For the last five years, Californians have adjusted to a new reality when it comes to water usage. Not much will change now that the drought emergency is officially over. After unprecedented rainfall and the development of a robust Sierra-Cascades snowpack, Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to the drought emergency on April 7. Brown spoke with caution, stressing that “the next drought could be around the corner.”
As state officials clamp down on records at Oroville Dam, one of the country’s foremost experts on catastrophic engineering failures has used state inspection reports, photographs and historical design specifications to piece together an autopsy detailing why the spillway at the country’s tallest dam failed so spectacularly this winter. The independent analysis by Robert Bea, of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UC Berkeley, points to design and construction flaws dating back to the spillway’s construction in the 1960s.
A report released today by the Southern California Water Committee and the Committee for Delta Reliability exposes the unintended consequences of nearly two decades of water cuts caused by environmental regulation – showing the hardest hit are those who rely on agriculture to survive, such as farmworkers, food processors, truck drivers and warehouse workers, among many others.
Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to California’s drought this month, lifting emergency water restrictions in all but a few counties across the state. This winter has been the wettest on record for Northern California, but that doesn’t mean California’s problems are over. Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson talks with Jay Lund (@JayLund113), professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California Davis.
The water spread into every corner of the fields, beckoning wading ibises and egrets as it bathed long rows of sprouting grapevines. Several inches had covered the vineyard ground for a couple of months. But rather than draining it, Don Cameron was pouring more on. “This is not about irrigation,” the sprawling farm’s manager kept telling his quizzical workers. “It’s about recharge. … I want all the water you can get into the grape fields now.” After a drought-busting winter, reservoirs up and down California are dumping water to make room for spring snowmelt.
Lead was a problem for hundreds of San Diego children even before the latest scare involving San Diego Unified, records from the county health department show. Last year, public health officials found hundreds of children in San Diego County with elevated levels of lead in their blood. The children are at risk for a host of health problems, including behavioral disorders. The county health department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program collected blood test data from 37,574 of the county’s 250,000 children under the age of 6, which is when children are at most risk of problems from lead exposure.
State data shows more than 300 schools in San Diego County are testing their water for lead, following an NBC7 Investigates series on water quality in schools. A state spokeswoman said more schools are testing in San Diego County, by far, than any other county in the state. At least 17 of schools, across several school districts, have received lab results of lead in school water at levels greater than five parts per billion.
Just a week after Governor Jerry Brown declared the end of the California drought emergency, the northern half of the state logged its wettest year into the record books. But that doesn’t mean California’s water problems are over. On 13 April, rainfall measuring stations in the Sierra Nevada mountains recorded 89.7 inches of water. The previous record set in 1983 was 88.5 inches. In the past 12 months, California has simultaneously dealt with the effects of not enough water and far too much of it.
Recharging underground water supplies through old and new channels and methods may only lead to overconsumption, especially if drought conditions return in a few years. Several water management experts in the central and southern San Joaquin Valley, where painful drought conditions have prevailed for the past five years, are discussing additional channels and choices for putting some of this year’s excess water into underground storage for future use. And they’re considering continuing programs to bolster those pools every year.
