You are now in California and the U.S. Home Headline Media Coverage category.

Opinion: Why California Should Support Delta Tunnel Proposal

/in , , /by /The Mercury News by Mike Mielke

If our state wants to remain economically competitive, it must re-engineer the troubled estuary that serves as the hub of California’s elaborate water-delivery system — the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The best and most viable way to do this is via the single Delta tunnel project proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, which the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and our 350 members support. The water that flows through the Delta serves nearly 27 million people in our state and ensures 3 million acres of farmland stays productive. Yet, the current Delta water delivery system – comprised often of simple earthen levees – is fragile and extremely vulnerable to catastrophic disruption from earthquakes, floods, and rising seas.

Full Story

Opinion: Farms Don’t Need Dangerous Chemicals to Grow Food. Let’s Cut Our Dependence On Them

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Brian Leahy

Forty years ago, farm neighbors told my surprised family that our wildlife friendly farming practices were organic – which doubled the value of our rice crop. Our farming methods evolved after my father-in-law’s return from World War II. Like many peers, he tried new technologies – chemical pesticides and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer – and saw them kill the wildlife he loved and the soil he relied on. He sensed that a food system based on toxic chemistry was a dead end. Instead, he developed an approach that incorporated wildlife – instead of fighting it.

Full Story

KRRC: Dam Removal Project is ‘On Track’ and Within Budget

/in , , /by /Taft Midway Driller

The Klamath River Renewal Corporation announced on Monday that they have submitted requested documentation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that demonstrates that they have sufficient funds to complete the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. Last week, KRRC announced that they’ve hired a company to ensure all the various phases of the project run smoothly and “in concert with one another.” KRRC selected McMillen Jacobs Associates to provide what is referred to as “owner’s representation services.”

Full Story

Lawmakers Angle for a Seat at the Table in Colorado River Drought Negotiations

/in , , /by /Casper Star-Tribuneby Nick Reynolds

CHEYENNE – For nearly a century, the Colorado River Compact has practically been seen as scripture for states from Wyoming all the way down to the Mexican border.

The compact – written in the years populations in the American Southwest first began to explode – has been the code by which life along the Colorado River Basin has been granted, a strict allocation of the snowmelt from the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the Arizona desert and the parched reaches of the expansive fields of Southern California.

Full Story

California Scientists Study Climate Change at Bottom of the Ocean

/in , , /by /KPBSby Erik Anderson

California researchers have found that oxygen levels and water temperatures play a key role in the health of deep-sea fish populations. San Diego and Monterey Bay scientists studied fish on the floor of the Gulf of California.

“This is an example of some of the video that we are analyzing for this research,” said Natalya Gallo, a post-doctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

She pointed to footage taken along the seafloor on the Gulf of California near the Mexican coast. The pictures come from a remotely controlled submarine. Researchers use the underwater tool to gauge the impact of a warming ocean on fish.

Full Story

Opinion: The Dam Truth About the Colorado River

/in , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Gary Wockner

The latest research about the Colorado River is alarming and also predictable: In a warming world, snowmelt has been decreasing while evaporation of reservoirs is increasing. Yet no politician has a plan to save the diminishing Colorado River. If you followed the news about the Colorado River for the last year, however, you’d think that a political avalanche had swept down from Colorado’s snow-capped peaks and covered the Southwest with a blanket of “collaboration” and “river protection.”

I won’t call it fake news, but I will point out errors of omission. First, the Colorado River is not protected. The agreement that was reached — called the “Drought Contingency Plan” — does not protect the river nor its ecological health. The agreement protects the federal government’s, the states’, the cities’, and the farmers’ ability to 100% drain the river bone dry every single year.

Full Story

Environmental Disaster or a Key to Clean Energy Future? A New Twist on Hydropower

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Steve Lowe gazed into a gaping pit in the heart of the California desert, careful not to let the blistering wind send him toppling over the edge.

The pit was a bustling iron mine once, churning out ore that was shipped by rail to a nearby Kaiser Steel plant. When steel manufacturing declined, Los Angeles County tried to turn the abandoned mine into a massive landfill. Conservationists hope the area will someday become part of Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides.

Lowe has a radically different vision.

With backing from NextEra Energy — the world’s largest operator of solar and wind farms — he’s working to fill two mining pits with billions of gallons of water, creating a gigantic “pumped storage” plant that he says would help California get more of its power from renewable sources, and less from fossil fuels.

Full Story

Utah House Reaffirms Intent to Develop Colorado River Water

/in , , /by /Deseret Newsby Amy Joi O'Donoghue

Utah’s booming population growth and rapid economic development means the need for more water, a higher level of conservation and wise development of water supplies, which are not infinite.

With that in the backdrop, the Utah House of Representatives on Tuesday passed HCR22, which makes clear to neighboring states and policymakers that Utah will someday develop its unused portion of the Colorado River.

The Colorado River, termed the hardest working river in the West, serves 40 million people in the Southwest, including a large population in Utah through a diversion system.

Full Story

California May Need a ‘Miracle March’ to Prevent an Early and Dangerous Wildfire Season

/in , , /by /AccuWeatherby John Roach

A brush fire that grew to 175 acres in Norco, California, on Tuesday was perhaps a preview of what could be an early and dangerous wildfire season in a state that just had its driest February on record. It was the eighth fire incident in 2020, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). That already equals the number of fire incidents before April 1 in the last four years combined.

Full Story

San Diego Would Suffer Catastrophic Damage if Rose Canyon Fault Produces 6.9 Earthquake

/in , /by /San Diego Union-Tribuneby Gary Robbins

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake on San Diego’s Rose Canyon Fault could damage 100,000 residences, cause widespread road and bridge failures, and make parts of Mission Bay sink about a foot, according to the most detailed disaster scenario ever done on the region.

Such a temblor could also cut gas and water service between La Jolla and the Silver Strand for months, collapse key municipal buildings, and close the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, says a report by the San Diego chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Parts of the fault would rupture the Earth’s surface and shift the landscape 6 to 7 feet, damaging streets so badly it would make it hard for police, firefighters and paramedics to get around.

Full Story