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Environment Report: Water Authority Extends Controversial Deal By A Decade

/in /by /Voice Of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Quoted: Dan Denham

The San Diego County Water Authority extended by 10 years a multibillion-dollar deal it has to buy water from the Imperial Irrigation District. That deal remains the largest water purchase of its kind in the United States. The Water Authority began talking about the deal in 1995, shortly after a major drought hit the state. The Water Authority pays Imperial County farmers to stop using some of the Colorado River water they have rights to and, in turn, San Diego gets long-term access to enough water for roughly 1.6 million city folk.

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Expert: ‘Grim’ Snowpack In Tahoe Basin Can Quickly Change With 1 Storm

/in /by /Tahoe Daily Tribuneby Bill Rozak

The snowpack in the Tahoe Basin is “grim” right now, but at this point one cold storm could quickly turnaround everything, according to one expert. The snowpack in the Tahoe Basin is 35 percent of median, said Jeff Anderson, water supply specialist with the Nevada Natural Resources Conservation Service. Rainfall totals are 113 percent, he added.

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Progress On New Drought Plan In Colorado Basin Is Slow Going

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicle

States, federal and Mexican officials hailed a binational agreement this fall that they said could lead to a radical shift in how the region prepares for and responds to drought. But three months later, they appear no closer to a drought contingency plan, as negotiations have pitted states and water districts against one another, as the U.S. tries to hammer out details of the plan.

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Lawmakers Ask Interior Department To Recover ‘Misspent’ Funds

/in /by /Daily Journal (Ukiah)

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) has sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, urging him to recover $84.8 million in taxpayer money that was identified in a recent inspector general report detailing how the funds were misspent, according to information released Friday by Huffman’s office. The funds were to benefit a select few California water districts participating in the “WaterFix” planning process, according to a report titled “The Bureau of Reclamation Was Not Transparent in Its Participation in the [San Francisco] Bay Delta Conservation Plan.”

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Lessons From Disastrous Wine Country Fires Helped In Battling Southern California Infernos

/in /by /Los Angeles Times

Both sieges began in darkness with fierce winds that made the flames impossible to stop. Hurricane-force gusts pushed the flames over highways that should have been barriers and into neighborhoods so quickly that officials said they were helpless to protect the homes in their path. The wine country fires that ravaged Northern California in October and the firestorm in Southern California this month have capped the most destructive year for fires in state history.

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How Dry Is It? Scientist Says California Has Only Slim Chance Of Normal Rainfall This Winter

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

This is how dry it has been so far this season: California’s chances of having a normal “water year” have fallen to around 33 percent in much of the state, according to a federal scientist. Michael Dettinger, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said those dismal odds are based on the amount of rain and snow that has fallen so far this year – and the history of how much precipitation California traditionally gets in the remaining months of the rainy season.

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San Diego Again Offering Money To Help Make Your Lawn Drought Resistant

/in /by /KPBS

Friday is the deadline for San Diego residents and business owners to apply for a rebate from the city for removing grass and replacing it with drought tolerant landscaping. The turf rebate program was very popular in the height of the drought. In past years, the money was used up immediately. This year, the city opened applications for rebates for two weeks in October and had 120 takers, said Brian Hojnacki, a management analyst with the city’s Public Utilities Department.

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Large New Reservoirs Threaten Trinity River Water Gains

/in /by /Times Standard News (Eureka)

A new $4.7 billion proposal from the Sites Project Authority to build up to 11 new dams and two reservoirs in the Sacramento Valley presents a threat to the salmon on the Trinity and Klamath Rivers, and years of decisions to provide them water. The new proposed Sites and Holthouse Reservoirs in Northern California could store up to 1.8 million acre feet of water, making them almost half the size of Shasta Reservoir and twice the size of Folsom Reservoir.

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U.S. Weather Forecaster Sees La Niña Chances Exceeding 80 Percent

/in /by /Yahoo News

A U.S. government weather forecaster on Thursday said La Niña conditions are predicted to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2017-18. The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), an agency of the National Weather Service, in a monthly forecast pegged the chance of La Nina developing at about 80 percent, with a transition to ENSO-neutral most likely during the mid-to-late spring.

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OPINION: California’s Infrastructure is Crumbling (When It’s Not Burning)

/in /by /The American Spectator (Arlington, Va.)

When I first moved to California from Ohio in the 1990s, I spotted a postcard in a gift shop that noted the state’s four seasons: wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and riots. The postcard wasn’t entirely wrong. Outside of drought years, the state does suffer through a regular cycle of fires, slides and earthquakes, although the riots aren’t actually a seasonal thing. Californians are accustomed to the state’s weather disasters the same way a Kansan is accustomed to tornado drills.

 

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