This story, like many, starts with rejection.
Jose Gruenzweig grew up in the lush, green hills of Switzerland and studied the cold, wet forests of Alaska before settling into his current position as associate professor of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ramona Municipal Water District directors agreed to apply for a state grant for up to $750,000 to help pay for a staff grant writer position and launch climate-related programs.
The Regional Climate Collaboration Program Grant, made available through the California Strategic Growth Council, makes about $5.4 billion in bond funds available for safe drinking water, water quality and supply, flood control, natural resource protection and park improvements.
The past three years have been the driest on record in California and officials warn that streak could continue.
Most of the state is under severe-to-exceptional drought conditions, fueling risks for wildfires and putting Central Valley farmers in an even bigger pinch, as they struggle to keep their crops alive.
The weather, in next couple of months, will determine if there will be some relief for the state. Until then, water officials say conservation needs to remain a way of life.
For as long as the Salton Sea has faced the threat of ecological collapse, some local residents and environmentalists have advocated a radical cure for the deteriorating lake: a large infusion of ocean water.
By moving desalinated seawater across the desert, they say, California could stop its largest lake from shrinking and growing saltier and could restore its once-thriving ecosystem. Without more water, they argue, the lake will continue to decline, and its retreating shorelines will expose growing stretches of dry lake bed that spew hazardous dust and greenhouse gases.
From record-breaking heat waves to historic rainstorms, September was nothing short of a meteorological roller-coaster ride and the Bay Area was given a front-row seat.
This roller coaster of temperatures and intense back-and-forth between extreme heat and strong rains has come to a halt, though. A quiet, mostly dry pattern looks to be taking center stage for October as California is set to enter its third consecutive year of La Niña. But another weather pattern could shake up our chances of seeing at least one more storm roll into California before the end of the month.
A few hundred farms in the southern tip of California, along the Mexican border, may hold the key to saving the drought-plagued Colorado River from collapse.
These farmers, in Imperial County, currently draw more water from the Colorado River than all of Arizona and Nevada combined. They inherited the legal right to use that water, but they’re now under pressure to give up some of it.
Researchers from Colorado State University focused on areas they call “late snow zones” – regions in the Western mountains where snow doesn’t typically melt until May or later.
They found that between 1984 and 2020, wildfire activity increased in 70% of these zones throughout the West. The mountain ranges studied included the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, Basin and Range, and Northern and Southern Rockies.
As California’s drought deepens, Elaine Moore’s family is running out of an increasingly precious resource: water.
The Central Valley almond growers had two wells go dry this summer. Two of her adult children are now getting water from a new well the family drilled after the old one went dry last year. She’s even supplying water to a neighbor whose well dried up.
“It’s been so dry this last year. We didn’t get much rain. We didn’t get much snowpack,” Moore said, standing next to a dry well on her property in Chowchilla, California. “Everybody’s very careful with what water they’re using. In fact, my granddaughter is emptying the kids’ little pool to flush the toilets.”
California cities and farms should brace for little or no water from the state’s big reservoirs in the coming year, a prospect that signals more water restrictions for households and more fallowed fields in the farm belt.
The warning was delivered Monday by state and federal water officials who said they are preparing for the possibility of a fourth year of drought. Both are considering, at least initially, reduced allocations for the many water agencies that contract for reservoir supplies from California’s sprawling water projects.
The Supreme Court opened its new term on Monday by hearing a property rights appeal that calls for limiting the government’s power to protect millions of acres of wetlands from development.
At issue is whether the Clean Water Act forbids polluting wetlands and marshes that are near — but not strictly part of — waterways.
