delta tunnel instead of two. For now, California’s WaterFix proposal, pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown, is for two tunnels under-crossing the Delta for 35 miles, allowing up to 60 percent of Delta water exports to come from the main channel of Sacramento River. Implementing such a major project requires extraordinary political and financial support that so far is lacking.
The Interior Department will continue to work with California on its $17 billion water project. An earlier statement saying the Trump administration didn’t support the project confused state officials. An official later clarified the department will continue to help with the project but not in its funding.
