Oct. 1 is the beginning of what hydrologists call the “water year.”
Historically, California’s reservoirs are near their lowest levels by this point after months of being drawn down, mostly to irrigate fields and orchards, during the state’s precipitation-free summer.
The Biden-Harris administration October 25 announced next steps in the efforts to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System and strengthen water security in the West. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the ongoing, collaborative effort to update the current interim operating guidelines for the near-term operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address the ongoing drought and impacts from the climate crisis.
Humanity is on course to transgress multiple global “tipping points” that could lead to irreversible instability or the complete collapse of ecological and institutional systems, a United Nations report warned Wednesday.
The third annual Interconnected Disaster Risks report from the U.N. University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn, Germany, found that drastic changes will occur if urgent actions are not taken around six moments when sociological systems are no longer able to buffer risks.
The Central Sierra Nevada and the rest of Central California could see another wetter-than-average winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its U.S. Winter Outlook for December through February.
A winter outlook map for precipitation, released Thursday, shows wetter-than-average conditions are most likely in areas that include parts of Central California and Nevada.
California, Nevada and Arizona’s historic pact to cut their use of the Colorado River’s overtapped supplies should be enough to keep the basin’s massive reservoirs from hitting dangerously low levels — for now, a federal analysis reported today.
A $5 million cleanup project in the Tijuana River Valley will begin in early 2024, with a completion date before the end of March, officials said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 in favor of dredging drainage channels and building a basin for sediment and trash control in the Smuggler’s Gulch and Pilot channels.
The Biden administration has set aside $310 million to expand a wastewater treatment in South Bay as part of an ongoing effort to tackle a cross-border pollution and sewage crisis.
The South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant was included in the emergency supplemental funding request at the request of a group of lawmakers led by Rep. Scott Peters last month.
Jeff Stephenson has been appointed director of water resources for the San Diego County Water Authority, where he leads the department responsible for regional water supply planning and long-term facilities planning.
Stephenson brings more than 27 years of experience at the Water Authority to fill the position vacated by the department’s previous director, Kelley Gage, who was appointed assistant general manager in August.
San Diego is accelerating efforts to shore up the city’s aging dams, including moving up construction of the new Lake Hodges Dam from 2031 to 2029 and committing to comprehensively evaluating the eight other city dams by 2028.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting higher-than-usual rainfall for parts of Nevada, California and Arizona this winter, but that rainfall isn’t expected to translate to gains in the water level at Lake Mead, regional climate experts said.
El Niño’s southern oscillation cycle began changing weather patterns this month and will continue through the winter to bring wetter conditions to the southern United States, said Jon Gottschalck, the operational prediction branch chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
