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Folsom Lake Water Releases Rise As Rain Continues

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby By Dale Kasler

With El Niño rains returning in earnest, dam operators ramped up water releases Monday from Folsom Lake as a precaution against flooding. They will double the intensity of the releases early Tuesday.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it raised the release levels to 8,000 cubic feet per second early Monday afternoon, nearly doubling the velocity from the weekend. The releases will go to 15,000 cubic feet per second Tuesday morning as a series of winter storms continues to pound the region.

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Storms Boost Sierra Nevada Snowpack, Reservoirs

/in /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)by By Ed Joyce

March storms are building the Sierra Nevada snowpack and helping to fill key reservoirs that are tapped in the spring and summer for water supply. The recent series of storms brought more snow to the Sierra Nevada – mostly in the northern Sierra.

Maury Roos, a hydrologist with the California Department of Water Resources, says the northern Sierra has nearly received its average precipitation for the entire month of March. But, Roos says, it’s not “Miracle March”… yet.

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Coalition Backs Legislation to Put Delta Tunnels Before Voters

/in /by /Lodi News-Sentinelby By Joe Benapfl

On March 1, the Delta Counties Coalition (DCC) officially supported legislation that prohibits the construction of the peripheral canal, twin tunnels or other isolated conveyance project unless approved by California voters. The coalition, which represents Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano and Yolo counties, expressed its support in a letter addressed to state Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton.

“The people most impacted by the twin tunnels project must have the right to vote to approve or disapprove the project,” the letter read.

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California Storms Send Billions of Gallons of Water into Reservoirs

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

This weekend’s soaking rains delivered just what drought-weary Northern California needed: billions of gallons of water pouring into the state’s major reservoirs — and more predicted for later this week.

With rain totals reaching 10 inches or more in some mountain areas, 46 of the largest reservoirs in California, closely tracked by the state Department of Water Resources, collectively added 391 billion gallons of water between Friday and Monday morning — enough for the needs of 6 million people for a year.

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Live Updates: Major El Niño Storm Moves Through; Some Areas Soaked

/in /by /The Los Angeles Times

A fast-moving storm soaked much of Southern California today, as frequent lightning strikes startled commuters and momentarily cut power at Los Angeles International Airport.

The storm, which had rolled south into Baja California by late morning, follows a weekend of rainy weather, traffic accidents and several swift water rescues. Northern California also saw its share of weather drama as powerful storms dumped rain across coastal regions and piles of snow in the Sierra.

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Study: Atmospheric River Storms Can Reduce Sierra Snow

/in /by /Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego)

A new study by NASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and other partners has found that in California’s Sierra Nevada, atmospheric river storms are two-and-a-half times more likely than other types of winter storms to result in destructive “rain-on-snow” events, where rain falls on existing snowpack, causing it to melt. Those events increase flood risks in winter and reduce water availability the following summer.

The study, based on NASA satellite and ground-based data from 1998 through 2014, is the first to establish a climatological connection between atmospheric river storms and rain-on-snow events.

 

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Second Desalination Plant for Baja California

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby By Sandra Dibble

A New York City-based company working with two Mexican partners has launched construction of an ocean water desalination plant in the agricultural region of San Quintin some 160 miles from the San Diego border.

Scheduled to open in the summer of 2017, the plant would provide 5.8 million gallons of water daily to more than 100,000 residents of the region. The cost of the project is about $32 million at current exchange rates. It is the first to be approved under Baja California’s new public-private partnership law.

 

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Late Winter Storms Put Dent in Drought

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby By Gary Robbins and Lyndsay Winkley

A sliver of the huge weather system that dumped upwards of 5 feet of snow in Northern California angled through San Diego County Monday, bringing soaking rains, damaging winds and flash-bang lightning.

The system seemed to mock the calendar; with spring only two weeks away, snow wafted on to the mountains and foothills, falling all the way down to the 4,100-foot level in Julian. It was the first major system to hit San Diego since late January, when a powerful windstorm caused power outages and toppled trees, one which killed a woman in Pacific Beach.

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BLOG: Let People Pay What Water is Worth – Sell Your Conserved Water

/in /by /California WaterBlog (Davis)by By Jay Lund

During dry years, water becomes scarcer, and, economically, people should pay more for it. But most urban residents do not pay directly for water scarcity. We only pay the financial cost of providing water through pipes, pumping, treatment plants, and reservoirs. We do not pay for the lost value that water would have had for environmental or agricultural uses outside our communities or the value of that water to other water users in our community.

These scarcity costs are real and including scarcity costs in water rates would appropriately increase incentives for water conservation.

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OPINION: Time for the Legislature to Get Serious About Water Storage

/in /by /Contra Costa Timesby By Devon Mathis,

For the past year, there has been a lot of optimism surrounding the potential relief from the five-year drought that El Niño could bring to California. But though we have seen our rivers swell and our mountains capped with snow, the precipitation from El Niño is not enough to provide a long-term solution to California’s water crisis.

California’s water woes are not simply from a lack of rainfall and changes in the climate; they exist because of a fundamental lack of infrastructure that even in times of record rainfall is not sufficient for our state’s needs.

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