Two dozen members of the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesale water supplier in the county, will be collecting more than $10 million as part of a successful litigation against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
A total of $90.7 million has now been collected by water agencies from Carlsbad to Yuima in Pauma Valley through the SDCWA’s successful rate litigation.
As California increasingly slips into extreme drought and calls intensify to reduce water use, the state’s water savings in 2022 remain bleak.
The average Californian used 83 gallons of water per day in April, compared with 73 in April 2020. That’s far from the 15 percent decrease that Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for as our reservoirs and the snowpack dwindle. (This underperformance has persisted since January.)
The lack of available water supplies could increase the amount of agricultural land fallowing than previously estimated. Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, said that more is needed to ensure ample water availability moving forward. The state is looking at a significant economic impact due to dismal water supplies, which could have even further repercussions.
Scorching temperatures and desperately dry conditions set the stage for the rapid spread of several explosive wildfires that erupted over the weekend, forcing evacuations in California and Arizona.
The blazes are among dozens that have broken out across the US south-west early in the summer, including a ferocious fire in New Mexico that became the worst in the state’s history. Officials say it is a foreboding sign of what is shaping up to be another intense year of fire.
The Colorado River begins in the Rocky Mountains, collecting snowmelt as it meanders through an alpine valley. Across a vast swath of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, the river grows as it takes in major tributaries: the Gunnison, the Dolores, the Green and others.
The Colorado River Basin encompasses more than 246,000 square miles in seven U.S. states and northern Mexico. On its 1,450-mile journey, the river scours the Grand Canyon and flows into the country’s two largest reservoirs.
As drought continues to be a concern across California and Kern County, there is a new proposal in the state senate that could spend up to $1.5 billion to buy back the water rights that allow farmers to take as much water as they need from the state’s rivers and streams to grow their crops.
After decades of fighting farmers in court over how much water they can take out of California’s rivers and streams, some state lawmakers want to try something different: use taxpayer money to buy out farmers. It comes at a time when the state’s drought tracker says that almost 98 percent of California is currently experiencing yet another severe drought, which is resulting in low river levels.
Sacramentans should continue to water their trees regularly despite the city’s watering restrictions on lawns and landscapes.
While residents can only water their lawns and landscapes twice a week during the dry season until the end of October, trees are exempt from this restriction, according to the city.
Why are trees exempt from this rule, and how can I keep my trees healthy?
As the drought in California and across much of the western United States enters another summer season, several experts participated in a conference hosted by the California Department of Water Resources and the Water Education Foundation on Thursday to discuss issues of how modeling precipitation can impact decisions made by policymakers.
One of the main takeaways of the conference was that the current modeling programs are not effective as they should be in helping water districts, state water agencies and federal departments in planning water distributions.
The federal government did not breach its contract when it gave water users, including the city of Fresno, a zero water allocation in the extreme drought year of 2014, according to a ruling issued June 6 in Federal Claims Court.
It may not seem fair, Judge Armando Bonilla wrote in his ruling, and “To be clear, a zero allocation for the Friant contractors was harsh,” but the fact is the Friant division of the Central Valley Project is outranked by superior water rights held by the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors.
Any WaterSmart landscape makeover starts with observing and recording your property as it exists today. Think of it as a bird’s eye view or satellite map showing your property’s boundaries and physical features. This becomes the basis of all your planning.
You need a few basic tools to draw your own plot plan. They include a tape measure for accurate measurements, a ruler to measure and draw straight lines, a clipboard, a pencil, and paper, preferably one-quarter inch grid graph paper.
