Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District has commissioned Xylem as part of a project at its FE Weymouth Water Treatment Plant to retrofit biologically active filtration and ozone. Xylem will supply its Leopold Type XA underdrains with IMS 200 media retainers and Leopold dual media sand and anthracite to the 75-year-old plant which treats water from the Colorado River Aqueduct and the State Project Water (SPW) California Aqueduct.
While they’re giving informal updates to water districts, federal water officials in California have put off announcing Central Valley Project allocations until they see what this month’s storms will bring.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Shane Hunt didn’t flinch when asked if the “March Miracle” of abundant rain and snow that many had hoped for is coming to fruition. He responded by noting that the agency’s eight weather stations along the Sacramento River in Northern California had received their average precipitation for the month by about March 9.
California residents are overwhelmingly supportive of using treated wastewater, or recycled water, in their everyday lives, according to a statewide survey released today by water technology provider Xylem. The survey defined recycled water as former wastewater that has been treated and purified so that it can be reused for drinking purposes.
The survey found that 76 percent of respondents believe recycled water should be used as a long-term solution for managing water resources, regardless of whether or not a water shortage continues.
We’re average, and that’s good. Just before 4 p.m. Monday afternoon, the amount of water in Lake Oroville topped the 2,569,644 acre-feet that is the average storage for March 14, and that’s the first time in almost three years the lake has been where it’s supposed to be.
The lake water level was rising about a foot every 2 1/2 hours Monday, according to the Department of Water Resources website. More important, about 5,000 acre-feet of water was being added to the lake each hour, with inflow to the lake topping 60,000 cubic feet per second.
Despite five spill gates open, Folsom Lake is rising once again and is nearly 70 percent full and Lake Shasta is nearly 80 percent full. Within weeks, the State Water Board will have to decide whether to ease tight water use restrictions.
As many as 13.1 million people living along U.S. coastlines could face flooding by the end of the century because of rising sea levels, according to a new study that warns that large numbers of Americans could be forced to relocate to higher ground.
The estimated number of coastal dwellers affected by rising sea level is three times higher than previously projected, according to the study published Monday in the science journal Nature Climate Change.
Department of Water Resources State Climatologist Michael Anderson talked to the dairy industry about the status of El Nino, which the majority of may have passed already. “So the tropical sea surface temperatures did reach their peak anomaly in November and have since been cooling,” Anderson says. “Beginning mid-February it starting cooling much more rapidly. We expect a transition towards neutral conditions in the latter part of spring and expectations are that we may transition to a La Nina condition by later in the fall and into winter.”
With California’s two largest reservoirs hitting historically average levels following a weekend of heavy storms, the state’s chief water regulator is cautiously optimistic that the drought may finally be relaxing its grip. If the wet weather continues, she said, the urban conservation mandates that turned lawns brown and have Californians taking shorter showers may be eased in the weeks ahead.
“In May, we’ll be either lifting it or changing it significantly,” Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said Monday. “The more precipitation we get, the more snowpack we have, the better it is.”
They see the purchase as part of a water grab to send more water to Los Angeles through Gov. Jerry Brown’s $15.5 billion twin tunnels plan, at the expense of fish and wildlife. Either way, some 20,000 acres of island is moving toward a change of ownership that is stirring up waves in California’s water politics.
After months of negotiations, the Metropolitan Water District board authorized its general manager Tuesday to enter into a contract to buy the islands from the privately owned Delta Wetlands Properties. The deal, valued at some $200 million, is expected to wrap up soon.
A series of storms pushed California’s biggest reservoir past its historical average for mid-March this weekend and put the second largest one on track for doing the same by Monday afternoon, officials said.
Together the Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville reservoirs have the capacity to hold more than 8 million acre feet of water and after a wet weekend in Northern California, they were 79% and 70% full, respectively, by Monday morning, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
