California and Colorado are both receiving impressive amounts of snow.
That’s good for us because snow in the Rocky Mountains ultimately ends up in the Colorado River, which leads to Lake Mead.
That snow is hitting places like the Copper Mountain Ski Resort, which sits 9,700 feet up in Frisco, Colorado. That’s about an hour and a half west of Denver.
California’s unusually stormy winter is promising good news for the state’s struggling hydropower industry.
After three years of extreme drought, winter weather has driven up the most populous U.S. state’s snow levels to 235% of normal, according to the latest figures from the California Department of Water Resources. That’s likely to fill up hydro reservoirs during the spring melt, which could lead to more of the cheap renewable energy source and less dependence on fossil fuels, public agencies and utilities said.
The healthy snowpack whitening Colorado’s mountain peaks has given water officials some breathing room to manage the Colorado River Basin’s ongoing drought. The challenge will be not to squander it.
As winter storms wind down, water managers and policymakers are mulling over decisions about how to release and retain water in shrunken reservoirs across the basin, which supports 40 million people across the West.
Marty Plaskett upgraded his farming equipment and spent $60,000 on new sprinklers to conserve water, even before the rural Nevada valley where he farms alfalfa began more strictly managing groundwater.
Now, Plaskett is weighing another adjustment: selling off part of his legal right to use water that lies under his land to the state.
Nevada gets less than a 2 percent cut from the Colorado River’s waters, but the state actually uses far more water than that each year, all while staying well within its century-old legal water rights.
It’s all thanks to an extensive water recycling program in the Las Vegas Valley and something called “return flow credits,” which allow the state to pull extra water out of Lake Mead for every gallon of wastewater treated and returned to the reservoir via the Las Vegas Wash.
If you wanted to measure California’s change of water fortunes, the boat ramp at Lake Sonoma would be one place to do it.
The lake is the scene of an incredible four-month turnaround, for the very water system where the drought officially started.
“As you recall, three years ago, the governor literally was up at Lake Mendocino,” recalled Grant Davis with Sonoma Water. “Declaring the start of the drought basically, basically April 2021.”
Sweetwater Authority is hosting a Rate Study Workshop-Technical Session on April 19 from 3-4 p.m. The Authority is currently conducting a water rate cost of service study. The study will evaluate the Authority’s existing rates and rate structure for water charges and provide recommendations for updating the rates and/or rate structure. Members of the public are invited to attend the rate workshop to hear about the rate study from NBS, the Authority’s consultant performing the study, and to provide feedback and ask questions.
The San Diego County Water Authority and 13 of its member agencies offer growers a special agricultural water rate program: providing lower-cost water in return for lower reliability.
The Water Authority’s Board of Directors approved the Permanent Special Agricultural Water Rate Program (PSAWR) in 2020. It helps support commercial farms driving the economic engine of rural San Diego County. PSAWR gives farmers a choice of what level of water service works best for their operations.
More and more San Diego water customers are getting sticker shock from gigantic bills that force them to pay for many months of past service all at once.
The cumulative bills, which can be as high as several thousand dollars, aren’t the result of customers being irresponsible. They are being caused by severe staffing shortages and outdated meters that often malfunction, city officials say.
Weeks of off-and-on storms across California may have been a source of frustration for many of the state’s residents, but it’s been good news for the state’s snowpack.
Precipitation has been so dramatic and persistent in recent months that this year’s historic snowpack totals are now believed to be the largest on record.
