Citing potentially higher costs that would be passed on to customers, Orange County’s largest provider of water to homes and businesses is intensifying its opposition to a key supplier’s plan to buy desalinated water from a proposed $1 billion Huntington Beach plant.
Federal forecasters have downgraded their projections for the Colorado River after an unusually hot, dry February that has increased the likelihood of a first-ever shortage declaration at Lake Mead.
Forecasters are now predicting the arrival of shortage conditions at the nation’s largest man-made reservoir in January 2018. Just a month ago, forecasters expected Lake Mead to narrowly avoid the shortage line for at least the next two years.
Water from the rain-swollen Sacramento River is spilling over a 33.5-foot-high concrete wall and into a bypass built to divert flood water.
NOAA hydrologist Robert Hartman said Sunday the overflow is expected to reach a depth of three feet on Tuesday then start receding. It’s the first time water has spilled over the so-called Fremont Weir crest and into the Yolo bypass since 2012. The nearly 2-mile-long concrete wall is located about 8 miles northeast of Woodland.
Flying over the boundary of Yosemite National Park, the view from 10,500 feet spanned east across 30 miles of snow, ice and rock to the Sierra Crest. The west-facing flank was side-loaded with massive slabs of snow up as far as you could see. Frozen lakes looked like giant skating rinks.
As the plane banked to the right, we caught our first glimpse of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. Looking toward Yosemite Valley, the top edge of Half Dome was visible, its colossal escarpment jutting into the sky.
Sunday’s storms brought more rain to Northern California, but they also helped the state hit a key milestone in its efforts to recover from the historic four-year drought.
Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California and a critical source of water for Central Valley farms and cities from the Bay Area to Bakersfield, reached 100 percent of its historic average Sunday as billions of gallons continued to pour in from drenching downpours. The 21-mile-long reservoir, north of Redding, holds enough water when full for the needs of 23 million people for a year.
It would be a ground-breaking project for Baja California, the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, situated on the Pacific Ocean in a corner of Rosarito Beach — and could one day serve as a supply for water consumers in San Diego County as well.
But as a critical deadline approaches, two partners in the group that proposed the 100 million-gallon-a-day facility are bitterly at odds, suing each other in U.S. and Mexican courts.
Ripping a page out of the playbook the Los Angeles Water & Power Department used to desecrate the Owens Valley to try and quench its insatiable thirst for water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is buying up land in San Joaquin County.
The deal for five Delta islands — Webb Tract, Bacon Island, Bouldin, part of Chipps Island and most of Holland Tract — could line the pockets of Swiss mega-corporation Zurich Insurance Group with as much as $240 million.
The El Nino storms drenching California won’t suffice to solve the state’s drought and won’t permanently save the Central Valley’s vulnerable salmon, federal scientists are cautioning.
In an apolitical assessment that comes amid a highly political time, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration experts stress that this year’s El Nino bounty is useful and limited. It might well be followed, moreover, by a swing back to a different kind of weather complication called La Nina.
The first of a pair of storms pounded Northern California on Thursday, bringing heavy bands of rain to the North Bay, causing minor flooding and mudslides, and raising the specter that the flood-prone Russian River might spill its banks.
The National Weather Service’s hazardous outlook remained in place for the most of the Bay Area as on-and-off downpours were forecast to continue Friday. Parts of Sonoma and Napa counties were expecting as much 4 inches of rain by Friday evening, igniting fear that a region thirsty for rain might get too much too fast.
The storm had gathered power for days as it crossed the Northern Pacific, and now its outer band was uppercutting the coast. By the time Eric Batman arrived at work at 7 Monday morning, a hard west wind was driving rain and hail sideways against windows. Thunder reverberated across the L.A. Basin.
Batman reveled in El Niño’s long-overdue rumbling. His job, as senior civil engineer for the county Department of Public Works, is to keep as much rain as possible from escaping to the ocean.
