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Salton Sea Geothermal: Cheaper than Solar Farms?

/in /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)

Building more geothermal power plants by the Salton Sea could eventually save Californians hundreds of millions of dollars per year, according to a new report.

The lake is home to one of the world’s most potent geothermal reservoirs, thanks to underground heat that brings salty water to temperatures greater than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. But while 11 geothermal plants already generate electricity along the Salton Sea’s southern shore, energy development has ground to a halt in recent years, due to the high cost of building geothermal facilities. Only one of those 11 plants opened after 2000.

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Measuring Drought Impact in More Than Dollars and Cents

/in /by /Phys.org

The standard way to measure the impact of drought is by its economic effect. Last year, for example, the severity California’s four-year drought was broadly characterized by an estimate that it would cost the state’s economy $2.7 billion and 21,000 jobs.

However, there are many experts who feel economic measures alone are inadequate to fully assess the impact of this complex phenomenon, which affected more than one billion people worldwide in the last decade.

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California Drought Monitor and National Drought Summary for April 12, 2016

/in /by /Sierra Sun Times (Mariposa)

This week was generally uneventful in those parts of the country experiencing abnormal dryness and drought, with only a few patchy areas received 1 to 3 inches of precipitation. As a result, dryness and drought either remained unchanged or deteriorated where it existed.

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Sacramento Moves out of Exceptional Drought

/in /by /ABC10 (Sacramento)by Monica Woods

Northern California saw the biggest improvements in the Drought Monitor released on Thursday.  Beneficial winter rain and snow has helped moved the extreme Northwest coast out of a historic drought.

In January, all of the state was in some drought category. The most severe category of exceptional drought covered 43 percent of the state. That number is now down to 32% coverage. Looking at the two most severe categories combined, extreme and exceptional drought,  the coverage has dropped from 69 percent to 55 percent.

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Stats Show San Diegans Are Slacking on Water Conservation: City Official

/in /by /Patch (Rancho Bernardo - 4S Ranch)

The city of San Diego will continue to conduct public outreach about the drought and cutting back on water use, as statistics show consumers slacking off on conservation in recent months, the city’s director of public utilities said Thursday.

“Like everything else, you keep hearing the same message over and over you start disregarding it,” Halla Razak told members of the City Council’s Environment Committee.

 

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California Drought: Odds of La Niña Increase for Next Winter, Bringing Concerns the Drought May Drag On

/in /by /San Jose Mercury News by By Paul Rogers

In what may be an ominous sign for the end of the drought, the El Niño that brought Northern California its wettest winter in five years is continuing to weaken and appears to be giving way to its atmospheric sibling — La Niña.

The shift in Pacific Ocean temperatures could mean a drier-than-normal winter is ahead, especially in already parched Southern California, where La Niña conditions have historically had the most impact.
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San Diego Residents Find Turf Rebates Are Taxable

/in /by /KPBSby By Claire Trageser Mentioned: Mike Lee

Some San Diegans who got money from the San Diego County Water Authority for taking out their grass last year are now startled to find they owe taxes on those turf rebates.

And some homeowners only received those notifications a few weeks ago, after they had already filed their taxes.

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Drought Poll: Most Californians See Serious Water Shortage Despite Rains

/in /by /San Jose Mercury News

Despite the wettest winter in five years, an overwhelming majority of Californians believe that the state faces an extremely serious water shortage and plan to continue conserving water, according to a poll released Thursday.

 The poll, carried out by the Field Research Corporation, sampled 800 registered voters across the state. It’s the fifth such survey that’s been carried out since April 2014, tracking Californians’ changing attitudes as the historic drought dragged on.
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OPINION: California’s Water Injustice

/in /by /The Wall Street Journal

El Niño has doused northern California, but farmers in the state’s Central Valley won’t see much benefit. The Obama Administration is again indulging its progressive friends at the expense of low-income communities.

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OPINION: GOP Needs to Drop Delta Bill

/in /by /Redding Record Searchlight

Once again, House Republicans have proposed to weaken the Endangered Species Act at the expense of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a day after the Metropolitan Water District committed to spending $175 million to buy five Delta islands.

The combination is enough to give some Northern California environmentalists the willies. The seller, a partnership led by Swiss-based Zurich Insurance Group that owned the islands, long sought to make money off the islands, perhaps by turning them into reservoirs. The buyer, MWD, has designs related to its responsibility to supply water to 19 million Southern Californians.

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