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Drought Prompts Ban on Outdoor Burning in San Diego, Imperial Counties

/in /by /Fox 5 San Diego

Although recent rains have been a welcome sight in California, drought conditions continue to increase fire danger prompting Cal Fire to suspend burn permits in San Diego and Imperial counties.

This suspension takes effect immediately and bans all residential outdoor burning of landscape debris like branches and leaves. “San Diego lives with the threat of wildfire year round and it is critical that the public do their part to be extra fire safe when outdoors” said Cal Fire Chief Tony Mecham.

 

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VIDEO: WaterWorld Weekly Newscast: San Diego Water Authority Executes Money-Saving $340M Bond Sale

/in /by /WaterWorld (Tulsa, Okla.) Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Last week, the San Diego County Water Authority priced a $340 million bond sale that will reduce the cost of financing vital water supply reliability projects over the next two decades.

When completed, the transaction will re-fund $340 million in long-term, fixed-rate bonds issued in 2008 and 2010, saving the water authority $63.2 million over the life of the refinanced bonds. Closing of the sale is expected in about two weeks.

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Fifty Percent of Sierra Nevada’s Trees Dead or Dying—Are Our Forests Doomed?

/in /by /KCBX (San Luis Obispo)

In search of solutions to the extreme threat to California’s forests and watersheds, correspondent Tom Wilmer met with Bob Kingman, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s Assistant Executive Officer in Auburn, California. He then visits with Sean O’Brien in San Luis Obispo about urban forested Monterey Pines in conjunction with Cal Fire in Cambria.

More than 60 percent of California’s water supply comes from the Sierras. High-intensity fires such as The 2013 Rim Fire generated greenhouse gas emissions equal to what 2.3 million vehicles produce annually. During the rainy season, the subsequent massive run off and erosion created in-filled reservoirs, and severely degraded water quality.

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Dairy Farmer Near Patterson Making Most of Scarce Water

/in /by /The Modesto Bee by John Holland

John Azevedo stretches the water that helps produce the milk on his dairy farm west of Patterson.

He is experimenting with drip irrigation lines for feed corn that used to be flood-irrigated. The water that chills his milk tanks is reused in nozzles that cool the cows on summer days. Azevedo is one of 16 farmers featured in a new report from Dairy Cares, a statewide industry program that encourages water and energy conservation and other practices.

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How Plans to Save Fish Species Could Cut Summer Water Supply

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee by Ryan Sabalow, Dale Kasler, and Phillip Reese

This year was supposed to be different. With Northern California’s reservoirs finally brimming and cities liberated from stringent conservation rules, farmers were expecting more water for their crops. The worst of the drought seemed over.

Or maybe not. Despite a winter of fairly abundant rain and snow in the north state, federal fisheries regulators are considering a set of plans that would put Sacramento Valley reservoirs on a tight leash again this summer. Their aim is to prevent two endangered California fish species from going extinct.

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29 Million Trees Have Died in California From Bark Beetles, Drought

/in /by /The Weather Channel

Ongoing drought conditions have contributed to the 29 million tree deaths in California, a number that is still on the rise. In addition to millions of oak trees in the state being killed off by sudden oak death disease, bark beetles have also played a large role in taking out the timbers.

“The tree mortality that we’re experiencing, it’s really unprecedented,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott said in a video for the California State Association of Counties (CASC). “Unless you get into the Sierra Nevada, and particularly the central and southern Sierras, you don’t necessarily understand the gravity of it.”

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North County Landfill Permit on Hold

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby J. Harry Jones Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The long-delayed and hotly contested Gregory Canyon Landfill doesn’t appear to be getting any closer to obtaining all of the permits still needed before construction of the dump south of state Route 76 near Pala could begin.

Work has yet to even begin on a permit needed from the county’s Air Pollution Control District because the new owners have yet to complete the necessary paperwork. Sovereign Capital Management Group, a San Diego-based private equity firm that took over the company last year, did however pay overdue fees last year with the intention of restarting the process.

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Water Reuse and Reclamation Projects in California get $30M Boost from Interior Department

/in /by /WaterWorld (Tulsa, Okla.)

More than $30 million in funding through the Bureau of Reclamation’s Title XVI program were awarded today by Deputy Secretary of the Interior Michael L. Connor. The money will support seven projects that will provide clean water to California communities and promote water and energy efficiency.

“With California in its fifth year of drought, these investments will build resilience for local communities struggling with limited water supplies — an effort that is more important than ever as the dangers of drought escalate in the face of climate change,” Deputy Secretary Connor said.

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EL NINO: ‘The Great Wet Hope’ is dead

/in /by /The Press Enterprise (Riverside)by David Downey

The Godzilla of all El Niños is dead. And the big guy went out with a whimper, at least in Southern California.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center declared the much-anticipated – and miserably disappointing – El Niño of 2015-16 history. “There’s nothing left,” said Climate Prediction Center Deputy Director Mike Halpert. “Stick a fork in it, it’s done.”

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So Long, El Nino! Hello, La Nina?

/in /by /San Mateo Patch

The winter El Nino, once described as a “Godzilla” weather pattern threatening to drench the coast with rains and put a dent in the Southland’s years-long drought, is officially over, forecasters announced Thursday.

Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center said the El Nino pattern, characterized by warming ocean temperatures, dissipated by the end of May “as indicated by the expansion of near-to-below average surface temperatures across the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.”

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