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San Diego Unified School District Receives Water Testing Update

/in /by /NBC 7 San Diegoby Wendy Fry

District officials updated the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Board Tuesday night on its lead sampling program for campus water. According to Board documents, the City and the school district plan to test all schools on district property for potential lead in drinking water by mid-June. With about 200 schools total to test, the district is about half-way through the process. A slide in a Power Point presentation made to elected officials shows the district has submitted sampling plans to the city for 109 schools. Of that, 72 schools have already been tested.

 

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Survey Underway For Farmers On Sustainable Groundwater

/in /by /Daily Democrat (Woodland)

Even as local hearings have been scheduled for California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a student survey is being planned to find out what farmers think of the program. The groundwater act has been the focus of debate statewide for the past two years with Yolo County primarily because of the involvement of the Water Resources Association of Yolo County. Known as “SGMA,” the act became law on Jan. 1, 2015, and mandates the creation of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in groundwater basins defined as high or medium priority by the Department of Water Resources by June 30.

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VIDEO: Lake Tahoe Filled To The Brim For First Time In Years

/in /by /Summit Daily News (Frisco, Colo.)

Lake Tahoe is full. As of Thursday, April 20, the lake’s surface elevation was 6,227.69 feet — almost 5 feet above its natural rim. U.S. Water Master Chad Blanchard said his office has been spilling water from Lake Tahoe since Feb. 22 in an effort to prevent the lake’s level from rising too high. It’s the first time since 2006 that excess water has been spilled from the lake.

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California Could Have Stored Abundant Water Underground

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Mohammad Safeeq

California’s recent drought was the worst in memory. However, in a relatively quick turnaround, this year the state’s water infrastructure is full and water managers are battling the wettest winter in quite some time. Now, by many accounts, the drought is over for much of the state. The uniquely wet winter of 2016-2017 has highlighted a key issue surrounding our surface water and groundwater storage infrastructure: We could have stored this abundant water, not in new reservoirs, but right under our feet.

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Bye-bye, Brown Lawns: Arroyo Grande Calls Off Its Water Shortage Emergency

/in /by /The San Luis Obispo Tribuneby Kaytlyn Leslie

Arroyo Grande residents can once again pull out their garden hoses without fear of financial penalty, though they’re still being required to restrict some of their water usage. The city declared an end to its water shortage emergency on Tuesday, following Gov. Jerry Brown’s announcement earlier this month that California is no longer in a drought. The decision removes the city’s water bill penalties, which charge users if they fail to reduce their water usage by a certain amount compared with their property’s historic usage.

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New Study: California Drought Increased Electricity Bills and Air Pollution

/in /by /The Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

California’s brutal five-year drought did more than lead to water shortages and dead lawns. It increased electricity bills statewide by $2.45 billion and boosted levels of smog and greenhouse gases, according to a new study released Wednesday. Why? A big drop-off in hydroelectric power. With little rain or snow between 2012 and 2016, cheap, clean power from dozens of large dams around California was scarce, and cities and utilities had to use more electricity from natural-gas-fired power plants, which is more expensive and pollutes more.

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The Dried-Up Heart of California’s Water Dilemma

/in /by /Bloombergby Justin Fox

California’s Tulare Lake was once the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi. It was shallow, and it varied in size from year to year and season to season. But it was home to lots of salmon, turtles, otters and even, in the latter half of the 19th century, a few schooners and steamboats. It was also at the heart of a 400,000-acre network of lakes and wetlands (“the river of the lakes,” the painter and naturalist John W. Audubon — John J.’s son — called it in 1849) that in wet years overflowed into the San Joaquin River to the north, making it possible to travel by boat from Bakersfield to San Francisco.

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Remember, The Drought Could Come Back Next Year

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily Newsby Kevin Smith

When it comes to emergencies and disasters, people tend to have short memories. Much of this is human nature. When something bad happens and we’re in the thick of it we generally do whatever’s necessary to deal with the situation. But once the crisis has past we want to move on with our lives. That’s fine because it’s certainly not healthy to wallow in despair over something that has already come and gone. But I say again that people have short memories. And I don’t mean that literally. I simply mean that we tend to forget how bad something really was. California’s recent drought is a case in point.

 

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A ‘Quick Yes’ On Delta Tunnels? Advocates Concerned Over New Language

/in /by /Stockton Recordby Alex Breitler

Proposed changes to a plan that is supposed to guide the Delta through the 21st century have advocates on red alert, as they worry that the new language locks in Gov. Jerry Brown’s $15 billion twin tunnels. The revised plan does not explicitly endorse the California Water Fix, as the tunnels proposal is formally known. It does, however, promote building one or more new intakes to pump water from the Delta, with a new underground conveyance system that would be operated in tandem with existing Delta channels. The twin tunnels proposal satisfies all of those criteria.

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State of California’s Last 2017 Snow Survey Set for May 1

/in /by /Sierra Sun Times (Mariposa)

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) conducts five manual snow surveys at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada from around the first of January through May each calendar year. The snowpack’s water content usually peaks around April 1, after which the sun’s higher position in the sky contributes to rapid melting and a diminished snowpack. DWR’s May 1 survey will be the last one of 2017. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, will conduct the survey beginning at 11 a.m. just off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road, about 90 miles east of Sacramento.

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