Deputy Secretary Mike Connor of the U.S. Interior Department heads to California this week to discuss the state’s worsening water crisis.
Politico reports that he will meet with state officials and water users as the water challenges continue to get bigger. California water users and their legislative allies were surprised by a couple of proposals that aim to protect endangered fish species.
The small town of Stratford, Calif., has been ravaged by drought for years. In this short film, director Joris Debeij talks to locals, hearing the personal stories of how they’re affected by the drought.
These conversations point to heartbreaking effects of this environmental disaster. A local farmer has to sell his land to earn money because he can’t farm without water. “It’s land that I worked with my dad, and it’s gone,” he says.
Based on calculations required under a state-mandated “stress test,” the agency said it had enough water to satisfy anticipated demand over those years.
“We’re not projecting a shortfall based on this stress test,” the Metropolitan Water District’s Brandon Goshi said. “I think the results show that under those challenging conditions, we have available water supply.”
The agency anticipates its customers would require 5.2 million acre feet of water, if the drought lasts another three years. Tallying up resources from the State Water Project, Colorado River Aqueduct and from storage, the MWD anticipates it can meet every drop of that demand.
Thanks primarily to residents’ conservation efforts, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced Wednesday that it has sufficient supplies to meet the water demands of its member agencies for the next three years.
But don’t relax your efforts to save water: Officials say the need to conserve is definitely not over yet.
MWD officials said the analysis of its water supplies was mandated by the State Water Resources Control Board, which ended its mandatory conservation program last month and asked agencies throughout the state to review their supplies for the next three years.
California is ramping up for what may be another challenging year for wildfires. Though welcome rain occurred during the winter, it was already too late for the millions of trees that have died due to the historic drought and epidemic bark beetle infestation.
Though natural disturbance agents such as wildfire, drought, insects and disease eventually restore a balance in natural ecosystems, the drastic and periodic disturbances of catastrophic wildfires and large-scale tree mortality from bark beetles are not compatible with a population of 38 million people, many of whom like to live in a forested environment.
Thanks primarily to residents’ conservation efforts, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced Wednesday that it has sufficient supplies to meet the water demands of its member agencies for the next three years.
But don’t relax your efforts to save water: Officials say the need to conserve is definitely not over yet. MWD officials said the analysis of its water supplies was mandated by the State Water Resources Control Board, which ended its mandatory conservation program last month and asked agencies throughout the state to review their supplies for the next three years.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced Wednesday they will definitely have enough water to meet demands for the next three years, thanks to local conservation efforts. Nice work, everyone! We reached out to some of L.A.’s most notorious celebrity water wasters to see if any of them were to thank, but first, a little more on what this news actually means.
The Metropolitan Water District is basically where the people who give us our water (likely DWP, for most of you) get their water from.
California’s drought – or lack thereof, according to some – has made national headlines again, prompting suggestions from many quarters on whether we need to divert more or less water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary in response. Some of these suggestions reflect a basic understanding of California’s complex water system. Many don’t. But almost all of the recent debates seem to overlook one crucial and fundamental fact about California’s water future and the Bay-Delta ecosystem that serves as the switching yard for the state’s massive water projects: The state has already answered the question.
The fight to save the delta smelt, the beleaguered fish at the center of an increasingly bitter tug-of-war over water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is as close to a lost cause as ever, but fisheries biologists vow to continue the struggle to protect the species.
Two developments in recent days outlined alternative strategies for protecting fish whose populations drive water-allocation decisions for much of California: A coalition of business and water groups petitioned the state to address a key predator of native fish, while members of Congress asked federal agencies not to force additional water-supply cutbacks on the species’ behalf.
The petition from the business/water coalition asks the California Fish and Game Commission to allow more fishing for the striped bass and black bass, non-native species that feed on endangered chinook salmon and delta smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
