The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced it has reached an agreement with the Orange County Water District to conduct a remedial investigation and feasibility study to address a large area of groundwater contamination in Northern Orange County known as the “North Basin.” The work required by the agreement is expected to take up to two years to complete and is estimated to cost up to $4 million.
A low-flying helicopter is circling above the community of Lost Hills, checking for water below the ground. The flights are being done by U.S. Geological Survey researchers on behalf of state water officials, and the work will continue next near Buttonwillow. Officials say they’re developing 3D maps of where there’s fresh and salty groundwater in certain oil field areas in the state. The first phase of that big project is the work underway in Kern County. “We will be trying to find places where it’s likely that fresh water exists,” USGS research geophysicist Lyndsay Ball told Eyewitness News on Thursday.
There was a blue heron a few yards away from the Big Bear Marina. Mallards played in the water near the marina’s office.“This is pretty sad looking,” said Scott Ruppel, 60, as he sat in front of the marina office on a recent weekday morning. A frequent lake visitor, Ruppel, a Barstow resident, talked about the grass and other plant life — some green, some not — growing on land once covered by a 3,000 acre lake.
The drought persists. This summer was the hottest on record. Last month, a National Weather Service meteorologist called the chance of adequate winter rainfall this year “a crapshoot.” Farmers in the Central Valley are pumping groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. And they may not be wrong; it’s not for nothing that the rest of the world ratified the Paris climate accord on Wednesday. Thank heaven Californians finally have gotten serious about water conservation – oh, wait
Seventeen California water districts have filed a lawsuit for $350 million against the federal government for not delivering water to contractors in the drought year of 2014. The Fresno Bee reports that the districts in the San Joaquin Valley and the city of Fresno filed the suit Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. Attorney Craig Parton, who is representing the contractors, says the claim seeks to recover the fair market value of Friant Division water not delivered to the contractors even though there were sufficient supplies in Millerton Lake that year.
Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli last week expressed his ongoing opposition to the controversial California WaterFix – aka “Delta tunnels” or “twin tunnels.”
The Gov. Jerry Brown-supported project calls for the construction of a pair of 35-mile-long, 40-foot-wide tunnels 150 feet beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for the purpose of rerouting Sacramento River water to parts of Central and Southern California.
I was surprised to read in the op-ed by Lance Johnson (“Learn from history; fight to hold onto your water,” Oct. 2, Page 1D) that he learned from me and other conservationists that our secret agenda was to bring an end to Central Valley agriculture.
That’s simply untrue.
I’ve never heard anyone in the environmental or fishing communities express that desire. Like everyone, I enjoy the products of Central Valley agriculture – the tomatoes, pistachios, lettuce and many other crops, increasingly grown with highly efficient drip irrigation. California’s Central Valley will continue to thrive and be our nation’s breadbasket, as it should.
Southern California is an epicenter for earthquakes, with an estimated 10,000 small temblors hitting the region every year. Now, there’s a discovery of a new, potentially significant fault line located 120 miles east of San Diego. It runs parallel to the notorious San Andreas fault, said Neal Driscoll, professor of geology and geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Californians’ water conservation slipped for the third consecutive month in August, prompting new alarm from regulators about whether relaxed water restrictions may be causing residents to revert to old habits as the state enters its sixth year of severe drought.
The trend raises new questions about Californians’ willingness to continue austere conservation after spending the last two years dramatically reducing their water use by ripping out lawns, installing water-sipping appliances and shortening their showers.
People living in the American Southwest have seen their share of drought. But the West’s recent water woes may pale in comparison to what’s coming later in the century, researchers say. The Southwest may very well face a decades-long megadrought before the 21st century is out.
A team climate scientists led by Toby Ault, an atmospheric researcher at Cornell University, has just calculated the risk of a Southwestern megadrought occurring by 2100. By “megadrought” they mean an extreme, bone-dry period that can last for more than 35 years.
