Tag Archive for: Climate Change

Opinion: Californians Will Adapt to Living With Drought, As We Always Have

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Jay Lund

Climate change is exacerbating droughts and accelerating the transformation and decline of California’s native forest and aquatic ecosystems.  As a state, we are poorly organized to manage these effects, which need extensive focused preparation.  We need to adapt (and we will make mistakes in doing so).  Our human, economic and environmental losses will be much greater, however, if we manage poorly because of delay, complacency or panic.

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Severe Drought Threatens Hoover Dam Reservoir – and Water for US West

/in , , /by /The Guardianby Oliver Milman

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover Dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

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“Water Battery” Being Considered on Mokelumne River

/in , , /by /Sierra Nevada Allyby Scott King

Earlier this year, GreenGenStorage received a renewal of their licensing period to submit Pre-Application Documents to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for their proposed Mokelumne Pumped Storage Water Battery Project. The developer hopes to submit their PAD by the end of the year for the project, which would utilize excess solar and wind energy to power their pumped storage technology, thereby generating electricity for the grid at peak energy-usage hours.

“During the midday peak of solar energy generation, we would pump water uphill to an upper reservoir,” Nicholas Sher, manager at GreenGenStorage said. “Then in the evening where energy usage is consumed the most, we would release that water downstream and it would drive a turbine, thus generating energy. Then by soaking up wind power in the evenings for release in the morning peak hours, we’re essentially just time-shifting renewable energy.”

By using renewable energy to transfer water back and forth between two reservoirs, the project would be a non-consumptive means of using water to generate power. In the case of the Mokelumne Pumped Storage Water Battery Project, the Salt Springs Reservoir has been identified as the lower reservoir, as it already has a small hydro-facility on it that generates about 44 megawatts of energy.

Two options are currently being explored for the upper reservoir that Salt Springs would be connected to via penstock pipes: the Lower Bear or Upper Bear Reservoir.

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Amid a Megadrought, Federal Water Shortage Limits Loom for the Colorado River

/in , , /by /NPR

The Colorado River is tapped out.

Another dry year has left the watershed that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest parched. A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time, a shortage is expected to be declared by the federal government this summer.

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California’s New Summer Normal: Use Less Power and Water

/in , , /by /Bloombergby David R Baker, Brian K Sullivan, and Mark Chediak

Californians once greeted hot summers by blasting the air conditioners and filling the pool. No longer.

Battered by drought and heat waves that are straining the power grid, the Golden State is asking residents to make do with less water and electricity, just when they really want to use both. It’s an uncomfortable new normal for a state that used to celebrate summer.

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After Decades Of Warming And Drying, the Colorado River Struggles to Water the West

/in , , /by /KPBS

A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time this summer, the federal government will declare a shortage.

 

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The Colorado River is Drying Up Faster Than Federal Officials Can Keep Track. Mandatory Water Cuts are Looming

/in , , /by /The Colorado Sunby Michael Booth

Ablunt new report based on June runoff conditions from the Colorado River into Lake Powell and Lake Mead shows the reservoirs fast deteriorating toward “dead pool” status, where stored water is so low it can’t spin the massive hydroelectric power generators buried in the dams, and large swaths of Arizona farmland going fallow.

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Opinion: San Diegans Don’t Face the Water Woes Seen in Much of the State. But Conserve Anyways

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for all Californians to reduce their water use by 15 percent amid a severe drought across most of the state won’t be met with the same urgency in San Diego County as elsewhere because of a decades-old effort to diversify water supplies here and because of a new court order.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declined a legal challenge by Imperial Valley farmers that had the potential to threaten the San Diego County Water Authority’s access to Colorado River supplies. This is why San Diego County is being asked to conserve but is not one of 50 counties in the state subject to Newsom’s stricter drought decrees.

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‘Unrecognizable.’ Lake Mead, a Lifeline for Water in Los Angeles and the West, Tips Toward Crisis

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jaweed Kaleem, Thomas Curwen

Eric Richins looked out from his pontoon boat to the shallows on the lake’s western edge. He squinted and paused as if he had come upon a foreign shore. For the first time in a career navigating the waters of the American West, he didn’t know where he was.

“I could have sworn I was here just six weeks ago catching smallmouth and bigmouth bass,” said the 35-year-old fisherman who runs tours on this 247-square-mile basin where the Colorado River meets the Hoover Dam to form the nation’s largest reservoir.

He pointed ahead to what looked like dozens of tiny steps made from successive layers of dried mud now covered in tall grass and weeds — the effect of rapidly creeping vegetation over a shoreline that has been dropping by nearly a foot a week.

“Now it looks like a lawn. I knew the drought was bad. I didn’t realize it was this bad,” he said. “This place is unrecognizable.”

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In California’s Interior, There’s No Escape from the Desperate Heat: ‘Why are We Even Here?’

/in , /by /The Guardianby Maanvi Singh

In Cantua, a small town deep within California’s farming heartland, the heat had always been a part of life. “We can do nothing against it,” said Julia Mendoza, who’s lived in this town for 27 years. But lately, she says, the searing temperatures are almost unlivable.

By midday on Thursday, the first day of a protracted, extreme heatwave in California’s Central Valley, the country roads were sizzling with heat. A young volunteer with a local environmental justice non-profit who had come to check in on the neighborhood collapsed on the sidewalk, her face bright red and damp. Construction crews working nearby quickly swept her into an air-conditioned car and handed her a cold bottle of water.

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