California entered a sixth year of drought with 102 million trees dying in its forest and a summer of wildfires that swept through communities from the San Diego border to far northern California, leaving a trail of death and destruction. But rains and snow in the Sierras gave the state hope that the drought’s grip was slowly loosening.
A North County water rights dispute that had been stuck in federal court for decades was officially put to rest last week, along with part of an even older case.The two settlements were included in a larger package of water resource and infrastructure legislation approved earlier this month by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then signed Friday by President Barack Obama. One case involved a 1951 three-pronged lawsuit over water rights to the Santa Margarita River that at one time had nearly 7,000 defendants.
Many years ago, leaders in our region came together to figure out how to ensure a reliable water supply for the future. They recognized not just the importance of water to our quality of life, but how essential it is for a healthy economy. We were in a vulnerable position, and we knew it. The region relied on imported water for 95 percent of its supply. Carlsbad was 100 percent dependent on imported water.
This water year, which stretches from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, is on track to outpace the last two months of 2015. As of Sunday afternoon, the Saugus weather station measured 1.58 cumulative inches of precipitation for the water year, said Bonnie Bartling, specialist for the National Weather Service Oxnard office. Though the Santa Clarita Valley is still below last year’s mark when the station cleared 1.62 inches of rain by the end of Dec. 2015. But, Bartling said the area still has time to clear the hurdle.
The twin 40-foot-diameter, 30-mile-long tunnels would harvest Sacramento River water before it flows through the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. A vast majority of this water would be sent to Big Ag operations like The Wonderful Company in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. It will destroy the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. But as the the San Francisco Chronicle recently editorialized, “The tunnel project, now marketed to Californians as WaterFix, lacks community trust and political will and is saddled with a $16 billion (and growing) price tag that appears much larger than water agencies are willing to pay.”
Twenty-six million people in California, Nevada and Arizona rely on the Colorado River, but this magnificent source of water that carved a continent is drying up. Representatives of the three states have been huddling behind closed doors and, for the first time ever, California water officials are offering to give up some of the state’s strongest claims to the river – at least temporarily. The thermometer of the river’s health is Lake Mead — the lake formed behind Hoover Dam. The lake is now lower than it’s been since it was first filled back in the mid-1930s.
Freeze watches and warnings are in place throughout much of California as cold, dry air moves through, toppling temperature records. In Orange County, it was cold but no records were broken over the weekend, though temperatures dipped into the mid-30s around the county. The National Weather Service reported a low of 33 degrees in Laguna Beach. In 1935, Santa Ana hit a low of 29 degrees for the same date, said NWS forecaster Brett Albright. Meteorologists say a warming trend should be apparent by Tuesday, with lows in the 40s and highs in the low 70s.
Climate change could supercharge the powerful storms often hailed for bringing drought-busting rains to California.The storms, called atmospheric rivers, are long stretches of water vapor that travel from the tropics up to the West Coast of the U.S.. In California, they can deliver up to half of the state’s annual precipitation in just a couple of weeks. But too much water at once can be a bad thing. The phenomena are capable of causing destructive floods and landslides — and now, according to a new study, ecological damage.
Today, Poseidon Water commended Congress and President Barack Obama on the approval of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act). The WIIN Act includes 98-pages of California specific regulations that, for the first time in nearly twenty-five years, invests more than $500 million into California water projects. “Not only is this a critical water bill for the nation, but it also recognizes desalination as a way to address California’s current drought and long-term water shortages,” said Carlos Riva, Chief Executive Officer of Poseidon Water.
Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia on Friday published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared – Totten is melting from below. The measurements, sampling ocean temperatures in seas over a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep in some places right at the edge of Totten glacier’s floating ice shelf, affirmed that warm ocean water is flowing in towards the glacier at the rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second.
