With California starved for water amid dire drought conditions, there’s a lot of hope that the upcoming winter will deliver plentiful rain and snow.
But exactly how much precipitation is needed to pull the state out of a drought?
The California Department of Water Resources, the state agency that manages drought responset, has answered that question with a model from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Staying on top of your irrigation system – especially in the midst of a drought – can mean the difference between maximizing your water efficiency and unknowingly wasting water running down sidewalks unused into the storm drain. Follow these tips for a thorough checkup.
The thirst for water in the Western U.S. will likely not be quenched in the near future.
Drought conditions are expected to persist in the West, which is already amid a decades-long megadrought, through 2022 and beyond, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s drought outlook.
Another year of drought means another year of reduced harvest for California rice. Farmers slashed planting by 20% in the spring due to water shortages, which amounts to about 100,000 acres of idle rice fields.
“We don’t want to be cut any more than people want to be told how they can treat their back lawn or anything like that,” said farmer Tom Butler.
State water officials are facing unprecedented challenges preventing erosion and runoff this winter after the Dixie Fire burned more acreage than any other single wildfire in California history. Crews have begun erosion control projects and are planning for the run-off of sediment into the Sierra watershed throughout the wet season. Crews with the California Conservation Corps are out doing erosion control in the burn scar areas in Greenville, in Plumas County. Most of the town was destroyed in the Dixie Fire.
Residents and property owners must now follow immediate citywide changes to watering and irrigation in the wake of this week’s City Council water shortage emergency declaration.
According to a city release, the council’s declaration Monday night goes into effect immediately and is intended to limit water use by 15 percent compared to last year, in part by limiting landscaping to three times a week at most.
A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday ruled that an environmental group can press ahead with claims that a toxic chemical in a central California city’s drinking-water system qualifies as “solid waste” under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Overturning a lower court ruling, a split panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city of Vacaville can potentially be held liable under the RCRA for transporting in its water pipes the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, which an environmental group claims is the result of commercial pollution at a site where the city draws its water.
Recent rainfall hasn’t been nearly enough to make a dent in Lake Shasta’s precariously low water levels.
The lakebed where the water has receded still shows cracks where mud has hardened and over the summer, dust devils have swept the fine, dried silt into the air.
The drought has dropped Lake Shasta to its second worst level since the last bucket of concrete was poured for Shasta Dam in December 1945.
Yan Yu Lin and her seven-year-old daughter live in a tight studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, in a century-old building where 60 or so residents on each floor share a bathroom.
Along the back wall of the room is a plastic potty – the kind designed for toilet training toddlers. The shared bathrooms are out of order so often, so rank and unhygienic, that Lin has her daughter use the plastic potty instead. “It’s safer,” she said.
After two dry years, the California is in desperate need of rain and snow. October marks the beginning of California’s new water year, which will run through Sept. 30 next year.
This also signals the transition from the long, dry summer months to the wetter time of year. But new research is showing a delay to California’s rainy season.
