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California’s San Joaquin Valley continues to sink at an alarming rate because of groundwater pumping and irrigation, according to a new study by NASA. Ground levels in some areas have dropped 1 to 2 feet in the last two years, creating deeper and wider “bowls” that continue to threaten the vital network of channels that transport water across Southern California, researchers say. The findings underscore the fact that even as record rain and snow have brought much of California out of severe drought, some parts of the state will probably struggle with water problems for years to come.

 

At Northern California’s Lake Oroville, water levels receded Monday, stopping the overflow of water from the dam’s emergency spillway. This reduced the risk of immediate uncontrolled flooding — but longer-term concerns remain. William Brangham speaks with Jeffrey Mount of the Public Policy Institute of California about the massive evacuation that took place and the outlook for the dam’s future.

Any dam engineer would be terrified of this nightmare scenario — the possible collapse of a retaining wall in California’s second largest reservoir.  That’s the prospect officials faced when they ordered more than 100,000 people evacuated downstream of the nation’s tallest dam Sunday. It occurred insidiously: a pocket of erosion that crept ever closer to a low concrete wall that was supposed to be the last, best defense against disaster.

Friday afternoon the sun peaked through the clouds above Lake Oroville and a rainbow arched over the Feather River. It was a welcome sight for state engineers who were battling the lake’s worrisome rise with torrential releases down the reservoir’s broken concrete spillway. The break in storms and a drop in the volume of water pouring into the huge reservoir gave dam operators hope that they could keep lake levels from hitting an elevation of 901 feet — the point at which uncontrolled flows would start washing down an unpaved emergency spillway that has never been used in Oroville’s 48-year history.

 

Public attendance at a Thursday evening (February 9) hearing to introduce water rates for Imperial Beach, Coronado, and southwest San Diego for the next three years was so sparse that the public was easily outnumbered by California American Water (Cal Am) and California Public Utilities Commission staff. Despite the low turnout (less than a dozen people), a battle over where to place a water-recycling plant — in Coronado or Imperial Beach — appears to be heating up behind the stiff formality of the proceedings.