The Butte County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the finalized drought plan Tuesday with the stipulation that it would be a living document that develops as conditions change.
Water and Resource Conservation Director Kammie Loeser was joined by Assistant Director Christina Buck to deliver a series of presentations on water with the first focus surrounding a major analysis project that has occurred over the past six months.
Early one winter morning, as Brian Lilla was riding his bike through Napa, California’s hills and meadows, he spotted farmworkers driving ATVs through rows of vines. They hauled huge canisters of the weedkiller Roundup. As the workers sprayed vines, a chemical smell shot through the air.
Having moved to Napa from Oakland nine years ago with his wife to start a family in the seemingly healthy environs of the country, Lilla found himself paying more attention to the use of Roundup after his daughters, now 8 and 5, were born. One day, he recalled, he saw the herbicide sprayed in a vineyard across the street from his daughters’ school.
The water that comes out of the tap for more than 900,000 Californians is unsafe to drink and the state isn’t acting fast enough to help clean it up, state auditors said in a report released Tuesday.
Thousands of water systems supply the state’s 39 million people, and about 5% of them have some type of contaminant, like nitrates or arsenic, in them, according to the audit. That means people can’t safely drink the water or use it to cook or bathe. Most of the 370 failing systems are in economically disadvantaged communities, many in the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural heartland.
Chula Vista homeowners Bryan and Denee Felber earned “Best in District” honors as the winner of the Otay Water District’s 2022 WaterSmart Landscape Contest. Converting 2,143 square feet of turf to a drought-tolerant garden in 2015 continues to save water and pay off for the Felbers while beautifying their neighborhood.
When Elana O’Brien decided to eliminate the front lawn outside her Pasadena home, she had three goals: water conservation, increased privacy and a view more natural than a city street and the seasonal decorations in her neighbor’s yard.
Smothering her 850-square-foot lawn with cardboard and mulch — a.k.a. sheet mulching — wasn’t enough, O’Brien said. She wanted to add some height and contour to her yard, and she found the answer with — literally — a lot of sticks and stones, using a process known as hugelkultur.
The western United States continues to suffer from a historic level of drought. California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot spoke during the Western Food and Ag Issues Summit hosted by Agri-Pulse. He offers a key example of the drought’s severity.
“We are facing a worsening regional drought across most of the American West that’s unprecedented in nature. I spent the first half an hour of my day with the Western Growers talking about the Colorado River Basin.”
NASA recently released startling satellite images of Lake Mead, which the agency notes is now at its lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time.
A measurement taken on July 18 put Lake Mead at just 27% of capacity. That effect you see in the image above — with the lighter color on the cliffs where the water level once was — is known as the “bathtub ring.”
California’s deepening drought has resulted tens of millions of tree deaths, increasing the risk of wildfires and threatening the state’s surviving trees.
“It’s obviously a concern and sad as well,” said Luis Garcia, who recently moved to the east foothills above San Jose’s Alum Rock Park.
Cal Fire estimates more than 173 million trees have died either from bark beetles or directly as a result of the drought over the past 20 years.
American Canyon is making urgent calls for water conservation and suing Vallejo over a water disagreement as it tries to eke out every drop amid a historic drought.
The city’s water supplies are on the edge. Demand in recent years is about 2,800-acre feet of water annually. City officials estimate a potential 470 acre-foot deficit this year if demand remains the same.
As I drive across my family’s farm in the San Joaquin Valley, it feels as if I’m traveling on a chessboard. I cross one square with crops and then another without crops — our fields that must lay fallow. Our farm’s crops have been decimated by the drought.
Last year, reduced water deliveries in the state led to 395,000 acres of cropland being idled, according to UC Merced researchers, and about 8,750 agricultural workers lost their jobs.
