When the highest stakes water negotiations in a century opened this fall, the largest, most powerful state — California — was represented by the youngest person at the table, a 27-year-old named John Brooks Hamby, who graduated from college barely four years ago.
Over the next two decades, Los Angeles County will collect billions more gallons in water from local sources, especially storm and reclaimed water, shifting from its reliance on other region’s water supplies as the effects of climate change make such efforts less reliable and more expensive.
An atmospheric river will continue to impact the West Coast over the next 24 hours.
A record amount of moisture is hitting the Pacific Northwest as the powerful system continues to bring heavy rainfall to the region.
California will escape much of the rainfall from an incoming atmospheric river, but the storm will still benefit some of the state’s reservoirs.
San Diego County has fallen behind in seasonal rainfall. A weak storm could bring a little moisture Wednesday through Friday. But the National Weather Service says the region will then be dry until late next week, and perhaps for much, much longer.
About 3 miles east of Bombay Beach, and a half-mile back from the Salton Sea’s receding shoreline, the crunchy exposed playa gives way from a mostly empty white landscape to more and more native vegetation, and then suddenly a few shallow ponds appear, surrounded by dense vegetation.
As forecasts tease California with rainstorms this week, the state’s reservoirs are already flush with water.
It’s a big departure from a year ago: The state’s major reservoirs — which store water collected mostly from rivers in the northern portion of the state — are in good shape, with levels at 124% of average. In late 2022, bathtub rings of dry earth lined lakes that had collectively dipped to about two-thirds of average — until heavy winter storms in January filled many of them almost to the brim.
A Pacific storm that was expected to drench San Diego County late Friday and early Saturday is turning away from the region and won’t deliver rain that’s needed to help reduce the risk of wildfires ahead of Santa Ana winds next week, the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters originally thought the system would drop about 0.70 inches of rain west of Interstate 15 and as much as an inch in the valleys, foothills and mountains to the east.
The binational agency that operates the aging federal wastewater treatment plant at the U.S.-Mexico border said declaring the sewage crisis an emergency to expedite the facility’s expansion may no longer be effective.
But the California Coastal Commission said Wednesday that all steps are needed to remedy the uncontrolled discharge of raw sewage and other pollutants as soon as possible.
Snowfall forecasts for the West’s mountains are critically important this winter after last year’s unusually heavy snow helped improve the region’s long-simmering water crisis, including conditions at Lake Powell and downstream Lake Mead outside Las Vegas.
Another heavy snow year could help reduce the need for water restrictions and help farmers continue producing irrigated crops such as melons, lettuce and almonds.
