Given California’s international leadership in addressing climate change, it isn’t surprising that voters will be asked this November to approve billions of dollars in bonds to help the state become more resilient.
But why settle for one ballot proposal when you can have three?
After years of playing third fiddle to solar and wind power, geothermal energy is poised to start growing again in California.
Three local energy providers have signed contracts this month for electricity from new geothermal power plants, one in Imperial County near the Salton Sea and the other in Mono County along the Eastern Sierra. The new plants will be the first geothermal facilities built in California in nearly a decade — potentially marking a long-awaited turning point for a technology that could play a critical role in the state’s transition to cleaner energy sources.
Abundant and clean water supplies will be essential for California’s people, communities and economy to thrive in the future. Yet, the state faces significant challenges on the road to water security.
To address those difficulties, Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has released a draft “Water Resilience Portfolio” designed to ensure that California’s water systems, both natural and constructed, will adequately support our growing state in the future.
Earlier this month the Newsom administration laid out its vision for addressing the linked issues of water and climate in two key policy documents: the much-anticipated draft of its Water Resilience Portfolio (WRP) and the governor’s budget proposal. The WRP, which resulted from an April 2019 executive order, was developed with extensive input from state agencies and stakeholders from around California.
Much of California’s water supply is a hidden asset: Deep below the surface, rocks, gravel and sand store water like a sponge, in an underground zone called an aquifer.
In dry years, this groundwater has been tapped to save farms, keep grass green and provide drinking water to millions of Californians. But over time, people have taken more water out than nature has put back in.
California is moving forward with its biggest water project in decades, a single tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that will help move Northern California water south to cities and farms, state water officials said Wednesday. The proposal piggybacks on plans by former Gov. Jerry Brown, who wanted to build a pair of 30-mile-long tunnels through the delta but was stymied by funding shortfalls and controversy. The project shares the same vision as Brown’s: to halt deterioration of the delta’s fragile ecosystem — the pinch point of the state’s water delivery network — while ensuring adequate water shipments to the rest of the state.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s governor has restarted a project to build a giant, underground tunnel that would pump billions of gallons of water from the San Joaquin Delta to the southern part of the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Wednesday issued a Notice of Preparation for the project, which is the first step in the state’s lengthy environmental review process.
Last year, Newsom halted a similar project that would have built two tunnels for the same purpose. The new project will have only one tunnel, and it will carry less water. State officials don’t know how much it will cost.
California plans to halve the level at which water suppliers must test for perchlorate in drinking water.
The move is the first step in lowering the state’s drinking water standard for the chemical, which is used in rocket fuel, fireworks, and airbags, said Robert Brownwood, assistant deputy director in the State Water Resources Control Board’s division of drinking water.
A fight over the management of a diked island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is shining a light on a growing conundrum for California water managers, farmers and environmentalists over the best way to restore natural habitat on cropland created more than a century ago by draining marshes.
The courtroom battle over 9,000-acre Staten Island is the latest conflict in the delta over farming, wetlands and the aging levees that, besides preventing flooding, preserve a way of life on the man-made islands.
California’s ambitious renewable energy targets helped drive a substantial drop in greenhouse gas pollution that propelled the state past its 2020 climate change goals early, according to a non-partisan analysis released this week. Yet one California lawmaker confirmed Tuesday he wants to put a stop to the mandate, for now.
Most of the carbon pollution that California scrubbed from its economy over the past ten years disappeared from the state’s electricity sector.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
