An agreement announced Tuesday paves the way for the largest dam demolition in U.S. history, a project that promises to reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border to salmon that are critical to tribes but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years.
The U.S. EPA’s water infrastructure financing programs would be in line for approximately level funding next year under a plan for FY21 appropriations released by Senate Republicans last week. The funding proposal is detailed in the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies’ Nov. 16 Monday Morning Briefing.
A new report from the U.S. Geological Survey says climate change will affect groundwater resources in both the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basin, but in different ways.
More than a month and a half into this year’s rainy season and significant precipitation was finally falling on Tuesday in Northern California. The state could use it in more ways than one.
Forty million people, 5.5 million acres of farmland and the livelihood of residents in major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Las Vegas depend on the Colorado River, described as the workhorse of the West and under assault by drought.
The U.S. Geological Survey is in the beginning stages of learning more about this river via an expanded and more sophisticated monitoring system that aims to study details about the snowpack that feeds the river basin, droughts and flooding, and how streamflow supports groundwater, or vice versa.
This winter may seem colder than previous warmer winters Californians have experienced in recent history, because a moderate to strong La Niña is forming over the pacific.
But La Niña, an annual weather pattern off of the Pacific Ocean that often dictates California’s drier conditions in the winter, doesn’t buck global warming trends, according to Michelle Mead, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Mead says since California is this long skinny state, La Niña’s impact will differ depending on where you live, just like the storm moving across Northern California this week.
Towering high tides hitting the Southern California coast were met with record-high temperatures Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
The astronomical tides, known as king tides, occur when the moon is closest to Earth and are often the highest tides of the year, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Combined with high surf, king tides can bring tidal overflows, minor beach erosion and an increased risk of drowning.
Non-revenue water loss is among the biggest challenges facing the water industry and the world. Nearly one-third of all water, amounting to $39 billion annually, is lost before it ever reaches a customer, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan. Water scarcity will proliferate with the aging water infrastructure, rapid urbanization and worsening disaster seasons throughout the world.
Bodies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are doing their part to make strides toward improved infrastructure. Earlier this year, the agency announced the availability of $2.7 billion in funding to support infrastructure projects that help protect surface and drinking water. However, with AWWA’s estimated cost of more than $1 trillion to manage water infrastructure over the next 25 years, the responsibility must fall to the industry to understand these challenges and prepare a strategy to understand and respond to them.
