The Department of Justice can proceed with its claims that California violated state law when it changed its water quality control plan for the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta system in federal court, the Ninth Circuit ruled.
To highlight the escalating global water crisis, this year’s UN World Water Day on March 22 will focus on valuing water. With water demand expected to exceed supply by 56% within the decade, companies, investors and institutions are being called on to not only recognise the challenges of pricing water appropriately, but consider the social, environmental and cultural value of water. To address this growing concern, sustainability nonprofit Ceres partnered with the Government of the Netherlands’ Valuing Water Initiative to form the Valuing Water Finance Task Force, a coalition of influential investors who seek to drive corporate action on water-related financial risks.
An enormous ocean current that flows between continents in a worldwide circuit that can take centuries to complete is slowing down, scientists say. And climate change may be partly to blame.
New research finds that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — a major ocean system that ferries water and heat between the equator and the poles — is at its weakest point in more than a thousand years.
A Senate committee unanimously approved a bill Thursday to create Utah’s Colorado River Authority, which would be tasked with helping the state renegotiate its share of the river.
Originally the bill allowed broad reasons to close meetings and protect records. It’s since been changed twice to come more into compliance with the state’s open meeting and record laws. Critics of the bill said it’s still not enough.
The Nevada Irrigation District announced Tuesday that it will preview its draft 2020 Agricultural Water Management Plan for the public at evening meetings at 6 p.m. on March 3 and 4 via Zoom. The California Water Code requires agricultural water providers, such as NID, to prepare an Agricultural Water Management Plan every five years.
West Side farmers using the federal Central Valley Project can expect 5% to 75% of their contracted supply this year.
Two straight dry winters brought that announcement Tuesday from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. It involves water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to as far south as Kern County.
Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.
California’s desert is littered with remnants of broken dreams — hidden ghost towns, abandoned mines and rusty remains of someone’s Big Idea. But nothing looms larger on an abandoned landscape than the Salton Sea, which languishes in an overlooked corner of the state.
The collapse of the power grid in Texas last week, and the cascading infrastructure failures that resulted from it, are stark examples of why a proactive government matters. A complete evaluation will surely show that, like most accidents and failures, many factors played a role, but it is already easy to see that the avoidance of government regulation contributed to the cold-weather chaos.
A change in Arizona water law will let farmers and ranchers conserve water without worrying about losing their rights to it in the future.
Like most western states, Arizona water rights are “use it or lose it,” meaning that if farmers or ranchers don’t use their full amount for a certain number of years they risk forfeiting their rights forever. Kim Mitchell, senior water policy advisor with Western Resource Advocates, said that disincentivizes conservation at a time when we increasingly need more of it.
“We’re on the heels of 20 years of drought and now we have these recent commitments to divert less water from the Colorado River. And annual flow in many of our water courses have been decreasing with climate change and the drought that continues to grip the region,” Mitchell said.
