California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced financial support to four urgent drought relief projects in Humboldt, Los Angeles, Modoc, Shasta, and Siskiyou counties through the Small Community Drought Relief Program.
In coordination with the State Water Resources Control Board, DWR awarded $2 million in funding to support four projects that will improve drought resilience and address local water needs.
Farmers and cities on the east side of the Valley may get more water than they originally thought.
Friant Water Authority, which operates the Friant-Kern Canal, said in a recent memo on its website it is confident its contractors will not only get the 15% allocation of surface water deliveries announced in February but that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will likely increase the amount to 20%, possibly as early as this week.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Wednesday that will provide $1.2 billion over three years to boost long-term water supplies for the desert state and implement conservation efforts that will see more immediate effects.
The legislation that was hammered out over months during the just-completed legislative session is viewed as the most significant since the state implemented a groundwater protection plan in 1980.
Colorado’s water leaders have released an updated blueprint detailing how the state will manage and conserve water supplies as climate change and population growth strain the system in unprecedented ways.
The first Colorado Water Plan was released in 2015 after back-to-back years of historic drought and sought to address the possibility that the state might not have enough water in the next few decades.
Trees are a very essential part of California’s infrastructure, with some of them taking 20 to 30 years to mature. Despite the drought, watering these important resources remains vital.
“We don’t want to put them at risk for various diseases because they’re not getting enough water. The tree tends to get used to the amount of water that’s there in the area. So as we dial back watering our lawns, we have to be aware that we might be stressing the tree that’s gotten used to the watering that we previously were doing,” Chief Sustainability Officer of StreetsLA Greg Spotts told “Inside the Issues” host Alex Cohen.
There are two schools of thought on how to navigate the West’s historic drought: Use less water or find new ways to make more of it usable. A few cities are trying to do both, and so far, it’s spared them from some of the most stringent drought restrictions.
In the last drought, Santa Monica used to rely heavily on water imported from Northern California. But now less than half of Santa Monica’s water is imported, which spared them from the mandatory outdoor water restrictions that began at the beginning of June.
California’s water issues may be complicated. But the rainfall shortage driving the state’s current drought comes down to basic math.
“In most places we are missing an entire year of rain over the past three years,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay. “It’s like if you worked three years but only got paid for two. You are going to be hurting.”
California and six other Western states have less than 60 days to pull off a seemingly impossible feat: Cut a multi-way deal to dramatically reduce their consumption of water from the dangerously low Colorado River.
If they don’t, the federal government will do it for them.
California’s once-abundant salmon runs are on the verge of collapse. That’s a tragedy, but this story is bigger than the extinction of an iconic fish that once fed millions of people and was the basis of thriving commercial, tribal and sport fisheries. Salmon (to mix zoological metaphors) are the canary in the coal mine for California’s water and power ratepayers.
The Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low for the second time in less than a year, a dire milestone as the US west continues to weather a historic mega-drought.
The Utah department of natural resources said in a news release on Monday that the Great Salt Lake dipped over the weekend to 4,190.1ft (1,277.1 meters).
