No surprise here, but an annual spring survey that is an important indicator of the Delta smelt’s ability to spawn shows the species has hit another record low.
“I am not optimistic that the smelt can make it through the next year or two. Love to be proved wrong,” California native fish expert Peter Moyle said in an email today after reviewing the survey results from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Will Gov. Jerry Brown’s $17 billion Delta tunnels divert water to Southern California that belongs to northern Californians? No, according to papers filed this week by state and federal officials — an assertion challenged by environmentalists, who are filing their own paperwork.
Months of contentious public hearings start July 27. This first set of hearings will focus on water rights; a second set of hearings, scheduled for 2017, will debate the tunnels’ impact on the environment.
As debate continues in San Diego County and around the state over how aggressively to conserve water amid a historic drought, a new study finds that cuts in urban water use have saved significant amounts of electricity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis, published by UC Davis, capitalized on the unique circumstances created by California’s drought. It culled statistics that electric utilities and water districts statewide were required to submit because of Gov. Jerry Brown’s unprecedented order for residents and businesses to lower water consumption by an average of 25 percent.
Sites Reservoir could be built sooner than anticipated — if it ever receives public funding,
Accelerating the construction timeline for the long-proposed reservoir project, as well as other proposed dams in the state, is the focus of a bill co-authored by Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake. Assembly Bill 2551 recently passed the Assembly and will head to the Senate. It would allow water storage projects to use so-called alternative delivery methods, allowing several steps in construction, such as designing and building, to happen at the same time.
For the Central Valley, known for farming and shipping, its status as a manufacturer is often overlooked.
However, here in San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties, companies make products ranging from auto parts for Tesla’s electric cars to the steel beams for Sacramento’s new Golden One arena. “Because of the diverse base we have, California remains No. 1 in the nation in manufacturing,” said San Joaquin Partnership President and CEO Mike Ammann. “It is more capital intensive and automated, and jobs are more skilled due to working with robots and computers.”
Representatives of 26 water purification, desalinization, wastewater treatment, piping, irrigation, and other companies will travel to Los Angeles at the end of June. Seeking US money, Israeli water companies are turning to drought-stricken California. Representatives of no fewer than 26 water purification, desalinization, wastewater treatment, piping, irrigation, and other companies will travel to Los Angeles at the end of the month in an effort to slake the thirst of Californians, while making a few dollars in the process.
More rain arrived in Northern California this year, which is good news overall. Yet, more bad news is lurking in the forest: Bark beetles.
In fact, those bark beetles are lurking in backyards throughout Butte County. Trees were under stress the past few years due to lack of water. Bark beetles have an easier time attacking trees when the forest is in poor health. The adult insects work their way under the outer protective bark, feed on the soft inner bark, and lay eggs for the next generation.
Of all the mistakes, misstatements, and assorted bloviations issuing from Donald Trump during the current presidential campaign, surely one of the leading head-scratchers is his May 27 assertion to the effect that “there is no drought” in California.
Talk of El Nino has barely faded from the internet, and already attention has turned to what El Nino’s other half will bring to North America, especially drought-stricken regions in the West.
La Nina is El Nino’s counterpart in the cycle known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, and with El Nino, it makes up one of the three phases of the oscillation. The third phase is a neutral one in between the two other. La Nina is essentially EL Nino’s opposite. As El Nino represents a warming of ocean temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean, La Nina is a time of cooling, usually of about 3-5 degrees Celsius, in the same region.
Overhead irrigation systems have revolutionized agriculture across the United States and in other parts of the world, using less water than furrow irrigation and requiring significantly less labor and maintenance than drip systems. But in California, the No. 1 agriculture state in the nation, it hasn’t gotten off the ground.
That is beginning to change.
