Lake Casitas is home for Owen Peralta. He works the dock at the marina and each year he’s watched the water levels drop more and more.
It has gotten so bad he’s worried the lake, which serves as a reservoir supplying parts of Ventura with drinking water, could dry up.
Ventura County has moved into severe drought conditions as it wraps up what is typically the rainiest months of the year.
Today marks the anniversary of the deadliest man-made disaster in California history. It’s a largely forgotten event which killed hundreds of people in Ventura County. On March 12th, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed, sending a wall of water more than 50 miles from the Santa Clarita area through the Santa Clara River Valley. More than 400 people died.
The Central Coast and parts south are unusually dry, according to the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s national drought monitor. That could lead to dry soil, increased irrigation, stunted germination of dryland crops and increased risk of fire, the report says.
Tension is growing between politicians claiming to be “climate leaders”; those who say that enacted policies are too little, too late; and industry sectors lobbying to maintain the status quo. Environmental activists are pushing hard against the fossil fuel industry and commercial agriculture — two sectors that helped build Ventura County but are now being put under the spotlight for activities that contribute to global warming.
The first slide of the Oxnard chief financial officer’s presentation to be given on Tuesday contains this message: “Warning: Estimates subject to change.” No politician, economist or crystal ball can show exactly how deep and how lasting this recession will go. As municipal finance leaders put together a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, the best they can do is use projections with limited certainty.
People crowded into an Ojai junior high school auditorium recently after thousands received legal notices or a court summons from the city of Ventura. The city notified 14,000-plus property owners in the Ventura River watershed of a potential adjudication of water rights. That move came years after the city faced legal action over its own water use. In 2014, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper filed a lawsuit alleging the city was taking too much water from the river, hurting habitat for steelhead trout and other wildlife. The nonprofit sued to compel the state to intervene, analyze the city’s pumping and set conditions on it if appropriate.
A cold, fast-moving storm out of the Gulf of Alaska worked its way Tuesday toward Southern California, where it was poised to hit Thursday and generate between three and five hours of moderate rain but is not expected to trigger mud slides or debris flows in burn areas, National Weather Service forecasters said.
In the San Gabriel Mountains, 4 to 8 inches of snow will fall above 5,500 feet and between 1 and 4 inches between 3,500 and 5,500 feet, said NWS meteorologist Rich Thompson in a telephone interview from his base in Oxnard in Ventura County.
When the Thomas Fire reached Ventura city limits early on Dec. 5, 2017, a critical tool to help curb the flames quickly disappeared: water.
Some of the more than 500 people who ultimately lost their homes sued Ventura over that lack of water, though they later directed their energy at Southern California Edison, which investigators found caused the fire.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
