February’s quarterly auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances under California’s cap and trade program was another financial washout for the state. Results for last week’s auction were posted Wednesday morning, revealing that just 16.5 percent of the 74.8 million metric tons of emission allowances were sold at the floor price of $13.57 per ton.
Could the torrents of rain that have recently soaked California trigger an earthquake? The science is mixed. Heavy rainfall can spark earthquakes, according to one scientist, and with a winter marked by moisture-packed storms, California should be prepared. “If water enters a fault, especially under high pressure, it lubricates the fault and can push it open and make it easier for it to move, causing an earthquake,” said Gillian Foulger, a professor of geophysics at Durham University in the United Kingdom.
As you are probably aware, on Sunday, Feb. 12, the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway almost eroded away. This caused more than 180,000 people to evacuate the area immediately. If the wall above the emergency spillway failed, it would have been catastrophic and could have caused many to lose their lives. Fortunately, this did not happen.
California faces an estimated $50 billion price tag for roads, dams and other infrastructure threatened by floods such as the one that severely damaged Oroville Dam last month, the state’s natural resources secretary said Wednesday. Nearly 200,000 people living near the country’s tallest dam were evacuated three weeks ago amid fears of a catastrophic flood after a chunk of concrete tore out the main spillway following heavy rains.
To hear John Duarte tell it, farmers knew the cavalry was coming to their rescue on election night. It’s one reason agricultural areas voted heavily for Donald Trump. On Tuesday, Trump ordered his new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, to scale back the agency’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act. The 1972 law is widely credited for reversing the decline in drinking water quality nationwide by controlling pollution to navigable waters.
La Presa de Otay Lakes tuvo que abrir sus compuertas para disminuir el nivel de agua que ya había llegado a su máxima capacidad en los últimos seis años provocado por las intensas lluvias registradas en el condado de San Diego. La reserva alcanzó su límite y autoridades decidieron desfogar la presión hacia el Río Otay, informó la vocera de la ciudad Alma Rife. Según registros de la ciudad, la presa puede contener casi 49 mil 849 pies cuadrados de agua y para el lunes ya se había reportado que había llegado al93 por ciento de su capacidad.
The plan to remove four hydroelectric dams to improve fish passage and water quality on the Klamath River is proceeding on schedule for a 2020 demolition time, according to plan proponents. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will ultimately have to approve or deny the plan, and the change in administration in Washington, D.C., has led to three of the five seats on the commission being vacated. President Donald Trump will be responsible for appointing the three new members, but plan proponents such as the dams’ owning company PacifiCorp, do not believe this will affect the project’s timeline.
In the late 1980s, a Japanese scientist named Koji Minoura stumbled on a medieval poem that described a tsunami so large it had swept away a castle and killed a thousand people. Intrigued, Minoura and his team began looking for paleontological evidence of the tsunami beneath rice paddies, and discovered not one but three massive, earthquake-triggered waves that had wracked the Sendai coast over the past three thousand years. In a 2001 paper, Minoura concluded that the possibility of another tsunami was significant.
President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor. The order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set about dismantling the Waters of the United States rule takes aim at one of President Obama’s signature environmental legacies, a far-reaching anti-pollution effort that expanded the authority of regulators over the nation’s waterways and wetlands.
The Kings River’s overflow system in western Fresno County cannot carry as much floodwater as it once did, so there is greater risk of flooding in this wet year, Fresno County supervisors were told on Tuesday. The problems led to approval of an emergency proclamation by supervisors that will allow officials to seek state help in an all-out effort to improve the county’s slough and levee system and any new problems that could arise from flooding over the next few months.
