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High Water Levels Could Lead to ‘Interesting’ Runoff Season

/in /by /KCRA (Sacramento)by By David Bienick

Federal water managers warned Tuesday that northern California could be headed for an “interesting” runoff season following a series of late-season storms. Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation made the statements during a meeting of the State Water Resources Board in Sacramento.

“This is an area where we tend to want to be very cautious with people’s lives and livelihoods,” said Ron Milligan, operations manager for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project. The Bureau of Reclamation manages several reservoirs, including Folsom Lake and Lake Shasta. Both are more than three-quarters full and still rising following recent storms.

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OPINION: Lance W. Johnson: Californians Must Demand Accountability for all this Wasted Water

/in /by /The Modesto Beeby By Lance W. Johnson

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Put into action, that looks like the federal water policy that sends millions of gallons of water to the ocean for the purpose of protecting Delta fish that continue to die.

Since 1992, federal water regulators have increased Delta outflow requirements repeatedly; they now total millions of acre-feet per year. Despite these releases, regulators have never been able to prove, through peer-reviewed science, that any Delta fish have benefited – not even during wet years

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OPINION: Linking Water Rights to the Train a Horrible Idea

/in /by /The Modesto Beeby By Charlie Hoppin

As I write this opinion from my home in the Sacramento Valley, our rivers are at or near flood stage and the reservoirs are continuing to fill. The bad news is that the water not being captured in our reservoir system is mostly blowing out under the Golden Gate Bridge with little diverted south of the Delta.

Most of us who farm up here have state or federal contracts that are the basis of our water rights, which are an integral part of our land and its value.

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Recent Storms Cause Problem for Drought Tolerant Plants

/in /by /KION TV (Salinas)by By Brandon Castillo

Recent rain has refilled reservoirs and replenished ground water, but it’s also created a new problem. The plants people bought to help conserve, don’t like all the extra water. March has been a very wet month. For those who tried to conserve water with drought tolerant plants, all the rain on the Central Coast may have done those plants in.

“Just a plant that saw way too much water. In the case of this bunching bamboo it’s not going to make it,”said Salinas Councilman, and owner of McShane’s Nursery, Steve McShane.

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DWP Unveils a Plan to Punish Water Wasters–But it Could Take Some Time to Implement

/in /by /The Los Angeles Timesby By Matt Stevens

The revelation was as shocking as it was incomprehensible: Someone in Bel-Air used 11.8 million gallons of water in a single year. Appalled officials had no choice but to react when they found out last fall. Councilman Paul Koretz called the consumption “a slap in the face to neighbors” who had conserved during four years of drought and demanded that the Department of Water and Power explain how it planned to deal with such “irresponsible” users.

Now, more than five months later, the city’s water utility has unveiled its plan to punish its most wasteful residents with hefty fines.

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Latest Storms are Filling Reservoirs and Bringing Hopes of a ‘March Miracle’

/in /by /The Los Angeles Timesby By Joseph Serna

Ever since a series of winter storms began dumping rain and snow in Northern California last year, officials have been looking for tangible signs that all those storms were making a dent in the state’s four-year drought.

This week delivered some pretty powerful evidence. The latest storms over the weekend pushed California’s biggest reservoir past its historical average for mid-March and put the second-largest one at its historical average, officials said. The rising reservoirs, along with growing snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, are important because both are key sources of water for California.

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‘H2O’ Program Aims to Ease Burden of Water Bills for the Poor

/in /by /KPBSby By Andrew Bowen

Four months after increasing water rates, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved a program to help poor water customers pay their bills. The program, branded Help to Others, or H2O, would solicit tax-deductible donations from ratepayers through their water bills. That money would subsidize the water bills of low-income San Diegans.

The program has to be voluntary because of a state law that requires utilities to charge their customers no more than the actual cost of service.

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18 record requests that took 100 days or more

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Lauryn Schroeder

California state law requires public records to be made promptly available, and allows 10 days to respond in certain siuations, plus another 14 for more limited circumstances. But in practice, the process can take a lot longer, U-T Watchdog found in a project to mark the nationwide open government event known as Sunshine Week.

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SWRO Water Declared ‘Drought-Resilient’

/in /by /Water Desalination Report Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority Water Resources Director Bob Yamada

State regulators certified the water supply from the Carlsbad Desal Plant as drought-resilient, reducing the regional impacts of emergency water-use mandates the state imposed in June 2015. The State Water Resources Control Board’s certification lowers the regional aggregate water conservation goal from 20 percent to about 13 percent, though water-use targets will continue to vary by local water agency.

Vallecitos Water District, the only retail water provider with a direct connection to the Carlsbad plant, will have its conservation target dropped to 16 percent compared to its previously mandated 24 percent reduction in potable water use.

California Revives Cloud-Seeding Effort as El Nino Disappoints

/in /by /Total Landscape Careby By Jill Odom

Hopes that El Nino will end California’s drought are withering. It appears they’re being replaced with high hopes for the science of cloud-seeding.

Southern California in particular has been suffering from a lack of precipitation and now Los Angeles County officials are reviving its cloud-seeding program for $550,000 a year. The program was abandoned in 2009 – several years after it had last been used – apparently out of fear that too much rain would destabilize hillsides charred from wildfires. It was resurrected last year after the governor’s declaration of a water emergency.

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