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El Niño No-Show Could Damage California’s Water Conservation Efforts

/in /by /Pasadena Star-Newsby By Robert Rector

We have been snookered, hoodwinked, bamboozled and beguiled.
We bought a “Rolex” watch from some guy on the street corner. We believed we won millions in some foreign lottery. We gave money to the nice young man at the front door who said he was supporting an orphanage. We took financial advice from Bernie Madoff.

And when we were told we would be subjected to monster storms this winter, we believed it.
We repaired the roof and replaced the gutters. We laid in a supply of sandbags. We placed cisterns beneath the downspouts. We bought kayaks. We stopped conserving water.

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Big Projects Floated to Save the Salton Sea

/in /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by By Denise Goolsby

Although there are some short- and medium-term fixes already in the works, the job of saving the Salton Sea is a long-term proposition – one that requires planning well into the next decades.

A group of local leaders – known as the Long Range Plan Committee – has been assembled under the auspices of the California Natural Resources Agency to convene a series of meetings to listen to presentations that address long-term solutions for the sea.

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Protecting Wildlife and Human Life

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby By Deborah Sullivan Brennan

In the 1980s, Bill Toone helped save condors from near extinction as the curator of birds for San Diego Zoo. Now, the Escondido resident is working on ways to save endangered animals and the imperiled people who live alongside them.

Toone, 60, is executive director of ECOLIFE, a conservation organization that promotes sustainable technology that benefits both people and nature.

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A Tale of Two Water Systems

/in /by /The Atlantic (Washington, D.C.)by By Alana Semuels Quoted: Carlsbad Desalination Plant

This growing region needs more water, and it’s spending hundreds of millions to get it. A $72 million plant opened here in 2014 to turn wastewater into drinking water, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District is planning to build five more plants to purify water in the region

Water is scarce and expensive in California, and facilities like this one, the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Plant, use some of the most advanced technology in the world to make sure Silicon Valley’s booming population will have water when it turns on the tap.

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State Surveyors Return to Sierra Nevada to Measure Snowpack

/in /by /CBS Sacramento

State surveyors will travel up the Sierra Nevada Tuesday to take their monthly measurements of the snowpack after a mainly dry and warm February.

The Department of Water Resources will conduct the survey in Echo Summit in the Central Sierra, which includes Lake Tahoe.

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El Niño Eclipses Continued Need to Conserve Water

/in /by /NBC San Diegoby By Matt Rascon and Laura McVicker

With a lot of recent publicity about El Nino, it can be easy to forget about the drought and saving water.“I don’t think it’s a question of relaxed so much as it is fatigued,” Poway Mayor Steve Vaus said. “You can send the message over and over and over again, but sooner or later people think, ‘Well, my neighbors are watering, so I’m going to water.’ It’s a domino effect.”

Poway’s mayor said he reminds residents about water conservation at every city meeting. Though El Nino has brought some rain this winter, Californians have also seen plenty of hotter-than-normal temperatures.

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Drier February Raises Concerns El Nino is Fading

/in /by /CNBCby By Jeff Daniels

California’s recent trend toward warmer, drier weather has raised concerns that El Nino may be a bust and that the 5-year-old drought may hang around much longer. The Sierra Nevada snowpack has fallen below normal levels, and state data show Californians have been slipping in their monthly water-savings efforts.

“As a percent of normal, it keeps dipping because we’re supposed to be accumulating during this time not having bright sunny skies,” said California’s state climatologist Michael Anderson.

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California Water Bond Funding Will Begin to Flow

/in /by /Environmental Leader (Fort Collins, Colo.)by By Craig Moyer

Two years ago, Californians voted to pass Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion general obligation bond, also known as the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014. As part of developing a comprehensive water plan for California’s future, Proposition 1 provides $2.7 billion of continuously appropriated funds for the Water Storage Investment Project (“WSIP”) through a competitive grant process.

The California Water Commission (“CWC”) is the state agency that has been charged with overseeing the allocation of the funds. The CWC is currently accepting written public comments through March 14, 2016, and accepting concept papers until March 31, 2016. The CWC must develop regulations to quantify the public benefits of water storage projects by December 15, 2016.

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Lost Water Is Wasted Water

/in /by /Visalia Times-Deltaby By Johnny Amaral

Last June, at the height of California’s drought, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that a homeowner in Bel-Air was using 1,300 gallons of water per hour. Annually, that works out to about 11.8 million gallons – enough water supply for 90 average households.

Reaction was immediate. Water agencies, other homeowners, and the public denounced the waste of water by the unidentified homeowner as careless and irresponsible.

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The Disappearing Wetlands in California’s Central Valley

/in /by /High Country News (Paonia, Colo.)by By Paige Blankenbuehler

Each year, 181 species of waterfowl, shorebirds and riparian birds flock to California’s Central Valley to nest between November and March. The space they roost in is already limited: There are just 19 wetlands, comprised of National Wildlife Refuges and State Wildlife Areas, spread across little more than 270 square miles in the valley’s 22,500-square-mile expanse.

But over the past five years during the state’s historic drought, those birds have returned, only to find once watery areas no longer suitable for nesting. If dry conditions persist, the little remaining space could disappear.

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