Traffic and the amount of harmful chemicals in the air have dropped amid coronavirus closures, data shows. Telework isn’t currently part of the city’s Climate Action Plan – but it could become part of updated versions.
California has the opportunity to enter a new era in water management. Unprecedented efforts by leaders at the state and national level have led to the kind of cooperation that will provide valuable benefits to water users and the environment.
I know because that’s what we’ve been doing in the Sacramento Valley for many years. The kinds of success we’ve achieved can be replicated in other parts of the state. By working together, we can accomplish much more than can ever be achieved when competing interests are fighting.
California’s current water regulatory system is completely broken. Farms, towns and cities suffer continued cutbacks and threatened fish species continue to dwindle. The only recourse currently available seems to be an ongoing parade of lawsuits that further paralyze the system and help no one.
April showers may be more scarce than normal north of Point Conception in California, according to an outlook produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This area where the probability of precipitation is below normal includes virtually all of Northern California and the crucial northern Sierra Nevada, where the state’s largest reservoirs are located.
While snow cover has increased thanks to a series of March storms, the Northern Sierra 8-Station Index stands at 56% of normal for the season. As of March 24, another 29.25 inches would be needed to reach the season normal of 54.52 inches.
Following recent reports that newly accessed geothermal power resources in California could also provide access to lithium as a valuable by-product, a pilot facility is now in development.
Resource developer Controlled Thermal Resources recently signed a power purchase agreement for 40MW of geothermal energy with Imperial Irrigation District, a water – and energy – provider in Southern California.
CTR is also now creating Hell’s Kitchen Co, facilities for lithium extraction and chemical processing at its geothermal plant at Imperial Valley’s shallow, saline Salton Sea. CTR has now partnered with technology provider Lilac Solutions, which has its own proprietary ion exchange technology, to open up a pilot plant to extract lithium from the run-off geothermal brine
California mountains are blanketed in snow and much of the state has had plenty of rain in a remarkable March turnabout from the extremely dry first two months of the year.
The most recent statewide storm started during the weekend and, despite diminishing, snow snowfall and showers were still occurring here and there.
In the Sierra Nevada, Homewood Mountain Resort on the west shore of Lake Tahoe reported late Tuesday a storm total of 114 inches (289.5 centimeters) of snow at its summit and 74 inches (188 centimeters) at the base.
David Snydacker knew going in that California’s Imperial Valley was a “graveyard for lithium-extraction technologies.”
For years, companies had tried and failed to find a cost-effective way to pull the valuable mineral — a key ingredient in the batteries that power electric cars — from the naturally heated fluid deep beneath the Salton Sea. One of the most recent busts was Simbol Materials, a much-hyped startup that collapsed in 2015 shortly after Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. offered to buy the firm for $325 million.
The Colorado River Basin is the setting for some of the most drawn-out and complex water issues in the Western U.S. In 2019, the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan — a water-conservation agreement between states, tribal nations and the federal government for the basin, now in its 20th year of drought — passed Congress. This year, it goes into effect.
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.
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.
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.
