Two winters’ worth of snow has already fallen in the Sierra Nevada since Christmas, pulling California from the depths of extreme drought into one of its wettest winters in memory.
But as a series of tropical storms slams the state, that bounty has become a flood risk as warm rains fall on the state’s record snowpack, causing rapid melting and jeopardizing Central Valley towns still soggy from January’s deluges.
Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley may be able to blunt a sharp decline in the years ahead if policymakers and the industry can come together on a series of strategies for reducing demand for irrigation while also increasing water supply, according to a new assessment from a prominent policy organization.
The report this month from the Public Policy Institute of California examined the biggest challenge confronting the state’s ag industry then recommended softening the impact by loosening water-trading rules, incentivizing farmland reuse and investing in storage, including groundwater recharge.
You would have to be at least a septuagenarian to remember “Rebel Without a Cause,” a 1955 movie that starred James Dean and depicted the lives of aimless teenagers.
The film’s most memorable scene was a game of chicken in which two boys raced cars side by side toward a cliff and the first one to bail out was the loser. The “winner,” however, died when his car hurtled over the cliff.
The most important piece of California’s water puzzle is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 1,100-square-mile estuary where the state’s two most important rivers meet. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain a watershed of mountains and hills that stretches about 400 miles from Mount Shasta, near the Oregon border, to the Sierra southeast of Fresno.
For at least a decade, off and on, state water managers and local water agencies have pursued the holy grail of a master agreement to improve the environmental health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by increasing its water flows.
If California sees its environmental goals get met, does it really matter who contributed to the success?
Among certain environmental groups, the answer can be boiled down to a single word: “It depends.”
California lawmakers representing the state’s Delta area are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to cancel his plan for an underground tunnel that would reroute water from Northern to Southern California.
Representatives John Garamendi, Josh Harder, Jerry McNerney and Mike Thompson, all Democrats, released a joint statement in response to the draft environmental impact report for the project.
Will the fifth time be the charm for California’s decades-long effort to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta so that more Northern California water can be transported to Southern California?
Don’t count on it.
Last week, the state Department of Water Resources released a draft environmental impact report on the latest iteration of the 57-year-long effort to change the Delta’s role in water supply, a 45-mile-long tunnel officially named the “Delta Conveyance.”
Rising river levels? It’s been a surprising sight in recent days for people out along the American River.
California is in year three of a severe drought and people are being asked to conserve, but water releases from Folsom Dam are being dramatically increased this week.
California water officials are poised to release the first environmental review of a controversial project to replumb the Delta — a plan in the works for decades that has alternately been called a water grab or a critical update to shore up state supplies.
Known as the Delta Conveyance Project, a tunnel supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom would take water from the Sacramento River and bypass the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, funneling the flows directly to pumps in the south Delta or straight to Bethany Reservoir at the northern end of the California Aqueduct.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
