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Statewide water savings slipped in June to 17.4 percent of that in the same month in 2013, the state Water Resources Control Board announced Tuesday. That’s the lowest monthly conservation rate since February 2016, which saw savings of 11.9 percent compared to the benchmark pre-drought year. Local districts did much better than the state average, ranging from 25-40 percent water use reductions compared to June 2013. The Del Oro Water Co. saw the biggest savings at 40.2 percent. That was the fourth best conservation rate in the state. Daily per capita water use was 84 gallons.

 

After undergoing five years of drought, many Californians may fear a future with less rainfall thanks to climate change. However, research carried out at the University of California, Riverside, suggests precipitation across the state may actually increase over the next hundred years. The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, looked at several different California climate models and aggregated the results. However, not every model is good at predicting factors like precipitation. So, rather than simply aggregating the findings, Robert Allen, a climatologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the lead author on the paper, was picky.

Drone video released by the California Department of Water Resources shows how repairs are moving along at the Oroville Dam’s main spillway, which crumbled during the extremely wet winter and forced the evacuation of 180,000 people. The video of crews laying down and compacting concrete (set to soothing music) was posted to the department’s YouTube page, where it regularly shares updates on the construction progress.   Reconstruction of the main spillway is on track to be completed by Nov. 1, 2017, in time for California’s rainiest months. Since the spillway’s erosion in February, crews have been working to remove and rebuild 2,270 feet of the spillway.