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Study Suggests Flooding Could Reach Never-Before-Seen Levels in Sacramento, Central Valleys

/in , /by /Fox40by Melanie Townsend and Jordan Radach

While wildfires and droughts dominate California weather, residents have to prepare for another kind of disaster — flooding.

Sacramento is no stranger to seeing flooding of epic proportions. It happened during the Great Flood of 1862 that completely submerged Old Town, and the evidence is still right below our feet.

Floodwaters have plagued the Central Valley several more times before, happening again in 1986, 1995, 1997, 2006 and 2017, but new research by the organization Climate Central suggests that in 100 years, flooding in the Sacramento and Central valleys could reach levels never seen before.

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Can Water Megaprojects Save The US Desert West? (Part 1)

/in , /by /CleanTechnicaby Jennifer Sensiba

In the American West, water has always been a challenge. Prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers, there’s broad evidence that droughts and water cycles heavily affected Native Americans. For example, the people who built the Gila Cliff Dwellings may have left the area when water supplies dwindled. Later settlements by the descendants of Europeans also followed water, with settlements placed near rivers so there would be something to drink and grow food with.

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Water Futures to Start Trading Amid Growing Fears of Scarcity

/in , /by /BNN Bloomberg by Kim Chipman

Water is joining gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.

Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike will be able to hedge against — or bet on — potential water scarcity starting this week, when CME Group Inc. launches contracts linked to the $1.1 billion California spot water market. According to Chicago-based CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.

The contracts, a first of their kind in the U.S., were announced in September as heat and wildfires ravaged the U.S. West Coast. They are meant to serve both as a hedge for California’s biggest water consumers against skyrocketing prices and a scarcity gauge for investors worldwide.

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Droughts Exposed California’s Thirst for Groundwater. Now, the State Hopes to Refill its Aquifers

/in , , /by /Science Magazine (American Association for the Advancement of Science) by Erik Stokstad

California’s Central Valley — one of the richest agricultural regions in the world — is sinking. During a recent intense drought, from 2012 to 2016, parts of the valley sank as much as 60 centimeters per year. “It isn’t like an earthquake; it doesn’t happen, boom,” says Claudia Faunt, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. But it is evidence of a slow-motion disaster, the result of the region’s insatiable thirst for groundwater.

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Folsom Dam is Being Raised. What That Means for Droughts, Boating and Your Flood Insurance

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Tony Bizjak

Folsom Dam has long quietly served as a backstop for Sacramento, offering critical flood protection to one of the most at-risk metropolitan areas in the country. But a few scary winter storms in the 1980s and 1990s proved that the dam and the region’s extensive system of river levees weren’t as fail-safe as thought.

That’s prompted several billion dollars of flood control work since then.

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