A disappointingly dry February is fanning fears of another severe drought in California, and cities and farms are bracing for problems. In many places, including parts of the Bay Area, water users are already being asked to cut back.
Colorado’s high country is just weeks away from its average peak snowpack date. Current measurements are on the fast track to coming up short. “Our snowpack has been struggling. We’re close to average, but not quite to average so the likelihood of getting average snowpack is pretty low at this point. It’s most likely that most areas of our state will have a little bit below average snowpack when we end the season,” said Becky Bolinger, Assistant State Climatologist with the Colorado Climate Center at CSU.
The South San Joaquin Irrigation District season is starting March 10 although board members added an asterisk to that decision. Restrictions on water allocation as the irrigation season unfolds loom as a possibility especially if March ends up being mostly dry. The board last week was guided by the conservative outlook the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration posted for its California and Nevada River Forecast that includes the Stanislaus River watershed that the SSJID relies on to make deliveries to farmers irrigating 52,000 acres around Manteca, Ripon, and Escalon as well as deliver drinking water to Manteca, Lathrop, and Tracy.
On issues ranging from climate policy to immigration and health care, the past four years have been full of discord between California and Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, water users throughout California have not escaped the conflict, including in the Central Valley, where our communities have suffered as a result. Now, with drought conditions returning and the impacts of climate change intensifying, it is time to advance a solution for statewide water policy that will transition us from an era of conflict to one of collaboration.
California water managers are pinning their hopes on the month of March to turn around a below-average water year. Many California reservoirs are still well below average as we start, what typically is, the last big wet month of the season. Folsom Lake has 345,609 acre feet of water between its shores — just 64% of where it should be for this time of year and just over a third of the lake’s capacity.
The Carlsbad Flower Fields are in bloom and open for visitors. Guests wanting to visit the blooming acres of flowers will need to follow some new rules. Reservations to visit the Flower Fields will need to be made online. Tickets will not be sold at the door.
California is spending more than $200 million to keep an unfolding ecological crisis from getting worse. The state wants to stabilize habitat along the southern bank of the Salton Sea, the state’s largest lake.
That is good news for nearby residents concerned about their health, but the restoration could also affect everyone who draws water from the Colorado River.
An invisible line splits the rural road of Avenue 416 in California’s Tulare county, at the point where the nut trees stretch east toward the towering Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. On one side of the line, residents have clean water. On the other side, they do not. On the other side lies East Orosi, an unincorporated community of about 700 where children grow up learning to never open their eyes or mouths while they shower.
On a Saturday in late October, Carolyn Phinney is hip-deep in a half-acre of vegetables, at the nucleus of what will one day be 15 acres of productive farmland.
It’s not long ago that Lake Cachuma, the main water source on the South Coast, was in danger of going dry in a seven-year drought.
Water agencies from Carpinteria to Goleta spent millions of dollars scrambling to buy surplus state aqueduct water from around the state to avert a local shortage. They did so not only because their groundwater levels were plunging and Cachuma was failing, but because their yearly allocations from the aqueduct had dropped to zero.
