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‘Decent Storm’ With 40 mph Winds To Drench Bay Area, Deposit Snow In Sierra

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Alejandro Serrano

A storm system from the Gulf of Alaska is poised to make Wednesday night in the Bay Area wet and windy.

The system is expected to deliver winds with gusts of up to 40 miles per hour and rain across the region, starting in the North Bay around sunset before moving south. Up to 2 feet of snow could fall in parts of Northern California and the Sierra, according to the National Weather Service, while local precipitation is expected to continue through Thursday, when showers give way to a cloudy Friday.

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Tests Of California Water Supplies Reveal Widespread PFAS Contamination

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

A class of toxic chemicals linked to cancer, known as PFASs, are present in numerous wells used for drinking water across California, according to new state tests performed on a fraction of California’s many well water supplies.

The test samples, released Monday by the State Water Resources Control Board, represent California’s fledgling effort to get a handle on contaminants that until recently haven’t been well tracked and regulated.

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Moccasin Dam, Which Came Close To Failure Last Year, Is Repaired And Working

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Peter Fimrite

A leaking dam that prompted evacuations in the Sierra foothills during an intense rainstorm last year has been repaired and is again storing drinking water for 2.7 million Bay Area residents, San Francisco water officials said Monday. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission spent almost $22 million over the past year repairing and reinforcing Moccasin Dam in Tuolumne County. A storm in March sent a torrent of water and debris into the reservoir, raising fears the earthen barrier would collapse.

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Risk Level Raised On Integrity Of Dam In Southern California

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Louis Sahagun

Federal engineers are raising alarms that a “significant flood event” could compromise the spillway of Southern California’s aging Prado Dam and potentially inundate dozens of Orange County communities from Disneyland to Newport Beach. After conducting an assessment of the 78-year-old structure this month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it is raising the dam’s risk category from “moderate” to “high urgency.” “Our concern right now is about the concrete slab of the spillway and how well it will perform if water were to spill over the top of the dam,” said Lillian Doherty, the Army Corps’ division chief. “We will determine whether or not it is as reliable as it should be.”

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Blueprint To Battle Bay Area Sea Level Rise Focuses On Natural Solutions

/in , /by /The San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Fimrite

A blueprint outlining how San Francisco Bay communities should combat sea level rise was released early Thursday by ecosystem scientists and urban planners who envision a ring of man made reefs, rocky beaches and graded marshlands around the largest estuary on the Pacific coast. The carefully designed features, outlined in the 255-page San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas, would in many cases replace or bury seawalls, rip rap, culverts and other crude fortifications that experts say won’t hold up as the climate warms and water rises.

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OPINION: Power Companies Want To Dodge Clean Energy Goals By Counting In Old Dams.

/in , /by /The San Francisco Chronicle

California power companies have an appealing but flawed argument with the state’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2045. They want existing dams that churn out carbon free electricity to count toward that mark, making it easier and cheaper to meet their climate friendly obligations. A pending bill, SB386, sounds narrow and focused, but it’s not. It would allow the Modesto irrigation district that operates Don Pedro Dam astride the Tuolumne River to total the cranked out electricity toward its renewable energy quota. That exemption would mean less need to buy juice from solar, wind and other green sources and save money for ratepayers.

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