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There’s enough water for three years, but don’t dare change your saving ways

/in /by /My News (Los Angeles)by Hillary Jackson

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.

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OPINION: Tree Mortality Demands Swift, Aggressive Actions

/in /by /AgAlert (Sacramento)by Ken Pimlott

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.

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There’s Enough Water for Three Years, but Don’t Dare Change Your Saving Ways

/in /by /MyNewsLA.comby Hillary Jackson

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.

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Thanks to Conservation Efforts, SoCal Definitely has Enough Water for Next 3 Years

/in /by /LAistby Julia Wick

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.

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BLOG: Reducing Reliance on the Bay-Delta

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Kate Poole

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.

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Delta Smelt on the Brink

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Peter Fimrite

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.

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Fishery Decisions Could Help, Harm Water Supplies

/in /by /AgAlert (Sacramento)by Kate Campbell

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.

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El Niño helps drive steep increase in CO2

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are predicted to grow at a record pace this year, projected to blow past a symbolic benchmark of 400 parts per million and creating conditions irreversible for any time scale relevant to modern society, according to a new study.

The report was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change as a collaboration between the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services in England and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which maintains the world’s longest stretch of measurements for atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

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Salton Sea May Get New Lease on Life

/in /by /Inland News Today (Riverside)

An ongoing effort to preserve the quality of life around California’s largest lake is taking on a renewed emphasis.

A series of public hearings and workshops will continue through the summer under the auspices of the Salton Sea Task Force which was created last year. The immediate emphasis is on dust control. The task force says managing the Salton Sea’s natural, agricultural, and municipal water inflows to maximize bird and fish habitat and minimize fine-particle air pollution will allow California to protect regional health, ecological wealth and a stable water supply.

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BLOG: North Valley Regional Recycled Water Program: A New Water Source for Valley Farmers

/in /by /California AG Today (Clovis)by Brian German

Anthea Hansen, general manager of the Patterson, Calif.-based Del Puerto Water District, described the exciting work to bring more water stability in the form of recycled water to multiple Central Valley cities—in our five-part series on the North Valley Regional Recycled Water Program (NVRRWP). 

“After six and a half years of effort,” Hansen said, “we have fully completed all of our environmental documentation, and most of the permitting is in hand.” Recently, the partners have interviewed and selected the preferred firm to construct the Modesto component of the project, so that process is underway.”

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